Beware Your Liberty...

I've heard people say, "Well, we don't have to go to church," or "We don't have to go" to this or that meeting at church just because it's scheduled when it is.  We don't have to go.........we don't have to give..........we don't have to work with difficult people...........we don't have to!

Beware this trend in your heart.  If, in the process of "practicing your liberty" in Christ, you find yourself using this liberty as an excuse for what you have grown weary of in your church, or in your life, you'd better wake up and check your salvation pulse. You might be dead.  No, it would not mean you have lost your salvation, but it might mean you were never a child of God's to begin with.

Our Christian liberty is not given to us to be exercised in freedom from service to Him; it is given to us so that we are free to serve Him.

The writer of Hebrews brings this home in a very real way.  In chapter 10, he admonishes us as follows:

²³ Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, ²⁵ not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

This does not mean  "Let us" as in a command.  It means "Let us" in that we are no longer hindered from doing what he has said.  It means to no longer be hindered. The tense of the verb is present - we ARE no longer hindered to consider one another.  

Our liberty in Christ is not a ticket to do what we want, or not do what we don't want to do; it's a ticket to serving Him unhindered.  

Praise be.

~Tricia