December 8, 2012 … Finally Free

Chronological Bible Reading Plan - Day 343 - 69 years in this life today!

Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Romans, Chapters 8-10 To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Blogger’s Note: … If you’ve been following my devotional blogs for any period of time, you know that God often reminds me of songs I love to help Him express His truths to me in my quiet-times with Him each morning; and when I meditated on Chapter 8 of Romans today, God bubbled up my memory of a great song, written and performed by Nichole Nordeman a few years ago, entitled Finally Free, to which I’ll link you on You Tube to hear before reading my comments below -  .
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Highlight Passages: Romans 8 [all of it!] : [NLT] … {Please take the time to use the link above and read, study, and meditate on ALL of Chapter 8 of Paul’s freeing epistle to all Christians. Most of what I’m about to journal below rests on the content of this chapter.} …
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Highlight Passages: Romans 9-10 : [NLT] … {And I’ll leave it to you to use the link above and to study through these two chapters as well, though I won’t be blogging on them here today. In Chapter 9, Paul tries to help Jewish believers to identify with the truth of the Gospel, which was prophesied by their Prophets in their Scripturs and by God’s Book of the Law. And in Chapter 10 we read Paul trying to get any Christian, with an emphasis for the Jews, to realize that one will only realize, by believing in Christ, the freedom offered by the finished work of Jesus in dying and being resurrected for our sins. As Nichole Nordeman sings in her song, , … only when we believe in and hang our eternity on the hope in Christ are we Finally - FINALLY - Free.} …
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Reference Passage: Romans 7: 14-24 : [NLT] … {Again I link you to Chapter 7 of Romans about which I blogged yesterday, where Paul was curiously railing about self-doubt and feelings of guilt for his very human condition of sinfulness, from which he longed to be free and which provides the platform for Romans 8, the great freedom chapter in all of the New Testament. So, if you want to review Paul’s comparison of his own chains of doubt to juxtapose to the exhilaration of freedom professed in Chapter 8, please use this link } …

My Journal for Today: Hey, my friends! Today is my biological birthday; and I’m feeling like a pretty painful 69 years old today. But that is not the really significant birthday in my life. It was on April 13th, 1983 that I was born-again spiritually in Christ; and that re-birthday is when God set me free from any experience of pain in my self as my Lord adopted me into His family. You see, … that’s when I went from living in the reality of Romans 7 to becoming freed from my self, … what Paul writes about in the freedom chapter of Romans 8.

Yesterday I blogged about the section of Romans 7 (i.e., verses 14-25), where Paul let his readers know the bondage which comes from trying to be saved by overcoming the truth of God’s Law by living in the flesh, i.e., serving the Law with our works. As Paul expressed in Romans 7, and you can reread by using the link above, trying to be saved by our works only leads to death, i.e., separation from God. But then … Paul presents the greatest freedom-producing exposé of truth in all of Scripture in Chapter 8 of this letter to the Roman Christians. And I exhort you to have meditated on the truths in this chapter whenever you read my following comments.

And after reading Chapters 7 and 8 of Romans, we see the stark contrast. We can live a Chapter 7 type of Christianity and be engulfed by the darkness of self-doubt; or we can live in the freedom-producing truth of Romans 8 and be bathed in the light of our freedom in Christ.

We can try to save ourselves by living in fleshly attempts to serve the Law, as Paul was describing in Romans 7; or we can be saved and set free from our sin-nature by believing in the life-saving works of Christ, Who has set us free from our sins as Paul describes so magnificently in Chapter 8 of Romans.

And it’s quite simply our choice, isn’t it? That’s why, when I’m feeling down-and-out and in the throws of a self-induced pity party, one of my battle strategies to free myself from self-condemnation is by going back and meditating on Romans 8. My friend, I strongly contend that any Christian who has genuinely confessed any sin or transgression to our Savior and especially to another Christian, … when they know and believe the truths espoused by Paul in Romans 8 and also by John in 1st John 1: 9, God will bathe that believer with His freeing and merciful grace; and that one, being cleansed by God’s love through His promises, will be FREE INDEED. It’s just as Jesus Himself promised in John 8: 32, … ”And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 

My Prayer Today: … Oh, yes, Lord, … as Nichole Nordeman so powerfully sings in her song, … I’m “Finally Free!” Amen