Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Boundaries”
Our Bible verse for today: “Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Thanks to our freedom in Christ, the boundaries for Biblical living are very wide.”
The great Christian writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote an essay about what he called “The problem of pleasure.” His thesis was that many Christians don’t know how to deal with the fact that pleasure is good because God created pleasure. God was the One who created taste buds so we could enjoy our food. It was God who came up with the idea of humor and laughing. Sex was God’s invention. But many Christians are suspicious of pleasure and just a bit uncomfortable with it. This problem of pleasure was the basis upon which the Old Testament Pharisees constructed the huge volumes of rules and regulations designed to govern and regulate virtually every aspect of Jewish life.
A careful study of Paul’s letter to the Galatians helps us to understand that Jesus has freed us from the problem. Christ did away with the heavy yoke of the Old Testament Law which produced a highly regulated and extremely narrow way of life. He replaced it with the freedom in Christ that Paul taught us about. It turns out that in the New Testament, the boundaries for Biblical living are extremely wide. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit Christians can learn how to fully enjoy the incredible array of God-created, God-ordained pleasures that life is so full of.
But this is not a license to sin. There are limits, there are boundaries. However a mature Christian, following the leading of the Holy Spirit, can enjoy the pleasures of life as a gift from our Father in Heaven without crossing the line into sin. One of the rewards of a mature Christian faith is the ability to fully enjoy the pleasures of life in the right way. This is a gift from God. It is part of our freedom in Christ. But it can only be done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Praise God that thanks to our freedom in Christ the boundaries for living a life blessed by God are very wide indeed. We will all be better off, and a lot happier, when we learn how it is that an obedient Christian, living a godly life, can still joyfully embrace life in all it’s fulness.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 