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: “Learn to live free in Christ.”
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. It is good because God created it. 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 His invention too.
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. It was largely to control and limit pleasure.
A careful study of Paul’s letter to the Galatians however helps us to understand that Jesus has freed us from that. 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. 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, 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 that an obedient Christian, living a godly life, can joyfully embrace and enjoy life in all its fullness.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 