Freedom > Fear

I’ve heard many times that we’ve been set free by love, which is true, but that doesn’t mean that we live in that reality all the time. We can say it all we want but it is in living it that we find its power. A good way to determine if we are truly living in freedom is by looking at fear, because fear and freedom can’t coexist.

Fear is self focused, it tells us “how will this affect you?” Freedom is others focused and says “how can you love others?”

Fear is concerned with self preservation “you need to protect yourself.” Freedom pushes us to sacrificial love “this will cost you but it’s the right thing to do”.

Fear thinks through all that could go wrong. Freedom is excited about the endless possibilities.

Fear makes up excuses, freedom finds a way.

The word freedom is a rare occurrence in the Old Testament. Understandably since they were living under the shame of Genesis 3. Shame teaches us to hide (Gen3:7-8), hide in fear. But Jesus came to take away our shame and restore the freedom from Genesis 1 and 2. That’s what “on earth as it is in heaven” means. To walk freely with God and others and do magnificently what we were created to do, to not betray our own conscience by doing “what’s expected” but to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and do what our souls are craving to do, what we know to do, what we were made to do.

Want to know if you are free indeed? Pay attention to shame, to how much you are hiding. How much of you is an edited version of who you really are? One that you think is more palatable? Want to know if you are truly free? If a movie of your thoughts was playing  how shocked would those closest to you be? How shocked would all who know you be?

Free people live in harmony between their inner world and their outer reality. That’s true freedom! They have no fear because they have nothing to hide.