Chains Be Broken!

^{Galatians 5:1, 6-21 (MSG)}

^{1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.}

^6-18My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

^19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

I was reading this passage this morning and it just struck me, particularly verses 19-21. The Message Bible just nails it- these are the sins eating away at all of us, churched and unchurched, saved and unsaved. We're all in a sinking ship together. But thankfully, those of us who have turned to Jesus are holding on to a lifeline that can't ever be severed or released. 

At our church, we've adopted the saying "Chains Be Broken" from an awesome Brooke Fraser song called "You'll Come" and the song talks about waiting on God  and knowing that He is rescuing us and is responding to us when we respond to Him. The bridge of the song is:

Chains be broken
Lives be healed
Eyes be opened
Christ is revealed

I think verse 19-21 of Galatians 5 is the perfect list of "chains" we're praying against in our church. We want to see people released from the slavery of these things that are holding them back from a free life lived for Christ. 

I am going to print Galatians 5:19-21 off and post it somewhere where I can see it and I encourage anyone reading this to do the same- this list, though Paul wrote it a couple thousand years ago, is still relevant today- they had the same problems then as we do now, but they also had the same God that we have now! We have access to the same powerful Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead to overcome the chains holding us back and God wants to break them for us, but He wants our hearts to acknowledge these things that are holding us back and willingly shake them loose as He breaks them and then He wants us to run straight to Him, never looking back. Let's pray, as a community, for these chains that are listed in verses 19-21 to be broken, smashed, and destroyed that we might be free to worship our King freely and completely with surrendered hearts and lives, every moment of every day! We declare it-Chains Be Broken!