God's Way Of Freedom
THE church I was attending had large windows running the length of each side of the auditorium. Once, before a service, I discovered a small, brown sparrow that looked like he'd been trapped in the building for some time. I opened wide the front doors of the church, expecting the bird to fly to freedom immediately. He didn't. He wouldn't take his eyes off of what he saw was the only way to escape--those windows. Even when I picked him up and started walking toward the doors, he still wouldn't look at anything but what he thought was his only path to freedom. But when we finally got to those open doors he burst out of my hands and flew outside into a tree.
Have you ever felt like that sparrow--trapped by a desperate need for freedom but believing that the only way out was one that was blocked? That's when we need Christ, Truth, to show us the wide-open doors that are God's way of freedom for us. Christ helps us discover the fact and freedom of our permanent oneness with God and His unlimited goodness for us. The Christ is God's message to us, freeing us from the constrictions of evil and disease.
For example, in the Gospel of Luke, the Bible describes ``a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.'' When Christ Jesus healed her he asked, ``Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?'' (13:11, 16).
For this woman, healing came in a way that may have been quite different from what she expected. She felt the immediate, abundant freedom of God's healing power. What joy that freedom brings! Can we today experience God's freeing power?
Yes!--through understanding God's nature and how God's power destroys what seems to bind us. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, writes compassionately in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ``I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servitude to an unreal master in the belief that the body governed them, rather than Mind.'' On the next page she points to the way to be freed from this slavery. She writes, ``Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: `Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!''' (pp. 226, 227). Divine Mind, God, is what governs. Mortal fears and beliefs--the ``unreal master''--are the roots of disease, lack, sin. They seem to hold us hostage, causing us to believe that there can be a time when God isn't present. But when these beliefs, and the fear they bring, are eliminated through God's, divine Mind's, power, the Christly message brings healing and freedom.
God's goodness is backed with His divine power. And there is spiritual power backing the health, supply, and good God gives His creation. God is power unopposed. God's authority, therefore, is unopposable. This is true everywhere, in every circumstance. Admitting God to be the only power in our lives brings His Christly message of freedom to bear on whatever tough situa-tion we may find ourselves in.
In the light of the fact that knowing God-given freedom heals and releases, we can see that these words Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians are true, and, in fact, can be part of our lives today: ``Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty'' (3:17). The power of God's goodness frees us in ways never before conceived. Look to His power and discover a completely new path to freedom.
