Recently, while speaking with a friend of ours who’s visiting different churches in the area, I expressed my enthusiasm for our church. \u201cWe (my husband and I) feel relaxed there,\u201d I said. \u201cWe’re experiencing a sense of freedom as we’ve enjoyed faithful preaching every week. Our pastor knows the flock, and we\u2019re hearing a regular drum-beat from him and the other elders to love one another and to remember our covenant to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
She seemed intrigued!<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it ironic that a high commitment like church membership can bring about a sense of freedom? I\u2019m not exactly sure how that works but I do have some clarity on what I think it’s not<\/em>. It’s not because I feel I can do whatever I want, or that I am free to be uniquely \u201cme,\u201d or even that I can act independently and without any responsibilities. On the contrary, I feel more bound to the Lord, his Word, and to the members of our church than at any other time in my life! So where does this freedom come from? What does it mean?<\/p>\n WHAT KIND OF FREEDOM?<\/strong><\/p>\n Those of us who claim Jesus as our Lord and Savior are acutely aware<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Isn\u2019t it ironic that a high commitment like church membership can bring about a sense of freedom?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[331],"class_list":["post-33842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-membership-discipline","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33842"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33844,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33842\/revisions\/33844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}