What comes to mind when you think of the word “rebel”? Maybe someone who is fighting with ISIS, or simply, an unruly teenager? A rebel is anyone who rises in “opposition of an established ruler.”
So, if we have given God our lives, He is the ruler of it! Therefore, if we try to walk our own path, or still do our own thing – we are rebelling against what Christ did for us.
Yet, God loves to take our stories of rebellion and hurt, and change them to stories of people living for His cause of eternity.
God gave us the gift of free will because otherwise, we couldn’t choose to love Him, and forced love doesn’t really love! But with free will, comes the ability to make our own decisions, for better or worse. There is no magic formula for the easiest path through life, and the scripture in Matthew reminded me this morning, that the more we try to cling onto life’s rewards, the more we discover how empty we really feel.
I have found, when we loosen our grasp on money, power, or popularity etc., it frees us to follow Christ and walk into what God created us for. In other words, when we let go of control or rebelling against God, that is that we begin to experience the benefits of following Christ and all the blessings and hardships it brings.
Yet please do not forget that with God directing our steps, we are never alone – no matter what we face.