Today all day we talked about freedom, specifically freedom from sin. Sin has a nasty way of entangling us…of ensnaring us. One minute we are following God, the next we struggle with an addiction to a behavior that we’d rather shake off but can’t. All day as we went through this process I thought of the words of Paul in Romans 7:14-20:
“14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
Some people try to argue that here Paul speaks of us (and himself) before conversion, but the fact of the matter is this is the life I see so many Christians trying to live. We desire to do good, but we find ourselves often doing exactly the opposite. CIY tried to bring this home, to show us how our sin enslaves us.
Listen to what one of our students, Eric, said about today:
“Today we learned about being slaves to sin and how Jesus paid for our freedom. CIY made this extremely and uncomfortably real by having us create paper wrist cuffs that later were tied together creating paper shackles. In an exceptionally spiritually charged atmosphere we tore the shackles off and we strove forward determined to become slaves of God instead of sin.”
We walked around all day with paper-shackles recording the the sins that we struggle with written on the other side. I love what our students said about this. “This is depressing. I’ll be having a good time and then look down and see my wrist, and there sin is.” That night we spent most of the worship service shackled, until finally we were invited to break free. (Queen reference) God is a God of freedom. He brought freedom to the Israelites, and again our story is their story. God has made a way for us to find freedom from sin (not just forgiveness). I typically don’t go for these sort of visual metaphors, but the sound of a 1000 sets of shackles being torn apart was incredibly powerful.
Here’s a few bonus pictures because I love you.
As usual you can find more on our facebook page.
