A Speedy Lesson

Over the six months that I've been here at Frontier God has really taught me a lot of lessons.
Some I learn right away.
Some I have to surrender every day.
Some hurt.
Some are really beautiful.
Some take a few nudges to get my attention.
This one took a really long drive to learn.


Some of you may know this, some of you maybe not... but...
I like to drive fast.
Like I really, really like it.
It gives me a sense of freedom, power, and control...
And plus it's just stinkin' fun.

I know that speeding is wrong.
God has really been convicting me of this.
I obey the other rules the government has put in place...
Like, I don't steal,
I don't graffiti things,
I don't assault people,
I don't drive on the wrong side of the road.
I believe those are wrong.
So what gives me the right to think that speeding is ok?

I was really struggling with this whole issue.

But once you get into a habit of sin,
It becomes a habit hard to break.

So anyways.
I'm driving back to Frontier on Tuesday...
I'm doing really well,
You know,
Watching my speed and all...
Well, slowing I start to creep faster and faster.
I know inside that this is wrong,
But it feels so freeing.

Next thing I know:
I'm getting my very first speeding ticket.
Actually, it was my first time even being pulled over.
I always thought that the first time I got pulled over I would be really upset...
Well...
I started laughing.
God has such powerful ways of getting our attention.
I know I deserved the ticket.
I had been stupid.
The police officer was really nice.
Because I was so pleasant to him and recognized what I had done wrong,
He bumped it down to the lowest possible ticket he could.

While I was sitting there,
God brought some verses to mind.
It was a set of verses that I had been reading repeatedly for the past few days.
The verses are from Romans 6 (The Message) and are as follows:

When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you've been raised from the dead!—into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God.

What Is True Freedom?

So, since we're out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we're free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
I'm using this freedom language because it's easy to picture. You can readily recall, can't you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God's freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.


I was giving in to sin,
Thinking that it was giving me freedom...
When really,
All along, God was waiting with His Life giving Freedom.

The rest of the ride back to camp was pretty sweet.
I definitely drove the speed limit,
And God really blessed that.
The sunset was spectacular,
The moon was huge and full,
I had an awesome time of worship,
And when I got back I had awesome friends waiting impatiently for me.

Sometimes learning lessons costs more then we want,
But in the end,
The new Freedom and Life we get is FAR better, and worth so much more then money...


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Here are the flowers I had waiting in my room from my amazing man.