…receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21 (NKJV)
Do you know anyone who is allergic to technology? This is the kind of person who gets a new IPad for Christmas and thinks its a fancy cutting board. Or buys a Kindle but gives up at the login process. In other words, they own something but don’t actually use it.
I must confess, the more years I live, the less interested I am in shaking up my status quo. I’ve had a chance to figure out a few things that work for me. So something really does need to be “worth it” if it means disruption.
James’ incredible field guide to living faith tells us something important: It’s worth it. It’s worth shaking up our lives. It’s worth having our perspectives shift and change. It’s worth discovering new ways to walk through trials and temptations. It’s worth allowing the Holy Spirit into our hearts, exploring even the places we’d rather not go ourselves.
Disrupting the status quo is worth it because Jesus died to give us a life that blows the status quo out of the water! The Son of God came, he said, to give us an abundant, overflowing life. His desire is to see us walk in radical prosperity of spirit, soul and body. He came to give us deep, settled, resilient peace. He came to help us walk in unprecedented authority and power, able to change the world around us.
In the Bible, those things I just described are summed up in one word: SALVATION. The Greek word sozo describes a “heaven on earth” existence. It’s not waiting for us when we die. It’s waiting for you here and now.
But is it waiting on a shelf, gathering dust?
James tells us we can experience sozo everyday, if that’s what we want. And he tells us how we can do it: receive the Word with meekness. Meekness is not weakness. It is power under control. It is a heart submitted. It is a humility that says, “I’m here to receive from you, Holy Spirit.”
We don’t spend time in the Word each day to check a religious box. We do it because it can create an atmosphere of living faith in our hearts. That kind of faith means connection with the Holy Spirit. Our thoughts and feelings are now being formed in his Presence. Out of that place, our thinking and feeling here on the earth is like life in heaven.
This, practically speaking, is salvation. Salvation is freedom. Freedom from the negative attitudes and emotions that bind us. Freedom from a poverty mindset. Freedom from compulsive behaviors that only destroy relationships and health. Freedom from a scarcity mindset. Freedom from self-centered anxieties and motivations.
Salvation is freedom. Freedom to respond to others with patience, love and compassion. Freedom to see a need and meet it. Freedom to perceive opportunities and investments worth taking. Freedom to dream and hope. Freedom to walk in health and absolute security. Freedom to stay peaceful in the midst of chaos.
This is salvation. You were meant to experience it everyday.
Amen! Freedom in Christ.