A Heart Set Free

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.     NIV

     What does it mean to be free? Does it mean that you just do anything you please at any time? That you throw off all order and restraint, you’re just self-indulgent, self-pleasing, self-willed. Let me tell you, friend, and I speak from personal experience, in my own life and in the lives of many others whom I’ve counseled from time to time, that’s not real freedom. That’s slavery. It’s slavery to self and it’s slavery to sin.

     But there is a kind of real freedom that comes when God sets our heart free. The psalmist says, “You’ve set my heart free.” What’s the evidence? “I run in the path of your commands.” When we are truly liberated by the grace of God and the power of God, it’s not to please ourselves, it’s not to do our own thing, but it’s to be able to obey God and be able to obey Him with delight, to obey Him with readiness, not reluctantly, not grudgingly, but freely and joyfully.

     The psalmist says, “I run in the path of your commands”: I’m not trying to find excuses for disobeying. I just long to know what Your will is. And when I discover Your will, I run in that pathway. There’s a note of eagerness, a note of excitement, that comes – not from pleasing self, but from seeking to please God, from doing His will. The Bible says, “He that does the will of God abides forever.”