never givin' up

I was going places [except not] on the elliptical yesterday, listening to some tunes. Jonathan David Helser was singing a song and he was singing,
"you're never giving up, you're never giving up, you're never giving up on me..."
which goes on for quite some time. Then they break into, "set me free!" which they sing over and over.

Now I believe that when Jesus died for me, He paid the price for my sin, setting me free from the law of sin and redeeming me from every curse that could keep me enslaved to it. So sometimes in certain songs I have trouble because I don't want to ask the Lord to do something for me that He's already done. But as I was listening to this, I started to think about freedom, and what that is, and I was thinking about the truth that God provides for us, which sets us free. If it doesn't set you free, it's not the truth! God's truth is liberating, not enslaving.

And now as I write this I'm connecting it with something i heard from Bethel Church about slavery and how when you don't know what's going on, you are a slave. When we are first saved, we are slaves to righteousness. We just do what God says but sometimes don't really know why. But "it is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the honor of kings to search it out" [Prov.25:2]. As we mature and get to know God more, His desire is to share His secrets with us through revelation, and then are, not just his slaves or his servants, but we become his friends.

So anyways, I'm thinking about how truth sets us free, and this song is just opening up to me. He's saying, "you're never giving up on me, set me free." God isn't going to give up on us even when our lives aren't perfect or our thinking is still imperfect or our behavior is far from perfect. We can ask him to set us free, meaning to give us His truth. Only God can reveal what is true, and it is freedom from misconceptions that we need.

We need, as Pastor Steve was preaching last weekend, IMMACULATE CONCEPTIONS. Meaning, spotless conceiving [as in our thinking]. The word immaculate comes from im- [not] -maculate [spotted], which comes from the word macula, which means a spot on the cornea. It connects. We need clear vision-- clear understanding-- clear thinking-- clear conception-- immaculate conception.

I need God to brainwash me. I need him to cleanse my mind from all misconceptions that I have and give me His thoughts, His truth.

I was talking with my sister today and she was saying how the message of God's grace and love and forgiveness just resonates so strongly inside. Hearing a message that doesn't jive with that which we know of God-- that He is good, merciful, and loving, is HARD to swallow but when we hear the good news of Jesus, it's like a breath of fresh air or a swig of fresh living water! Why? Because the Lamb was slain before the foundations of the earth were laid, and when Jesus came he transitioned us into an age where God's law of love is now written in our hearts. The message of grace is easy to swallow because we already have a taste for it, since God changed our spiritual taste-buds to crave Jesus.

He's never going to give up on us, until we are free. I'm pretty confident He'll keep working on us until the day we are like Him completely.