Mastered

Who do you serve? You may reply "I don't SERVE anyone" I live in America and I am free...  Whether you know it or not you serve someone, whether you like it or not you are a slave. Now, before you start pounding out a political correction on your keyboard, bear with me. It might be an eye opening experience.

We don't like the term "slave" or "servant", unless of course you are the one served. The words stick in our craw, and are bitter passing across our lips. For some, because of human atrocities and indignity and down right cruelness - the epitome of our inhumanity. For others the freedoms are too precious and the thought of giving up a single one, well that's unthinkable. "I" begins and ends all thoughts, decisions and actions. Whatever deep place is pricked by these words, might I suggest that we are offended because we don't understand, but we long to. We have allowed the flawed image humanity paints to define the Spiritual, the eternal - and it can't.

See, the problem is perspective. We, in ignorance, do not understand that no matter who we are, we are under authority and so, we mistake the deep"desire" to belong TO someone, to be known and loved perfectly, instead - for the need to be accepted, to be valued based on performance, and our worth decided in the eyes of others and then when that fails we seek self-fulfillment or we rebel completely against it all. We fail to see that "belonging"to someone is good, fulfilling and purposed.  We fail to understand that to "serve" is good, fulfilling and purposed.  We fail to see that WHOSE we are matters

Once you understand that we are hardwired to serve, that in fact, we were created to serve. Then we can look back across a life of seeking and begin to understand the reality that we have been seeking someone to serve and in fact realize that we have been serving someone.  And we can identify that "someone" by our desires, attitudes and actions.

God's Word tells us we are slaves, servants and He has prepared in advance good works for us to do. We are slaves and to be a slave means that one has a master.  God's word says there are only two masters. One is righteous, loving and compassionate, He is who He says He is and does not trick or cajole His people into service. He is always working for their good!  The other, is a master of disguise. He shifts like the shadows of the night, he comes in pleasant form - promising much but all the while scheming for your demise. He is the father of lies. He demands much and promises little.  BUT  the good news is we get to choose who we belong to.  So I encourage you to choose wisely....  

You say to yourself, who would choose master number two? Who would intentionally give themselves over to someone so cruel? And yet, every day, they do.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to come to the last days of my life before I get this. I don't want to have eighty plus years to look back across and see how I've been serving a cruel task master that has demanded more and more with each passing year, and I, with less and less to give. And only then come to realize that I had chosen poorly, chose to be served, deluded into thinking that I could be my own master... Deceived by the shifting shadows and lies. Enticed by what was once shiny and appealing, now proved by the test of time only to be tarnished trinkets. Heap upon heap of worthless bobbles. Our "slave price". Oh, how cheaply we sold ourselves - desiring riches and fame at the cost of precious hours with family only to gain the praise of strangers...  Adorning ourselves with the lie that we "deserve" to have it all no matter the cost - ending up alone surrounded by tarnished heaps of trinkets.  Grasping for more and more of whatever we think we "need".  This is the "slavery" that is bitter to taste. This slavery consumes all in its wake, using and abusing.  Selling our souls for bobbles, believing they will satisfy the great void within, yet they left us completely unfulfilled, weary, lonely - unloved. Having sold ourselves for temporal, earthly pleasures and fame and now we face eternity...  This was the Task Masters plan all along. We have chosen to be slaves to sin and the wages of sin is death.  Satan come to steal, kill and destroy. 

Instead, I want now, to choose the Good Master. One who ensures the rest of my days and into eternity to be good. One who works on my behalf, bringing about goodness in me. Creating in me desires, attitudes and actions that prove that I am His. I want to one day look back across my life and see that by choosing to "serve" rather than to be served, I gain. Gain freedom to be who I am meant to be, gain freedom over sin, gain an eternal inheritance beyond my wildest imagination! And not only that, my life had greater meaning than to just satisfy the flesh. Although this Master gives generously and we wanted for no thing. Even belonging. He met our greatest desire right where He created it then satisfied it completely with sonship. He bought us out of slavery, out of death, and gave us life. New life as a son (or daughter) with the full rights of inheritance! Co-heir with the one Whose Blood was our ransom. Jesus. Our Savior, our brother. Bought at great price to be freed to belong. In the "belonging", found; being known and loved perfectly, completely satisfied. My tarnished trinkets transformed into treasure. Bobbles replaced with jewels.  And sum of my life being greater for it.

Satan entices us deceitfully to serve his many gods of self and we sell ourselves to him for mere copper - only to end up living in bondage to serve unto death for eternity. 

The LORD God on the other hand has already paid your "slave price". He deemed you worth the greatest commodity ever known - the priceless Blood of His Son Jesus. All for you. It's done. He did this to set you free...

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:20-23)

Do you want some good news? If you have, like I was at one time, become enslaved to the Task Master, enslaved to the god of self, you need to know that your bonds can be broken in an instant. That in one single moment you can change the life you will be looking back over as well as your eternal destiny.                                            
                                                   All you have to do is choose.

"But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (Jos 24:15)