Don’t be afraid to be free …

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Our capacity to experience change in the New Year we’ve now entered depends on our willingness to take hold of the freedom we have in Christ and exercise it responsibly. To fail to do so is to choose to be tethered to something that constrains us from being free.

For many of us, a key obstacle to our living free in Christ are our own fears. Seth Dillon uses the plot of a movie to explain how we allow fear to impede our freedom …

    In the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” Ellis “Red” Redding has spent his prime wasting away in prison because of a reckless act of violence he committed as a teenager. After 40 years of incarceration, Red finally receives his release to enjoy the freedom for which he’s longed.

    However, he can’t free himself from the habit of asking for permission each time he wishes to use the men’s room. He’s become “institutionalized.” This newfound life scares him, because he’s grown accustomed to the structure behind bars. Imprisonment had become safe for Red. He didn’t have to exercise his own decision-making. Someone else did the thinking for him, and now, on the outside, he faces a prospect more daunting and terrifying than incarceration: freedom.

    Red confesses that he contemplates various ways to break his parole and return to the security of his prison cell. He sums up his dilemma in one line: “It is a terrible thing to live in fear.”

Beyond the annual hype around New Year resolutions and setting new goals, there is a multitude of people who would love to dream dreams and take risks for a different and better life in the coming year but they’re too afraid to embrace their freedom to make decisions and set a different course. The fear of the unknown, the fear of potential failure, the fear of consequences, the fear of being different, the fear of taking responsibility for self, and other fears become tethers to an enslaved life. It’s easier — and it’s “safer” — to just stay like we are, in the same circumstances, and not make waves.

For many, a New Year won’t bring change because they’re too afraid to be free.

Are you?

Scotty