Live in Freedom

<p>In Texas, where I grew up, there were festive parades and picnics in Black communities every June 19. It wasn&rsquo;t until I was a teenager that I learned the heartbreaking significance of Juneteenth (a word combining &ldquo;June&rdquo; and &ldquo;nineteenth&rdquo;) celebrations. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation giving them their freedom&mdash;<em>two-and-a-half years earlier.</em> Enslaved people in Texas kept living in slavery because they didn&rsquo;t know they had been freed.</p> <p>It's possible to be free and yet live as slaves. In Galatians, Paul wrote about another kind of slavery: living life under the crushing demands of religious rules. In this pivotal verse, Paul encouraged his readers that &ldquo;it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves by burdened again by a yoke of slavery&rdquo; (Galatians 5:1). Believers in Jesus had been set free from external regulations including what to eat and who to befriend. Many, however, still lived as if they were enslaved. &nbsp;</p> <p>Unfortunately, we can do the same thing today. But the reality is that Jesus set us free from living in fear of man-made religious standards the moment we trusted in Him. Freedom has been proclaimed. Let&rsquo;s live it out in His power.</p>