We live in the land of the free. We have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. We have the freedom to walk down the street wearing whatever we want (no matter how ridiculous). We also have the freedom to get ourselves into some serious trouble.
God loved us enough to give us free will. He wanted us to choose to love and follow him. Oh yeah, he could have kept things real simple and just made us love him but, He wanted loving followers and servants, not mindless slaves.
You have to make choices in your life every day, every minute. God gave you a loving heart and a discerning mind to make those decisions. He expects you to use them! The freedom that we are so fond of is a double edged sword. Yes, we have the freedom to worship our God without persecution, we have the freedom to make decisions to better our lives; we also have the freedom to pursue money instead of God, to look at pornography, to make choices that lead to marriages falling apart. You wanted freedom, you got it!
So what are you going to do with your freedom? Are you going to use it to make short sighted choices that are pleasurable now, or are you going to use it to make the tough decisions to follow God? God never said that following Him would be easy, quite the opposite! Jesus never took the easy way out (thank God!), if he had we would all be in a lot of trouble!
I recently found an awesome website for the Third Option Men. The idea is based around men’s freedom of choice. Men, you have three options:
1) Live for yourself
2) Live for worldly gain
3) Live for God
How will you use your freedom?
Real Life, Real Men 