The people of Egypt are free for the first time in thirty years – for now.
I can’t help but think about them this week and wonder how long their freedom will last.
Forgive my skepticism but freedom from one despot does not mean freedom from all tyranny. You have to believe there are many, without Egypt’s best interest in mind, vying for power in that place. Believers around the world should be praying more now than we were in the past eighteen days.
Consider these sobering words from Jesus in Matthew 12: 43-45: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Unless Jesus is invited in to reside in the unoccupied house, it is vulnerable to worse occupation than it knew before its initial release – even if it has the appearance of order and cleanliness.
This is why I continue to pray for the people of Egypt.
The stand they took against the tyranny of Hosni Mubarak was inspirational and brave. But any human despot is simply the puppet of the master dictator, the prince of the air. We know from Ephesians 6:10-12 that “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Remain on your knees for the people of Egypt.
Jesus can occupy the house of Egypt and it will be free, truly free. He can touch individual lives and they will be free no matter who sits in the seat of worldly power.
Remain on your knees for the people of Egypt.
Also, during this whole fight for freedom, I keep asking myself – what do I do with the freedom I take for granted? As I watch a nation plead for, fight for, stand for a freedom they have never known, I wonder what I’m doing with my own freedom besides just possessing it.
I was born as a free American and I have been born-again into the freedom of life in Jesus Christ. People who are enslaved dream of the day they are free but what do those of us who have realized freedom DO with our freedom?
Now that I am free to love, to forgive, to rejoice, to risk, to sacrifice, to share, to serve – do I? What is different between my life and the life of someone without the freedom bestowed on me by Jesus?
Do I use my freedom?
Do you?
What do you do with your freedom? I really do want to know.
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Idi Amin was thrown out of power during my lifetime, the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet Union disbanded. But are the people in those countries living better lives today? Like you, Lori, I have misgivings about the fall from power of Egypt’s Mubarek.
There’s an unfortunate truth to the lines, “you don’t what you’ve got until you’ve lost it” (Maybe a paraphrase).
It wasn’t until we returned from a land of boy-men wielding guns on every corner and outstretched hands waiting expectantly for the dollar that would let you cross their bridge, that I appreciated what treasures all my freedoms were. And in Christ… my reading of Leviticus is a jaw dropper–How could I possibly have lived with such constant constraints?