Replacing Striving with Freedom
I went through a phase during my struggle with infertility where I was striving for perfection in my quiet time. I am typically working on a Bible Study or a devotional or a reading plan, and during that time I would be incredibly diligent about keeping to the schedule of whatever I was working on. If I missed a day or two, I would double and triple up to make sure I was still on track. While having a daily quiet time is so important for our relationship with God, I had gotten to a point where it wasn’t about spending time with Him. It was about checking a box in order to earn God’s approval. I had begun to think that if I was staying perfectly on schedule with my studying, God would be proud of me and reward me with what my heart desired: a baby.
This behavior wasn’t really anything new for me. I have always been the type of person that puts 100% into everything I’m working on in life. I put 100% into my job, into my marriage, into motherhood, into my writing ministry. I keep my schedule organized so that I have the time to devote to these things. I will take opportunities to grow in these areas by participating in classes or professional development. If something in one of these areas is not going well, I will read and research and learn what it takes to improve.
Somewhere in this process, though, the perfectionist in me inevitably rears her ugly head and turns genuine hard-work and growth into trying to be perfect at everything, ultimately striving to build my worth in these roles. The problem with trying to give 100% to everything I do is that it is mathematically impossible. Technically, if I’m putting 100% into my job, there’s nothing left for any of the other things in my life. Without striking a balance, I end up burning myself out trying to be the perfect teacher, wife, mom and Christian.
My tendency towards perfectionism is rooted in this inherent need to earn my place, to prove I deserve the blessings I’ve been given. If God blesses me with my dream job, I’m going to prove to Him I deserve it because anything less than my best there means I’m wasting what He gave me. Ultimately, I’m striving to earn God’s love and grace through my good works in the places He has me right now because deep down I don’t feel like I’ve earned any of it.
That striving is exhausting. And I’ve been at it for a long time. The more my anxiety has grown through infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy, and motherhood, the more I have strived for the things I desire. Because that feeling of having caused my past suffering has been so hard to shake, I’m desperate not to repeat my mistakes, so I keep reaching to try and do what I think will earn me the blessings I’m seeking- or the blessings I already have.
What we all long for when we reach the end of our rope with this type of striving is freedom. We want the freedom to stop trying so hard to be perfect. We want the freedom to be able to make mistakes without feeling like it will destroy all we’ve worked hard at. We want the freedom to hand some of this off without feeling like we failed.
God is the only person who can offer this kind of freedom to us, but we often miss that because He’s often the one we’re striving to prove ourselves to. We see him as a gatekeeper: He passes out blessings to those who deserve it and He takes them away from those who can’t hack it. When we realize that what God really wants is for us to embrace our freedom in Him, we can finally release that desire, that need, for striving.
The first picture we see of freedom in Scripture is found in Exodus 21, right on the heels of God giving the 10 Commandments to Moses. The next several chapters that follow this lay out the laws God is establishing with His people, and the first of those has to do with keeping servants. God states, “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything” (verse 2 NIV). The Hebrew word here means “free from slavery, let the oppressed ones go free.” This word also literally means what is described here: a bondslave that is set free in the seventh year.
This is a pretty straightforward picture of the very literal concept of freedom: someone who was enslaved to serve another person is permitted to go free. What I find fascinating is that this is the first of fifteen references about letting servants go free in the Old Testament. God paints this picture for us again and again. Why? To set us up for the ultimate release from slavery into freedom.
There are surprisingly few uses of the word “free” in the gospel- six to be exact. And half of those occur in the same passage of John 8. It opens with Jesus speaking to His followers, telling them that, in order to truly be His disciples, they have to uphold His teachings, because “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (verse 32 NIV).
What is this truth that will set us free? Jesus spent most of His ministry teaching that He was the Messiah, and that He had come to save people from sin. These are the teachings He’s asking His followers to uphold because this is the truth that will set them free. But the people didn’t get it. They identified as descendents of Abraham, so they had never been literally enslaved as was described in Exodus 21. They didn’t think they had anything to be freed from.
Jesus quickly corrects them: “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Since we’re all human and we all sin, this means we’re all slaves, even those descendents of Abraham who didn’t think they needed to be freed. We all stumble, therefore we all need freed from our slavery to sin.
Jesus explains the biggest reason why we need to be freed: slaves have no permanent place in the family. As Exodus explained, they are to be freed after seven years. But we want to have a permanent place in God’s family. That can’t happen while we’re slaves to sin, so we need someone to free us from that slavery.
Thankfully, a son has a permanent place in a family, and therefore has the ability to free those slaves according to the direction of Exodus 21:2. And praise God, we have access to the Son! “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Because Jesus, the Son of God, has freed us from our slavery to sin, we are able to receive a permanent place in God’s family.
The Greek word for “free” in verse 32 and the first part of 36 means, “make free, set at liberty from sin, exempt, liberate from the bondage of sin.” These definitions mean that this freedom requires action on the part of someone in order for the other person to truly be free. Once that action is complete, the person who has been freed will embody the definitions of the second Greek word used in verse 36: “freeborn, one who is not a slave, one who is free from the yoke of the law, free from the bondage of sin.”
Those last two really get to me. First, to be free from the yoke of the law means that we are no longer striving to keep those commands perfectly, mainly because it’s impossible. We’re human, we’re going to slip up. When the law was established in the Old Testament, people were required to make sacrifices over and over to be set right with God. But with the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus in the New Testament, we’re not bound by those laws anymore. We are free from striving to be set right with God; Jesus did that once and for all. We no longer have to “earn” our blessings and prove that we deserve the positions God has given to us. We could never be seen as deserving on our own, so Jesus steps in and makes us deserving. All we have to do is accept this freedom.
Second, to truly understand the implications of being free from the bondage of sin, we need to take a peek at Galatians 5:1: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” The King James Version translates the last part as, “be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” First of all, I like the imagery that “entangled” gives this verse. It paints a picture of being trapped in a way that is challenging to escape. It makes me think of trying to get a knot out of a necklace and unravel Christmas lights; it’s usually frustrating and feels impossible without some assistance. When we find ourselves entangled in sin, we’re wrapped up so tight that we’re not going to make it out without some help.
Second of all, the Greek word here for “bondage” really helps us understand what we’re being freed from through the death and resurrection of Jesus: “the bondage which consists of decay, perishing; produced by the thought of death; also by the Mosaic law (grievous burdens its precepts impose of its adherents).” Not only does this definition indicate just how enslaving the law can be, and how much we need to be freed from it, but it reminds us of the consequences for not being able to keep that law: death. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23 KJV). Jesus has freed us from death! We are no longer slaves and therefore granted a place in God’s family, which comes with the inheritance of eternal life with Him.
Of all the blessings in our lives that we could strive to earn, this one is the ultimate, and yet we don’t have to do anything to be granted this freedom. We just have to believe. We can let go of all striving, based on the Mosaic law or the law we’ve created for ourselves. We’re never going to live up to either, anyway. We’re never going to be perfect wives, perfect moms, perfect employees, perfect Christians. We’re just not. Beating ourselves up trying to be only exacerbates our anxiety and steals the joy God wants us to find in those roles.
But when we stop striving and embrace God’s freedom, it helps us to find joy in the fact that we don’t have to earn any of God’s blessings- not our jobs, not our husbands, not our children, and not even our salvation. It’s all free simply because God delights in blessing us. So let go of perfection, let go of striving. Embrace your role as a child of God and claim your inheritance. That’s the freedom Christ set you free for.
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