Come one come all….Alex Derry’s debut blogging experience (that is if you don’t count the now ancient xanga and sketchy myspace) has begun. For those of you who may not know me, my name is Alex Derry. I’m am currently serving on the 2009-2010 RHCC Ministry Intern Team. My primarily focus as Student Ministry Intern is to partner with Nic Allen (the best boss ever) in working with High School and Middle School students. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to walk alongside students as they discover the Lord and live lives transformed by His glory.
This week we are continuing our series “Happy” on Wednesday night. Come as Nic Allen talks about how Blessed are/ Happy are the…merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Get to The Warehouse early this week because we have Bethany Hawks (Centennial High School) performing a sweet cover song at 6:40PM.
Over the past couple weeks of the “Happy” series God has been teaching me so much. I know for sure that I’m definitely in a growing season of my life. The only hard part about a “growing” season is it can often be hard. Change is hard. I, like most people, am a creature of habit. I consistently order the same sandwich from Lenny’s (regular #5 on wheat), the same drink from Starbucks (tall White Mocha), and I even use the same table to study at when I go to the Library, if I can help it. The truth is I don’t like change because change is hard. And while my study habits and food choices are great (unless of course you are taking into consideration my current weight perdicament) and in no need of changing, there are things in my life that the Lord is teaching me to change.
Galatians 5:1 says, “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.” Freedom is a term used a lot in Church. I feel like I’ve grown up always hearing people talk about freedom. But what I’ve realized is that I don’t really know what it means. Don’t get me wrong….in my head I understand, but I’ve forgotten with my heart. I feel like freedom is so easily forgotten because it’s often overused and overlooked in our culture. I find this pretty interesting because of the dominate role it has played in the history of our country and world.
When I think of freedom, I also think of slavery. Honestly, I am thankful that I haven’t every really witnessed slavery first hand. All my life it has been thematically portrayed in movies and on television shows, yet I have never really experienced slavery and for that I am thankful. The same cannot be said about our country. The United States has many first hand experiences with slavery. Ultimately, it took the Civil War to break the yoke of slavery in our country. At Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural in 1865, only weeks before he was assassinated, he spoke on how both parties “deprecated war” and yet war had come. But with the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the end of the “deprecated war,” slavery was legally abolished. Headlines in virtually every state trumpeted the same message: “Slavery Legally Abolished.” And yet something happened that many would have never expected. The majority of slaves in the South who were now legally free continued to live as slaves. Most of them went right on living as though nothing had happened. Though free, many lived virtually unchanged lives. An Alabama slave in 1864 when asked what he thought of the Great Emancipator whose proclamation went into effect that year said this, “I don’t know nothing bout Abraham Lincoln,’ he replied, ‘cept they say he sot us free. And I don’t know nothing bout that neither.”
Isn’t that tragic! A war had been fought. A president had been assassinated. Once enslaved men, women, and children were now legally emancipated. Yet amazingly, many continued living in fear and squalor. Yet that is how plantation owners wanted it. They maintained the age old philosophy, “keep ‘em ignorant and you keep ‘em in the field.”
While most of us would consider this sadly tragic, we consider to live lives of slavery everyday. Even though our Great Emancipator, Christ the Lord, paid the ultimate price to overthrow slavery once and for all, most Christians act as though they’re still held in bondage. As our slave master, Satan, loves it so. He is delighted that so many have bought into the life and live lives of ignorance. More than most in God’s family, the adversary knows we are free, but he hates it. So he does everything in his power to keep us pinned down in shame, guilt, ignorance, and intimidation. Yet the truth is we are free! Galatians 5:1 says, “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.” So let’s live lives in light of what Christ has done and no longer subject ourselves to slavery! Let’s live lives transformed by the Grace and Glory of our Lord and Savior, the Great Emancipator, Jesus Christ!
Alex Derry
Student Ministry Intern
Rolling Hills Community Church
alexderry@rollinghillscommunity.org
Posted in Alex Derry, dock@1810, Student Interns by J.J. Merrick No Comments
