“So Jesus said to those who believed in him, “If you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

“We are the descendants of Abraham,” they answered, “and we have never been anybody's slaves. What do you mean, then, by saying, ‘You will be free’?”

Jesus said to them, “I am telling you the truth: everyone who sins is a slave of sin.”

(John 8.31-34 GNB)

Freedom is oft misunderstood. For many, it is both elusive and illusive. According to Cambridge:

• Elusive: "difficult to describe, find, achieve, or remember"
• Illusive: "not real and based on illusion"

Frequently, when we think we are "free" from something, we are still not free from something else, be it physical or pyschological or spiritual. Take the Israelite in Exodus 16. They were freed from the Egyptian slavery, but they complained, because they were still behaving as slave for something else.

And I am not above them either. God has blessed me and freed me from hunger and poverty, but am I truly free from worry? I may not worry about tomorrow's tomorrow (i.e. the next 24 hours, weeks), but truthfully, I am worried about the other "tomorrow" (i.e. the next decades).

I trust and have faith God will keep his promises. But that does not stop me from worrying.

Yes, I am a work-in-progress.

However, knowing that I am free from one thing and still not fully free from another thing is freeing me from the "illusive" freedom because it is no longer "elusive". I can describe it.

That is what God's truth does: it sets me free to focus on the right thing.

Related:

• Why work hard
• The great concern of our lives
• Force majeure
• Nothing in, nothing out
• Freedom (2)