In God’s Hands

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes himself as “a prisoner for the Lord.” Yet, he also wrote to the Christians of his day, “For freedom Christ has set up free; therefore stand fast in the freedom to which you have been called” (Gal. 5:1, 13). If these statements appear to contradict each other it is because we have not understood that one becomes “a prisoner of the Lord” only through an exercise of freedom of the highest order. Becoming “a prisoner of the Lord” is accomplished only by the free act of unreserved, total, voluntary surrender. “The Truth shall make you free.” Only by allowing the Truth, which is Christ, to completely overtake us — to “enslave” us, so to speak — can we free ourselves from the “uptightness” of our time.

The “uptight” person, the excessive “worry-bird,” is enslaved by an inflated notion of his or her ability to manage the future, to be in control. But the New…