Freedom for Excellence (07/04/2026)

The fireworks have already started as Americans celebrate 250 years of being a country established on the LORD’s gift of freedom. As we celebrate individually and communally, let us not lose sight of the role of freedom in our country but also in our lives. The founders of the USA and drafters of the Declaration of Independence understood well the LORD’s gift to us of freedom for excellence.

Freedom isn’t just about the ability to choose. It has always been, from the beginning in our LORD, about the freedom to choose what is right and loving. The LORD created us and desires our love, but the LORD wants the response of love from us to be authentic, not automatic.

Anyone who studies the bible can tell you just how important freedom is to the LORD. It is the whole basis of the exodus story, the LORD wanted His people to be free. The law and the prophets are both about using the freedom for excellence, about choosing the loving and righteous path because we desire to become the ones we are created to be. And nowhere is the freedom for excellence more evident than in Jesus’ free choice for love of His Heavenly Father and love of us to give His life for our sins though He himself was sinless.

The drafters of the Declaration of Independence got freedom for excellence. They understood it as foundational for life and used it as the foundational declaration of our lives on this soil as this nation founded in God. The LORD figured heavily in our founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Reading the first line of the declaration should tell everyone that we are nation built on the belief in freedom for excellence.

I am proud to be an American. I didn’t make America. It has made me in conjunction with the LORD and His unfailing love and grace. I am doubly blessed in that daily my LORD calls me to exercise my free will for good and my country supports that by ensuring my freedom on its soil.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.