I would like to take a moment to introduce you to Maggie Mae. Maggie is our 16 month old Great Dane, and she is a brilliant dog. She is always surprising us with her cleverness. We got Maggie when she was 7 weeks old. 
Earl took four hours deciding, while watching all the puppies in the litter before finally picking Maggie. It was her natural curiosity that tickled Earl. Now, Earl and Maggie are inseparable. She loves and adores him and will protect him from me at all costs, including hugs and kisses….oh the dog’s life I live.
One day when I was getting ready to start work in my home office, I found Earl and Maggie watching the old 1966 movie “Born Free”. Maggie does not watch TV normally, but on this particular morning she was so engrossed in the film, it was comical. It was the end of the movie, where the lioness, Elsa, had been training for weeks to learn to hunt and kill for herself, so she could be set free in the wild and be able to survive on her own.
Now Maggie has her big dog stuffed toys: a moose, a cow, a turkey and her squirrel. Each day Maggie is let outside to spend the day in the great wild of our backyard. As I passed the kitchen window, I happened to see Maggie running past with a squirrel in her mouth. My thought was “How did she get her toy squirrel outside?” and so I went to go and get it when I noticed her toy squirrel on the living room floor. My jaw dropped. I went racing for the window only to see Maggie outside frolicking with a real squirrel, dead in her jaws. I cannot figure out how Maggie, this huge 140 pound Great Dane managed to kill a squirrel. Then, I believe as a gift for Earl, she left it on the back porch. 
But in remembering her total immersion in the Born Free movie, I saw her acts as analogous to those of Christians. When we totally engross ourselves in God’s Word, and we allow Him to teach us His ways, we will actually take what we’ve learned and apply them to our everyday lives.
We are set free to serve God in the capacity to which He appoints us. Just like Elsa, she went into her natural habitat and after learning how she was to hunt, she applied herself. When we are set free in Christ, we break the chains of slavery to this captured world of evil and we are given new life. In Galatians 5:1 “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.” We are to walk away from our dependency on what the world has to offer and immerse ourselves in the world that God has to offer us.
We were born to be free in Christ. It is only through being born again that we taste and live that freedom. 1 Peter 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”. It is through this hope that we are assured of a new life both here on earth and later in an eternal life with Christ. For in John 3:3 “Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Where Maggie saw Elsa and learned how to hunt to survive, we should see The Lamb and learn how to love, to have compassion, to give to those in need, to worship and glorify God and to live an abundant life in Him. For once we learn His way of life we are born again, to be free.
“If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:36
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