Trading for Freedom

If I had the power to offer a trade on any aspect of your life that you wanted to change or improve, what would it be? asked Karmyn Bokma, the Spiritual Emphasis Week speaker at Smithville Christian High School.

Student Cohen volunteered to demonstrate Bokma’s point with a series of gift bags. Cohen could choose to keep the bag of candy that he had been given, or he could trade his gift for another bag. Cohen took the trade – twice – and ended up with a powder blue fuzzy bunny hat.

Jesus offers us a trade too, Bokma said in the second chapel of Spiritual Emphasis Week. In fact, the whole theme of the Gospel is that what God has for us is a trade – the ultimate trade.

As it says in Romans 5:1: “So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God.”

“God has the best trade we could ever hope to have, taking sin and replacing it with the life God has for you,” Bokma said.

Bokma told the story of Nicodemus, found in John 3:1-2, a religious leader with all the answers, who comes to Jesus at night because he has a longing for something more than right answers. At first, Nicodemus is confused and doesn’t understand what Jesus means when he talks about rebirth, but then “Jesus goes on to talk about the ultimate trade, that HE is the trade.”

And when we give up our old for the new life that Jesus can give, God promises us new life.

“When anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come,” Bokma said, quoting 2 Corinthians 5:17. “The truth I want you to hear is this one,” Bokma said. God DOES make all things new for us.

We don’t always feel it, we don’t always do it, she said. We still get stuck in the old ways, and Nicodemus himself didn’t instantly change, Bokma said. But God is not a giver of gold stars, God is not someone who wants us to earn our freedom. It is a new gift given every day.

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A student praise team led in worship with My Testimony, So Will I, and Lead Me to the Cross. Students danced during the closing song, Praise.

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Small Group Discussion Questions

1.      If you could have one talent or skill that you don’t have now? What would it be?  Can you think of anyone you would trade with?  (I, for one, would love to trade my ability to shoot 3 pointers with Steph Curry, for example!)

2.      Read 2nd Corinthians 5:17. If the words of 2 Cor 5:17 are true (and they are!), how can this change how we see ourselves?  What do you think it means that the old can be gone? 

3.      Read together John 8:12 and also vs, 34-35. What do you think the connection is between these verses? In your own words, discuss what Jesus means in vs 34-35.

4.      Discuss what stops us from feeling totally free, the way Jesus describes. 

Chapel is held every morning at 9 a.m. Guests are welcome.