I Had God and My Mission: Free or Enslaved?

Introduction

Have you ever heard of "the woman who walked toward freedom"? Her name was Harriet Tubman. Sarah Marvane discovered her story not long ago, and it left a deep mark on her. She loves true stories, and this one hit her hard.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery around 1822 in Maryland, in the United States. But she refused to stay enslaved. One night, she escaped alone, following the North Star, until she reached freedom in Pennsylvania. And instead of savoring that freedom forever, she went back to save others. Through the Underground Railroad, she guided dozens of enslaved people north without ever losing a single one. They called her "Moses," because she led her people toward freedom. During the Civil War, she became a nurse, a spy, and even a military operation leader: she helped the Union Army free more than 700 enslaved people in a single night. When asked if she was ever afraid, she answered: "No, I had God and my mission." After the war, she kept fighting for former slaves, the elderly, and women's right to vote. She died in 1913, poor, but surrounded by those she had helped.

One of her most famous quotes: "I had reasoned this out in my mind: there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other." She would rather risk death in the swamps and forests of the South than live one more day in chains. And she answered fear with faith, trust in God, and the courage only he gives.

This message starts right there: "I had God and my mission." Do you have God? And have you found your mission, the reason you get up every morning?

Message Outline

1. Liberty or Death: Where Are You?

• A life like that raises questions Sarah asks herself regularly: Is my life meaningful? Is it effective? Will it leave a mark on this generation or the next one coming? Will I one day be a hero of freedom and courage in Jesus Christ, not for my own glory but for the glory of the author of freedom? As long as we keep asking these questions, we stay alive and active.
• Like Harriet Tubman, we all face the same two things: liberty or death. The slavery she fought against was physical. Those enslaved people were already dead though still alive, treated as less than animals. And that inner death waits for all of us.
• Jesus says in John 8:34: "Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn't live in the house forever. A son remains forever." Sin makes us slaves, chains us, condemns us, reduces us to nothing. It isolates us, like those enslaved people crammed into makeshift shacks. It locks us out of the Father's house, far from his presence.
• Last Sunday, Pastor Matt spoke about the indescribable joy that comes down from heaven when someone becomes a child of God: our names written in the book of life, forgiven, justified for eternity. But that joy is only the beginning. What God wants to give next is to bring us into the mission he wrote for you and for me. When he wove you together in your mother's womb, he already had a mission drawn out.
• Everything starts with this first question: do I have God? Can I say today, "I have God in my life"?

2. Sin: A Problem of Roots, Not Fruit

• We often think sin doesn't concern us. We tell ourselves we're a pretty good person, that we do good around us, that we're not a murderer or a predator. But Romans 3:23 says: "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." From birth, you are a sinner, because it's not a matter of a few sins here and there, but of human nature itself.
• Picture an apple tree: if a tree is diseased, it will bear both good and bad fruit. Pulling off rotten apples one by one as they appear won't fix the tree's real problem. As long as the roots aren't treated, repaired, restored, the tree will keep bearing bad fruit, even if it's trying its best for its farmer.
• That's exactly our picture. You can put in every effort in the world, try to bear the finest fruit in people's eyes. If the roots aren't changed by the one who is the tree of life, Jesus Christ, who wants to take the place of your roots, there's no way out.
• Jesus doesn't just want to help you discover your mission, he wants to come and uproot that fleshly nature. When I live in him, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Those are his roots. Then you can bear good fruit, live a life that has meaning, a mission that has meaning.
• Free or enslaved today, where are you? Whatever your answer, you're in the right place: there's no sin too big, no chain too thick, not even a sin too small that Jesus cannot uproot by the power of his blood. He died on the cross at Golgotha so that, by his wounds, you would be restored, healed, and set free. If you hear his voice today, this is the day of your deliverance. This is "your Pennsylvania."
• God doesn't just want to forgive you and free you from sin, he wants to give you so much more: to fill the desires of your heart. The Bible says he answers wordless groans. If you trust in him, he hears what you've never told anyone, and he will answer. And it's very simple: be honest with yourself, look to him, and acknowledge your mistakes.

3. Remaining in the Word: The Truth Sets You Free

• John 8:31-32: "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." If you remain: that's where you need to stay. Only the truth sets us free.
• There's a new form of slavery: false reasoning. It comes from a lack of knowledge, because we don't know God's word, we don't read it, we don't ask ourselves what God has left in this living book. Let's make his word our most precious treasure: all the knowledge you need to live your life and fulfill your mission is found in it.
• When Jesus says the truth sets you free, he's speaking of himself. Jesus is the Word, the Word made flesh, come down to this earth to live a perfect life so that you and I could enter into that reality. The more you dive into the Word, the more you know Jesus personally. And the more you know him as your friend, the more his Spirit in you does what no one else can do.
• Harriet Tubman walked toward her freedom with the Holy Spirit as her friend and best ally. Jesus will no longer physically come and take your hand to walk beside you the way he once did with his disciples: he said it was better for him to go away, that he would not leave us orphans, and that the Holy Spirit coming upon us, we would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Samaria. His Spirit comes to live in us. You're no longer alone: he is in you and with you.
• His Spirit is essential for fully entering into the mission. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Harriet was led through the swamps and forests. At times he would tell her: "Don't take this path anymore, go that way, cross the river." People were afraid, didn't know how to swim, but the Spirit of God led her, she never stopped obeying him, and she saw his glory throughout her life.

4. Practicing the Word: Obedience or Spiritual Overweight?

• Romans 2:13: "For it isn't the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified." Hearing doesn't make us free or fully happy, and it won't let you enter into the mission. You can't come to church Sunday after Sunday, listen, leave, and live your life however you please until the next Sunday, while thinking you're fully living the mission God calls you to.
• There's also the sin of religiosity: the kind that pushes us to criticize, condemn, judge, finding every sort of false reasoning and excuse. That kind of life is slavery, far from the freedom Jesus promises.
• James 1:23-24: "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was." That's a serious level of amnesia: forgetting your own face! Sarah admits she forgets plenty of things, but that... You hear, and you forget, right there in church. Living that way is living without purpose, with a barren faith.
• God wants us to have vibrant lives, effective for his kingdom. His heart burns for that. Jesus gave his life not only to forgive and restore us, but so that we would find this purpose and this mission. When he forgives, God sends. When God adopts, he commissions. He doesn't just add you to a list of names in a big book: he makes you his daughter, his son, and his greatest desire as Father is to work hand in hand with the one who has finally come home.
• Picture a family business: the great-great-great-grandfather founded the woodworking shop, and today it's the grandson who took over the company and carried it further. That's the picture of God toward his children. He wants to train you as an apprentice, teach you to handle the tools, work the wood, trust you, give you projects. Small at first, then bigger and bigger. Sarah prays that Jade, Simon, and Lisa, her three children, will go much further for the Gospel than her own life has: for her, as a mother, that would be her greatest achievement.
• God doesn't need children who spend their whole lives sitting on "Daddy God's" lap by the fireplace, listening to stories. Too many Christians live that way. God wants to make his children the very actors in his story.
• Everyone had a mission: Jesus, the cross; Adam and Eve, to rule the earth and be fruitful; Noah, the ark; Abraham, to leave his country and become the father of a multitude; Moses, to bring the people out of Egypt, pass on the law, lead them to the promised land; Joshua, to take over and conquer the promised land; John the Baptist, to prepare the way of the Lord; the apostles, to proclaim the Gospel and build the church; Esther, to rise to royalty to save her people by overturning Haman's plot; Harriet Tubman, to bring hundreds of men and women out of slavery; Reinhard Bonnke, to see Africa washed by the blood of Jesus; Mother Teresa, to serve Jesus among the poorest; Martin Luther King, to preach and embody justice according to the love of Christ; Marie Durand, to stand firm in faith under persecution, imprisoned at 19 in the Tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes, encouraging every day for 38 years the women locked up with her, refusing to deny her faith until her release at 57.
• Today, what is your mission? Not someone else's: yours. When Jesus has truly become the Savior and Lord of a life, we no longer live for ourselves, we exist for others. And there's no more beautiful life than that. When your life has helped men and women move from slavery to sin into eternal salvation, whether you end up poor or rich, you are the happiest of men or the happiest of women.
• Our lives are given to us for two things: to meet God and to live our mission. And this mission can only be discovered by putting the Word into practice, in that word so simple and yet so demanding: obedience.
• Sarah noticed that "obedience" and "overweight" sound surprisingly close. In church, haven't we sometimes mixed the two up? We eat, we eat message after message, we receive sermon after sermon, we hear, and hear, and become spiritually overweight without ever walking in obedience. We're not called to be overweight, we're called to be obedient.
• Maybe you're called to be a businessman or businesswoman, a person of influence, to earn a lot of money to advance God's kingdom (money isn't the goal), to be light in a sector where influential men climb the ladder through hidden networks. Maybe to be an artist who portrays life in a world of glitter, hypocrisy, and depression. Maybe, on the other hand, to be a doctor among the Chepang people of Nepal, a people living in remote areas, on poorly fertile land, who have historically suffered from malnutrition: to heal their bodies, but above all to bring them the bread of life found in Jesus Christ alone.
• Sarah doesn't know what your mission is, but she knows he is calling you. And he answers whoever, like Harriet Tubman, says to him: "Yes, I'll go." Every trip north was a death sentence waiting to happen for her. She knew it, and she never stopped going back.
• We don't want to believe from a distance: being a believer who doesn't practice has its limits. We don't want to be the kind of Christians who tour churches like spiritual food critics, redoing the whole menu from start to finish. Those people are bored, and because they're bored, they criticize, judge, condemn. Once you've found your mission, you no longer have time for any of that. Church SOS is not a church of spiritual food critics: these are workers who roll up their sleeves, who want to sweat for his kingdom and move it forward right where he places them.

5. Five Questions the Word Asks You

• Exodus 3:10: "Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." Which Moses are you going to be? Who will you set free?
• Joshua 1:9: "Haven't I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid. Don't be dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go." What kind of pioneer are you going to be?
• Jeremiah 1:7-8: "Go to whomever I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Don't be afraid because of them, for I am with you to rescue you." Who are these "whomevers" he is sending you to?
• Esther 4:14: "Who knows if you haven't come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" If you wonder why you're where you are in your life, God answers you: who knows if it isn't for a mission as important as Esther's that you find yourself in this place?
• Isaiah 61:1: "The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted." If the Spirit of the Lord is on you, who are the ones he is sending you to heal broken hearts?
• When you make the Word your own and remain in it, it becomes impossible not to hear God speaking, impossible to be bored, impossible not to find your mission, impossible to stay in a spirit of criticism. And God will have no greater joy than to entrust the mission he calls someone to, to the one who commits. May we all be able to say one day in turn: "I'm not afraid, I have God and my mission."

Key Takeaways

• We all face the same choice Harriet Tubman did: liberty or death. Sin is real slavery that locks us out of the Father's house (John 8:34).
• Sin is a problem of roots, not just fruit. Only Jesus, the tree of life, can take the place of your roots so you can bear good fruit.
• Having God is only the beginning: when he forgives, God sends. When he adopts, he commissions. He wrote a mission for you while you were still in your mother's womb.
• Your mission can only be discovered by practicing the Word. Hearing without obeying makes you spiritually overweight, not free (James 1:23, Romans 2:13).
• The Holy Spirit is essential: he guided Harriet Tubman through the swamps, and he lives in you and leads you today.

Personal Application

1. Free or enslaved: where are you today? Can you honestly say "I have God in my life," or are you still chained by a nature you're trying to fix fruit by fruit?
2. Is my life meaningful? Is it effective? Will it leave a mark on this generation or the next one coming?
3. Are you a forgetful hearer? What do you actually remember from last Sunday's message, and what have you put into practice this week?
4. What is your mission, yours and not someone else's? In business, art, medicine, or elsewhere: where is God sending you to be light?
5. Who are the "whomevers" he is sending you to? Which Moses are you going to be, and who will you set free?

Scriptures Cited

• John 8:31-36: everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin; the truth will make you free
• Romans 3:23: all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God
• Galatians 2:20: it is no longer I who live, but Christ living in me
• Romans 8:26: the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings which can't be uttered
• John 14:18 and Acts 1:8: I will not leave you orphans; the Holy Spirit coming on you
• Romans 2:13: the doers of the law will be justified
• James 1:23-24: a man looking at his natural face in a mirror who forgets immediately
• Exodus 3:10: come now therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh
• Joshua 1:9: be strong and courageous
• Jeremiah 1:7-8: go to whomever I send you
• Esther 4:14: for such a time as this
• Isaiah 61:1: the Spirit of the Lord is on me to bind up the brokenhearted

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "I had God and my mission" mean?

This was Harriet Tubman's answer when asked if she was ever afraid while leading enslaved people to freedom. For Sarah Marvane, these two things sum up the Christian life: first having God (being freed from sin and adopted as a child), then receiving the mission he wrote for you. When God forgives, he sends. When he adopts, he commissions.

How do I discover the mission God has for me?

According to this message, your mission can only be discovered by putting God's word into practice, that is, obedience. Listening to sermons isn't enough (James 1:23, Romans 2:13). You need to remain in the Word, read it, practice it, and move forward with it. Then it becomes impossible not to hear God speaking and not to find your mission.

Why is sin compared to slavery?

Jesus says in John 8:34 that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Sin chains, condemns, isolates, and locks you out of the Father's house. It isn't a matter of a few faults here and there, but of human nature itself (Romans 3:23). Pulling off bad fruit one by one isn't enough: Jesus, the tree of life, must come and change the roots.