“Living life as if we have a home means living to experience God’s love on a continuing and ongoing basis and making that love known to others. As Christians, we are sons and daughters of God,yet so many of us live as if we don’t have a home. We live, think, and act like fatherless orphans because we have never truly embraced Father God’s love on a personal level. The storms, setbacks, and disappointments of life have made us afraid to trust, afraid to let go, afraid to risk becoming vulnerable by believing God when He says, “I love you.” Because we do not love ourselves, we feel unlovable and find it difficult if not impossible to believe that anyone else could love us, including God. The thought of Him loving us personally seems to good to be true… and much more than we deserve. And that’s precisely the point: it is much more than we deserve. But it is also true. God Himself said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jer. 31:3).
All my life I’ve lived as if I don’t have a home. I have lived, thought and acted like a fatherless orphan because I never truly embraced my Father’s love. When I heard the gospel for the first time, I understood that Jesus loved me, that He died for me and that I could have freedom in Christ. But honestly, it wasn’t until 2 weeks ago that I started living that out.
At first, the thought about posting a blog like this scared me, the thought of being vulnerable in front of all of you scared me. But as I am stepping fully into my new life with the lover of my soul, all my shame is gone, and I am going to do it anyways. I want to share with you the freedom and love that I am now living in as a daughter of the Most High God. I know it’s a little long,but please read it to the end.
When I look back on my life, I see a pattern of ruined relationships. Friends, roommates, relationships, and family. I noticed that when people started getting too close to me or tried loving me too much, I pushed them away. I never let anybody love me fully. Not even God. I always felt unlovable and by that I was never able to fully love either.
I thought I knew God’s love, but it turns out that I didn’t fully know it. I could tell every person in the world how much the God of heaven and earth loves them, but when it came to telling myself that, a part of me found it hard to believe. And for this reason, I couldn’t open up to people the way I wanted to, I couldn’t receive love the way people wanted to love me and I couldn’t trust people or their intentions.
“You will treat yourself and others according to the way you think God feels about you. If you know you are loved unconditionally, you will love yourself and others with that same kind of love. But if you feel you have to perform in order to be of value to God, then you will portray the thought to others that they need to perform in order to be of value to you.”
I started to evaluate my life and they way I treat people. I heard podcast after podcast about the topic of “love” and how much you love people was really a gauge on how much you genuinely love Jesus. I heard a podcast on 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter. This time I read it, it was different. The first three chapters explain that if you have no love, then whatever you do will not matter.
Paul says in verse one that even if you can speak every tongue of every culture, every language in the universe, and on top of that you could speak tongues of angels in heaven, which no human can do, if you have no love in what you speak or no compassion in what you say, it means nothing. Every time you spoke it would be like hearing a noisy gong or an annoying clanging symbol.
In verse two, Paul says that if you have the gift of prophesy meaning speaking truth, if you knew everything, every mystery of mankind, if you knew everything in the world, the ability to communicate everything to come, if you had all knowledge, to even have the same knowledge only God himself has the power to know, but without love, then you are nothing.
Lastly, verse three tells us that if we give all the possessions we ever had to feed the poor or to give your body to be burned, with no love it will profit you nothing. For example, to come on the World Race, I had to give up a lot of things. Let’s just say that I gave up every single thing I owned and sold everything except for the clothes on my back and my identity, and somebody said, “wow, you really wanted to go on this trip, you sold everything you had to get there!” and my response was, “no, I just really needed a good excuse to get rid of the junk I had collected over the years and I wanted to start a new life.”
People would really wonder what I was doing, then, going on an almost year long mission trip to “spread the gospel of love”, wouldn’t they? Yes, without love being your number one motive, this year would mean absolutely nothing.
Like I said, I started evaluating my life. I realized that I could only love as far as my flesh could love, and we all know our flesh doesn’t love as much as Jesus loves. I prayed constantly for God to give me eyes to see His people, to love like He does. But what I didn’t realize, was that I wasn’t grasping His love for my own self. So as much as I tried to see His children the way He saw them, I couldn’t. I still got annoyed with things they did, I couldn’t extend grace like I wanted to, I couldn’t be patient with them. Nothing was working for me, except to get away from them and be alone, so I didn’t have to ruin another friendship.
When the nasty parts of my heart were being revealed to me, I started feeling very confused and feeling like a failure. I felt confused at what I am doing on the Race, because without love then everything I gave up and did wouldn’t matter. I felt like I failed God. Like I failed myself and everyone around me. When I felt like I had failed God I ran away. I felt unworthy to approach Him. (This is where the works part of my relationship with Him revealed itself).
One night, about 2 weeks ago, God decided to use my teammate to reveal to me just how twisted my heart was. Luckily, When God revealed the condition of my heart, I was on a ferry for 3 days with no where to go and no where to hide from them. I wasn’t happy about it at first, but now I am thankful as ever for that time. God had orchestrated a place for me to figure things out with my team and my heart.
After I got off that ship and took a bus to our debrief location, I spent the first 2 days in my room and in my bed. I cried more than I ever had in my life; for three days straight actually. It took all that was in me to even get out of my room to worship with my squad. I felt like I couldn’t even approach Jesus because of how horrible I felt. I went anyways and sat in the back. I listened to all the worship songs playing, but I couldn’t get myself to sing. I couldn’t even open my mouth to say anything to anybody. Then, one of my old teammates came up to me and simply just put her hand on my back. As soon as I felt her touch, and I know her touch, I started to cry. Hard. For about 30 minutes straight I sobbed and wrestled with God in my head. The song Break Every Chain came on and I fought with God asking Him what chains I was still holding on to. I knew I had chains, I felt shackled to something, but I could never put my finger on it. This frustrated me. My one desire, more than anything was to be free, and I knew I wasn’t. After worship session was over, I went to my bed and cried some more. I cried out in desperation to the Lord and begged for Him to show me His love. To let me actually feel it. To feel Him. For the numbness of my heart to go away. To let all my fears of letting people in to go away and for me to actually experience the fullness of Him and His love. And then I begged for Him to break my chains.
The next day we had a squad bonfire and worship night by the lake. This was the first night in days I could open my mouth to worship my Lord. Person after person kept coming up to me the whole night. Each person that came to me either had a vision of me from God or a word that He spoke to them to tell me. Everything that was said to me was about how much my Father loved me. I came to a point where I told myself, “Okay, Lord, please give me a second to process. I can barely handle receiving all of this love.”
Then, one of my teammates came to me and asked me if he can talk to me for a second, without telling him anything about how I had been feeling. “Sure”, I responded, not sure what to expect. He began to say how he normally doesn’t do this, but he felt he really needed to tell me what God just showed him. It was a vision of me speaking to women about freedom. The women in the crowd were all crying and one woman stood up and yelled while she was crying of joy, “I’m free, i’m free, i’m finally free!!” Then he proceeded to tell me that God sees me as free and that I am free. While closing my eyes trying to hold back tears, I kindly thanked him and head back to my spot in the sand. I put my face in my lap and smiled, yet still I felt confused. I didn’t feel free, how could God possibly see me as free, when I knew I wasn’t? All these thoughts came back to my head on how I can be free. What I need to do on my behalf to be free. Then God simply spoke to me in the most powerful way. He simply said, “My daughter who I love so much, you are free. You are free because I say you are free. There is nothing you can do that will make yourself free. But Me, I can simply break your chains without you having to do anything at all, and that is what I did tonight.” Here comes the tears again. This time it was tears of joy. I say over and over again to myself, “I am free, I am free, I am finally free!!”, just like the woman in my teammates vision.
That night, when I laid my head on my pillow, I went to sleep knowing my Father’s love and free of chains and shackles that I felt like a slave to for the first time. I went to bed free! Like, actually free. Free of the lies I believed all my life, free of the bondage that I had been carrying around all my life, free of my shame and guilt, free of feeling unworthy and inadequate, free of not believing that I am pure and white as snow, free from fear of letting others in, free of not trusting other people and free of being afraid to let God and others love me. I can now say that I live in the freedom and love that Christ died for and this is the most alive I have ever felt in my life. Thank you Jesus!!!!
To wrap this up, I want to leave you with encouragement. Maybe you feel like I felt. Lost in the baggage and chains and that are holding you captive. I know it hurts. I know you are tired. I know you feel alone. I know it is scary to let it all go and I know it feels impossible to be free. But, my friend, there is hope for you. Jesus died for mineand your freedom.
Galatians 5:1 says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”
Paul was not talking to non- believers, he was talking directly to Christians. So what, you might ask, was Paul referring to? Aren’t believers in Jesus Christ free? Sadly, the answer is no for many Christians. Christians can still have areas of captivity. Even though Jesus has called us to liberty in Him, many people won’t allow Him to to go deep in their hearts to actually set them free.
Please, I beg of you, let the Father set you free. If you can boldly and confidently say you are free, then great, praise Him! But, if you can’t confidently say that you are free, don’t give up until you are. Fight for your freedom. Fight with all that you have. Even if it hurts. You will get to the end of the tunnel and see the most glorious light you have ever seen. I promise you there is nothing more satisfying than to live in the fullness and freedom in Jesus Christ. If you can’t bare the pain for yourself, do it for somebody else who doesn’t know freedom at all, he/she needs you. Be bold. Trust in your Lord. He wants to free you more than you even want to. And I know your deepest desire is to be free. So, go! BE FREE IN THE NAME OF JESUS AND LET HIM LOVE YOU!
With Love,
