The tiny chains hung from my body, holding up weights of various sizes, shapes, and colors that bumped against my tired frame. Such were my possessions. As a child, they took the guise of ‘sentimentality‘, then later, ‘materialism‘, then they were numbered for their ‘value‘, and finally became ‘regret‘.
As ‘Send Me Lord’ rose as the mantra of my soul, these tiny chains began clanging loudlywith each movement, and tugged toward the ground with each step. I was suddenly acutely aware that these things in my life were nothing more than obstacles! Yes, Lord, I will follow You….. but first, I need to sell my stuff, and get out of my lease, and decide what to do with my car, and raise funds…. And… and…and.
I was quickly reminded of Matthew 8 in which 2 men are interested in following Jesus. Jesus’s response cuts me right to the core!
19 Then a teacher of the law (Man 1) came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
21 Another disciple (Man 2) said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Suddenly, I saw these chains for what they were….hindrances! They were not valuable, enjoyable, sentimental, or even necessities of life. Instead, they were holding me back! My heart and mind began frantically pulling away the brittle cobweb of chains that had enveloped me. Some of the stronger, tougher chains lingered a little longer, but my awareness to them degraded their strength day by day until they finally fell away.
This is only the beginning! It’s one thing for me to sell my favorite chair, and hold a garage sale to clear out the dusty boxes of kitchenware I haven’t used in a year. But it’s another thing entirely to give up showers, and shaving, a warm bed and my favorite feather comforter, ice in a tall glass of Coke, and air-conditioning.
As many chains as I see on the ground behind me, I suspect there are still others that linger in places I cannot see in the middle of my comfortable life. Chains that feel soft as I lay on my pillow-top mattress with feather pillow, and my favorite comforter. Chains that may suddenly feel cold and hard as they dig into my back at night while I sleep on a thin pad in the blistering heat being eaten by mosquitoes after a hard day of laboring in the fields or pouring concrete by hand in the blazing sun.
But I welcome these challenges and changes because I welcome freedom! True freedom sets us free, and makes us continually more free! I am tempted to go on a tangent about freedom, but for the sake of brevity, I will stop here. I’ll share more on freedom in the future, so keep reading!!
Your Chains: What chains might you have lingering in your life? How can you identify a chain?
Chains are: anything that is holding you back from following Jesus right now. Things that you would say…. Wait Jesus, first I need to…..fill in the blank.
I first referenced this blog in a previous post called ‘Passionfullness’.
