The other day, I cut my hair. It was mid-way
down my back. I chopped
it off between my jaw and shoulders.
The girl who cut it
also decided to change my part from
the right side to the left side. My hair falls a little nicer, with more volume I suppose (she didn’t say this, she only speaks
Hungarian, rather it’s something I’ve come to realize).
Today, I tried to put
a braid in my bangs.
What I didn’t realize,
until I had gotten really frustrated and annoyed with my hair, was that everything I had to
do was now on the opposite
side of my head. My left hand now had to do my right hand’s
job, and vise-versa. And, the reality I now face is that it’s going
to take a lot of practice
to make those “bang-braids� look good again.
While I was braiding,
I realized that this is a stellar correlation
to something that God has been teaching me recently.
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I have structured my entire life around the
system of ‘good and evil, right and wrong’.
This system never works.
It says so right in
the beginning of Genesis. This system not only doesn’t work, it also produces death (Genesis 2:16).
Did God teach me that
there is no such thing as right and wrong, good and evil? NO. There is absolutely a
good and a evil, and a right and a wrong.
But when we use right and wrong as the basis for our measurement of life, we are walking down
a path that God indisputably said not to walk down in the Garden of Eden. When
we base everything on the criteria of right
and wrong, we’re walking the opposite way of freedom.
Instead we walk in the
direction of bondage.
God is in the business
of relationship,
and not the business of rules.
It was never His plan, nor is it now His
plan, for us to adhere to a set of rules. His plan was to be in relationship
with us. When we get caught up in rules, our instinct is to hide.
In our hiding, we aren’t willing to take responsibility for
our actions. We try to find something or someone to blame.
Hiding is rooted in fear.
I have been living in fear.
The more I have lived in the system of, “Is it right or is
it wrong?� the more I have fed my fear.
I didn’t eliminate
it. You may be asking, how is doing
what’s right or wrong living in fear? Well, it’s because when we make
decisions based on whether its good or evil, we’re afraid of the consequences of not
doing what’s right. Let me give you an example.
I like to eat.
I love food. My dad always
jokes that the Rouse’s have this horrible gene, that if we even look at food we gain weight. But in all
seriousness, I’ve lived in fear my
whole life because of food.
My entire life I have
battled with not eating too much food because it wasn’t right…
because it would make
me gain weight.
So I feared the consequences of
eating too much because it wasn’t right.
Never once
did I make the decision based
on God’s intended plan…
As Christians, when we
live life doing what is right or wrong, our relationship with God is in a state
of compliance, not in love. That’s
how I have lived for 24 years- in compliance.
Frankly, the criterion
that I have used to govern my life has actually robbed me of my inheritance. I
have lived my life being more secure in the rules that governed my coming and
going. I’ve spent not enough time being secure in the relationship with my
Abba.
So, I must address the obvious question, “How do you govern your life?� That’s a
great question and this is where I’m making the correlation between me braiding
my hair and this new way to live life.
I’m going to have to practice a new question: “Does this bring life?�
This new way to live is going to be hard. Honestly, the hardest
part will be breaking the habit and culture’s influence in which I grew up. However,
when you make decisions based on whether it brings life or not, the answer comes through prayer, discernment, and a heart
in line with God’s.
The temptation will be there to live a life
that feels good.
But as we can plainly see, through the life of Christ,
a godly life often requires hard things. Christ Himself didn’t go through with the
cross because it felt good. He endured the cross for the glory
set before him…but it certainly didn’t feel good.
So, I want to live a
life that brings life.
And, the reality is that it’s really going to take a lot of practice to make that life look good again.
In the words of
Lecrae:
I wanna be like you
in every way
So if I gotta die every day, unworthy sacrifice
But the least I can
do is give the
most of me
Cause being just like
you is who I’m supposed to be
They say you came for
the lame
I’m the lamest
I made a mess, but
you say you’ll erase it…I’ll take it
They say you came for
the lame
I’m the lamest
I broke my life but you say you’ll replace it…I’ll take it
