In a former chapter of my life, I worked as a teacher. Students are interesting creatures. They teach me a lot about myself. They teach me a lot about life.
On one page of that chapter, there was a high school student who came to class every day, walked to the back of the room, and sat in the last row in between two people that he referred to as his friends.
He sat there every day. Same seat. And every day his friends would steal his books, take his pencils, hide his notebook, and other bothersome things. And there he sat. Day after day.
On one of his most trying days, he asked me, “Aren’t you ever going to do anything about this?”
That is what we do. We enter the same rooms, and we sit in the same seats. We put ourselves in the same situations, and we consistently expect different results. We hide behind the same doors. We build the same walls. We date the same boy. We believe the same lies. And we expect things to be different. To be more.
And they are not. No matter how many times we do the same things, no matter how much effort we put into them, no matter how many times we try, they are not going to be different.
And then we look to God, and we say, “Aren’t you going to do anything about this?”
Aren’t you going to fix this? Aren’t you going to make them stop? When are you going to take away the lies, take away the temptation, take away the struggle?
We want God to come down and put out the fire we keep standing too close to. We want God to come down and turn off the stove that we keep sticking our fingers on. To make some boy treat us the way that we want to be treated. To tear down the walls that we keep building up.
“Aren’t you ever going to do anything about this?” I asked.
To which his young face responded with confusion.
And sometimes He turns to us, and He lovingly asks, “Are you going to do something about this? When are you going to stop believing the lies that you know are lies?”
God is saying, “Back up off that fire, girl.”
He is saying to take your own hand off the stove. Walk away. To refuse to accept the kind of treatment that does not live up to the standards of a daughter of the King. To open the door and let people in. To stop building the walls that we are not meant to live behind.
It is for freedom that we have been set free.
We have already been set free. God has already sent his son to die to bring us life more abundantly, to bring the freedom that we keep asking for. He broke the chains, and we are walking around carrying broken chains.
Jesus told the sick man that if he wanted to be healed, he needed to get up, take his mat, and walk. And he was healed. But he did not go back everyday and sit by the pool, waiting for Jesus to come by and tell him to walk every day. He was set free; he got up; and he walked out. [John 5]
We have been set free. We need to get out of the fire that we keep allowing to burn us over and over again. We need to get up and start walking around like free people. We have to make a decision and get up and move to a different seat.
We have to put down our broken chains.
