Greetings from India! Team Rush/Feeny and two other teams are currently posted in an undisclosed location in the state of Andhra Pradesh on the East coast of this incredible country. We honestly could not have asked for a better final month and I could not be more grateful for the place we have landed in His Kingdom. We have been given the choice of staying and working in town at a home that houses 84 special needs children or go in and out of a semi-remote village of the 2nd lowest Hindu caste in order to build a church and raise up new believers. These ministries are ones of freedom in the Holy Spirit, allowing us to apply what our Father has taught us the entire year.
As we move and flow in this freedom, I cannot help but take a look at how much I have grown during this year of active ministry. Each month brought new challenges, new wisdom, greater understanding and most importantly, it brought me closer to my Savior. My World Race experience has shaped and molded me in ways that I could have never achieved in a safe and easy relationship with my fleshly nature or in the safety of my own American bubble. This blessed life I lead will never look the same after these 11 months and I couldn’t be more grateful to Him for saving me from myself.
Funny thing is, without the Grace and Salvation that was so freely given to all of us, the mere thought of freedom wouldn’t really exist on its own. We don’t deserve anything that we have, not life, not breath, not emotions, nothing. We will constantly mess things up, digging ourselves into a hole that we alone could never completely climb out of. Our natural instinct is to try and glorify our own interests by fixing things by our own means, when we have been so graciously given something that came out of pure love with no expectations of getting anything in return. There is no freedom in a state of constantly trying to better our mistakes when we have already been forgiven for them.
Freedom is something we have be predestined to chew and swallow and He allows us to either spit it out or guzzle it down. We can walk around with an ‘I could be better’ mentality or we can choose to celebrate the fact that what we are doing is absolutely perfect if it is bringing Christ the glory He deserves. He cashed a check for the sake of all of our sins and we can never calculate the cost. All we can do is walk in that flawless freedom, knowing that there is nothing we can do to please Him.
Are you burdened by your flesh, a slave to the ‘self fixing’ desires of your human body (Galatians 5)? Do you choose to walk in freedom of the Holy Spirit or are you to caught up in the goings on of the world around you? Have you chosen to humble yourself before the Lord and admit that nothing you can do will ever appease Him? Doesn’t it feel good to walk in freedom?
