So, God has quickly begun to teach me many new things this month as we have begun a new leg of our race, and I thought I would let you know what God has been doing in me and teaching me. Okay, so the other day as Cory and I were walking down a street of bright colored house on the way to the girl’s house after a little man time at the local pub, we were talking about the last feedback session we had earlier that day. So, as we were walking, Cory turns to me and says, “ I really wish I had been in the Word more since we have been here, so the Spirit would have given me more words to speak to everyone on the team.” As he said this, I immediately thought in my head, that he was right and I hadn’t been in the Word as much as I should have been either. But as I thought that, something inside of me grabbed at my heart, as if to say, “What are you telling yourself.”
Let me back track for a minute. So, a lot of what I have learned on this trip so far is the freedom we have when we become part of Christ’s family. We are free from sin, free from the penalty of sin, but the freedom I have learned the most is different from all of those. The freedom I have been hearing about from God has been about the freedom we have from guilt and shame. God has been freeing me from the past I have come from, the freedom of knowing its anything I have to do to become worthy in the eyes of Christ to be His child, because He did that for us. We cant do anything to become worthy of Him. It’s part of the gift of being His child.
So, after this thing inside of me grabbed, I began to ask God what He wanted me to be learning from this. I began to think and pray that God would show me immediately what it was, and He did. This is what God told me: “Remember that I have given you freedom, and I have given you my Spirit. My Spirit is not conditional on whether or not you do “your part”. My Spirit doesn’t leave when you do something wrong, or when you don’t read My Word, and then come back when you apologize and read My Word. He is always there inside of you.”
Alright… that’s some freedom to take in. For sure. So, at this point, we had arrived at the girls and had sat down for lunch and just hanging out with each other. So, I didn’t get to think about it too much, but when I got home, I did some good talking with God on what this exactly means, and here is what I got:
Feeling guilty about not doing something and feeling ashamed that you aren’t in the Word as much as you should be robs the power of the Spirit inside of you. This is not to say we shouldn’t read our Bible’s or act as we should as a Christian, but when we tell ourselves we cant do something or the Spirit wont be as strong when we don’t do those things, it robs an intimacy that we can have with Him. The Spirit that God puts inside us when we become part of His family doesn’t not come and go as we obey or disobey Him. He is always there, always waiting for you to grow closer to Him. Yes, its true that if we do something against the Spirit, we take ourselves away from His presence, but just because we don’t read His word or fail to act on a prompting from the Spirit doesn’t mean the Spirit is going to withhold something from you that will better His kingdom. Its just not how things work with Him.
Freedom is the word for me on this trip, and there has been much more to this word than I could have expected, but one thing I have learned for sure is this: Guilt and shame rob intimacy with God. It immediately tells yourself that you are not worthy of the Spirit that Christ gave you after He died on the cross and rose again. You are saying that all that Christ endured just to say that you are worthy isn’t true, because you failed to do something. This is not and never will be the case!
So, there it is. Christ told me just because I didn’t get in His word that morning, my and Cory’s capability to share words from the Spirit with our teammates was still there. We serve as amazing God, don’t we?
