Hey everyone!
This past week has been going really well.. Something that really spoke to me at training camp was that I can not go out and preach freedom to captives if I am not walking in freedom. I thought I knew that, but apparently not because for a while, I was speaking freedom to people but I wasn’t totally free. I had bitterness in my heart towards people and it was warping my view of everything. While at camp, I was given the opportunity to let those things go and I finally chose to put them down. The Lord began to show me what sin looks like and what it feels like. What I was holding onto felt justified; not to mention, it felt good to be angry. So God began to show me that sin is a bunch of dead weight. HE created us to walk through the worst trials and even the best mountain tops, and He even equips us to do so, but not while we’re carrying a bunch of dead weight everywhere. A friend of mine recently told me a story about this woman who owned a boa constrictor. She loved this snake and it would always cuddle with her, so she started letting it sleep in her bed. A few weeks after it started sleeping with her, she noticed that it stopped eating it’s food. She took it to the vet and they didn’t see anything wrong and said to just give it some time, but it still wouldn’t eat weeks later and had begun stretching up next to her at night, so she took it back to the vet and this time mentioned that she had been sleeping with it in her bed. Once the vet realized that the snake had been sleeping with her, he told her to get rid of it immidiately because the snake was starving itself so it would have enough room to eat her and that it was stretching out next to her to see if she would fit. This really relates a lot to sin and how when we decide to walk in sin, we are flirting with evil and opening ourselves up to be consumed. Another good friend told me that everytime we choose sin, we are aborting another opportunity for life. So, as God was speaking to me about freedom, I was realizing that what I had been doing was choosing death everytime I chose bitterness, so I cried out to Him. During camp, I had a few dreams about the person I was bitter at, and I don’t really remember either of them, but what I do remember is waking up with a deep love and compassion and forgiveness that I didn’t have before. Now, when I think of this person, all I can do is love them! Praise God!! What a blessing it is to just be able to love people and to now know that I am free to speak freedom because God has indeed set me free!!!
