It has been about a month since training camp and I have written two blogs with different themes describing what I had learned and what God had really taught me during my time there. I had really been struggling to finish them because I felt as if I were cheating on one theme if I posted about the other, but today God showed me that they are not different themes but that they go hand in hand.
So are you a servant or are you a daughter?
This was a question that I kept asking myself at training camp, a question that had been brought to my attention so many times in those 10 days that I had never thought about before. This question challenged me because as a daughter I was loved, I was forgiven, I was given grace for my shortcomings, and I was invited to eat at the table with my Father. On the other hand, as a servant I was always in the business of pleasing my boss and scared to fail but failing was inevitable, and I ate at the table that represented shame, and un-forgiveness for a sinner like myself.
So which one was I, was I the daughter of the King of Kings the Lord of Lords or was I His mere servant?
The answer is tricky because we are told in scripture that we are the sons and daughters of our Lord, but do we act in that way? Do we feel like the son or daughter saved by grace and adopted into the kingdom, or do we live our lives seeing ourselves as servants and missing out on how our Father truly sees us.
I am grateful to have a very loving relationship with my earthly father and it is a reminder me of how much more my Heavenly Father wanted me to see myself as his daughter. So at training camp, for the first time I realized the actual roll of a daughter in His kingdom it broke the chains off and gave me freedom in knowing that I have a Father that is coming alongside me in this journey I call life. That I no longer have to worry about failing because He loves me no matter what and that instead of constantly trying to please Him I could just trust Him.
That freedom of being a daughter empowered me to love like I have never loved before. It gave me the security and DNA of my Father’s heart, and I saw the beautiful people around me as sons and daughters of the same Father. We had all been saved by grace and my heart could not contain how much I loved them. It was the overwhelming freedom of knowing that I was His daughter that I did not have to try to be someone that I was not. I did not have to find my confidence in myself; I did not have to be perfect to the standards of this world. I did not have to worry about what others thought of me, and man can I tell you the huge boulder that fell off my shoulders. The weight was so light, and the love was so big that I could not help but to let it overflow.
As Christians we often miss the point because we are so caught up in trying to do all the right things that we don’t ever stop to enjoying our Father. So as you read this I want you to ask yourself; are you a son and daughter or are you a servant because your Dad is waiting for you to be his son and daughter. You have the ability to drop the pressure of who you are trying to be and just rest in the assurance of His love as your Father.
