Love God and do what you want. Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. I’m still learning. I feel like my brain has been untangled and is now being woven back together. It’s a slow process; it was a pretty tight knot of a mess. I grew up in the world of religion. Where rules and regulations were put in place for our own good. But it really didn’t work that way, because instead of living freely the way life was intended to be, I was dragging around these chains of shame. Shame made my choices for me. It decided what I did and did not do, what was okay, what I should or shouldn’t say. It was a cruel master.
I don’t think that was ever the intent of anyone who put those rules or guidelines in place, but that’s how they ended up working for me. I found safety in the walls of the law, making my home on the sidelines of life so as to not cross any boundaries. Safer to stay far from the edge than accidentally cross over. Failure and the unknown were untouched territory in my life. I always chose the good thing, chose to be the good girl. Life was safer that way. Wasn’t being good all that God wanted from me?
It’s not. In fact, He wants sooo much more for me. Because I’m learning that it’s not about doing so much as being. When I become all He created me to be, when I believe it fully and walk in it, that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be, no matter where that leads in the physical world.
I’ve been finding my way closer to the boundary lines over the past few years, testing out new places and ideas; exploring where my life is supposed to lead. I’ve been realizing more and more that I’m not supposed to be anywhere. There is no perfect plan. He trusts me to make decisions. I spent so much of my life waiting on Him to move, asking for signs on where to go and what to do, when the whole time that was never the point. The point was to go. To find people to love on, to live abundantly, not fearfully, to take risks and to get into the messy places. That’s where the growth, challenge and transformation take place. I can get information on how to love people from the sidelines, but I can only change and make change when I jump into the hard spaces.
The truth is, I hear Him clearly and I always have, I just didn’t know it was His voice at the time. I can trust myself to make decisions, because I hear Him and He has placed desires on my heart. It’s okay to chase them. He’ll correct me as I go, but I have to start moving for that to take place. The whole time His point has been to partner with me in life, not to tell me what to do. It’s a loving relationship, not a perpetual obedience test.
It’s not about me anyway. It’s about allowing myself to be loved by Him, loving Him back, and loving His people. I just need to get out of my head and trust my heart. He’s been trying to tell me this for a long time now. Scattered throughout my journal are letters between us; me asking Him what to do, and Him clearly saying in return “I trust you.” When I keep my heart in hot pursuit of His, I can trust that He will bless whatever I choose to do.
It’s a constant battle. I still struggle to trust myself. But He keeps gently reminding me that He trusts me. That He made me good and I don’t have to worry about failure or what the unknown holds. At the end of the day, it’s all good. Because He’s good, and that never changes.
I’ve had some really good people speak all of this into my life over and over for the past few years and it’s taken a lot of unlearning to start believing this truth. That my God is good, He made my heart good and I can trust that. So these days I find myself searching through the grey areas of what brings life and what brings death rather than eating from the tree of good and evil. I now find myself asking questions like, “If I make this choice, will it benefit the Kingdom? Does the answer change if I do this instead?” It’s all new ground for me. Releasing the need to be perfect all the time and knowing that when my heart’s in the right place, there really is no wrong choice.
Now I don’t want you to think this is me convincing myself that I can sin any way I want and it doesn’t matter. That isn’t it at all. But when my heart truly is after the Father’s, it just wants good things for myself and those around me. And when it comes to the big life decisions about where to go and what to do, there are no right answers there either. I get to bring my Father’s heart with me no matter where I go or what I do.
All this to say, I’m still learning. I’m learning to trust myself and do what I want. I’m even learning what it is that I want, because I’ve used the idea of a rigid perfect life path to avoid exploring all the possibilities. It’s all a process and thank goodness there’s grace in the process. It’s freeing and terrifying all at the same time. But I know this road leads to greater freedom.
I was on the road to comfort, safety and security with my ticket to heaven in hand. I got to hold that tightly from the sidelines. What I’ve been realizing is that the real abundant life comes on the road to freedom, where I get to bring heaven with me to people in all spaces. What religion taught me was how to follow rules and keep myself safe. It used shame as a scare tactic and it worked. What Jesus is teaching me, is that His heart and His desires for my life are in the wild mess of a world that doesn’t have an exact or perfect plan. The plan is love. The best comfort in that is I can’t mess it up! So I’m shedding shame and choosing my Father’s heart. And because of that, as I embrace God’s master plan of love, I get to do what I want.
