Sup party people. I just spent my first month with my forever people here in Gainesville, Georgia. We live in tents, eat every meal together, have a strict schedule for each week day, shower in storage containers, and wash our clothes out of buckets. I know what you’re thinking… how in the world is the title of this blog post “freedom?” I don’t make my own schedule, I don’t truly have that much time to myself, and I have plenty of rules to follow. But, I’ll tell you why I have been experiencing true, unbridled freedom. Surrender. There is simply freedom in surrender. I lost my ability to make my own schedule… but I gained the ability to understand time management and discipline. I lost most alone time… but I gained the meaning of true unity, learning to work well with others and love others well, and patience. I lost a normal shower… but I gained gratitude for a shower at all. I lost my bedroom and bed… but gained the understanding of true abandonment to this world & the comforts in it. When we give Papa our lives and all the little things we hold onto SO tightly, we finally have open hands to receive all the freedom that He has to replace it with. Here, where I’m lacking earthly freedom, I have experienced true freedom for the first time. Something my heart has always longed for. Found my life when I laid it down, people! There, I said it! Galatians 5:1 says “Christ has set you free FOR freedom! DON’T submit to the bondage of slavery again.” Freedom is a gift that we just get to receive because God’s good like that! True life is found when your life isn’t yours anymore. Sometimes that looks like packing up your belongings and living out of a bag for 9 months for the sake of sharing the gospel, and sometimes that looks like simply inviting the Lord into your everyday life, because there’s just more for you where He is. Freedom in surrender. And I would shout that from every rooftop, forever.
“May you learn to embrace the freedom that has been calling your name, so you can liberate courage in others so they can do the same.” Morgan Harper Nichols
