Amazing Freedom

(The above is from the movie Amazing Grace, well worth seeing.)

Whether the chains are on your body or in your thoughts, slavery marks you with a lie - that you belong not to God but to what enslaves you - be it another person, an addiction, your past, whatever. It seeks to make you believe that you have no choices and therefore no power and ultimately no worth - that you are not redeemable for who would redeem what is of no value.

Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor said that "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." We choose how to respond to the circumstances of our life. We do not have to be bound (enslaved) by what our body says or our head says. We can choose to respond from the spirit part of us, the part that was made in God's image, that will stand before His throne washed clean through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, redeemed and embraced. When we respond from that part of our nature, we can do all things through Christ because we are responding from the part that is Christ in us. The body and head will surely object because God's ways are not the ways of the world but they will follow when we give the lead to the new nature, the new identity that is placed in us at salvation. The choice of who gets to lead is ours at every moment in every circumstance.

At the women's conference I just returned from the speaker said, "Whoever gets the I is in charge." I am a new a new creation in Christ. My body may be aging and far too "fluffy" for it's own good. My head may have a mile long list of things I must do and things I must not do (for they are too dangerous, time-consuming, expensive, silly, etc.). But I (the real me, the spirit) can still choose to align myself with the God of the universe, allow him to work in me and through me to demonstrate his character and his love. My head says I am not a patient person. Yet, God is patient and He is in me. Therefore, I am patient. As long as I keep the I with the spirit part of me, my head can object all it likes but it doesn't get to choose how I respond to the stimulus and I can then choose to respond patiently.

Freedom is the proclamation that you belong to God - first, foremost, always and forever. Respond from that truth and miracles will follow you.

May you have a joyous, amazing Easter

Bought

When you adopt, particularly internationally, the cost is always on someone's mind and often that gets expressed very poorly. Recently a woman on my adoption e-mail group, who has been waiting almost a year for her referral , got the "Why is it taking so long, you're buying the baby aren't you" comment. She was asking the group how they dealt with such comments.

Typically, I've responded to comments about the costs of adoption by saying that doctors and nurses don't help you bring your baby into the world out of the goodness of their hearts. It's just for most people the true costs are hidden by insurance coverage. With adoption, however, the costs of getting your child home are not hidden.

Later, as I was driving home listening to a new scripture set to music CD, the song for 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 came on.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

It then occured to me that the truest response to such comments is "We were all bought...Christ paid the highest price to bring each one of us home. The money I paid people to help me bring my child home from China doesn't compare to the price that was paid for me and for you."

I know that right before I accepted Christ as my savior one of the most difficult concepts for me to grasp was that this price had already been paid and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was in the past. I desperately didn't want Christ to have had to die for me (me not being worthy of such a sacrifice and all). I eventually realized that it was a done deal and the only thing that was within my control was to accept that the price had been paid or to reject it. Rejecting it wouldn't take away one bit of the sacrifice or the suffering anymore than my being a "good" person would lessen what He did or make what He did unnecessary. It was already done. Nothing I could do now more than 2000 years after the fact would change what had been done or why it had been done. The only question was - would I benefit from it? Would I accept that the price for me was paid and the way home was now open?

Now that I've had my daughter home for nearly two years, the cost seems inconsequential. I am beginning to realize that perhaps God takes such delight in me, and each of his children, that he truly doesn't count the cost to bring us home.

Whatever

As a mother of a two-year-old, I am subject to much conversation that is well, unintelligible, no matter how many times I ask her to repeat herself. To avoid consenting to anything I didn't mean to or triggering the meltdown for saying no, I often find myself giving the noncommittal "Whatever" reply.

Recently, I saw that on a mug in a Christian catalog and thought, well that's not exactly the positive, inspiring wares you're used to seeing there. Then I read the description and realized that inside the word on the mug was Philipians 4:8 -

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

That really caught my attention and made me realize that so much of life really is how you look at it. You can choose to view something negatively or you can choose to think about "such things" through the lens of what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.