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