The Empowerment of True FreedomIt's been quite a few months since my last post. College began, life got crazy, and I watched my old life fly past me as I attempt to adjust to my new lifestyle. Let me tell you, it's been hard. Adjustment is hard. Change is hard, but it is often so good and so very necessary. Everyone tells me that your first semester of college can be a really "dry season" and also a very hard time. It has been just that - but through this phase of often spiritual depravity I have grown much and seen Him work in ways I would have never expected.
Here's one of those ways. I had a dream the other night.. I would call it more of a vision if you ask me. The Lord gave me the words "The Empowerment of True Freedom" after showing me a vivid and scarring vision of what our society looks like - and we are completely blinded to this inevitable truth.. I wrote in my journal when I woke: I had a vision - a vision of one long, as far as the eye can see, row of humans - every height, weight, age, race, color - it was all of us. Second by second a person emerged from the dust, from the dry and dusty brown dirt came a person - each so unique and beautiful in their own way. But the most interesting part is how each person in this seemingly everlasting line of the entire human race had one, just one, thing in common: shackles. They were all chained by the ankles and by the wrists to each other. It was their one and only common bond, just the shackles. Then I looked around at the very few people who weren't gloomy eyed like the many in the shackles. These people, the very few, the minority, they were free. Running towards the lush green mountains ahead of me and in the opposite direction, more of the "free" were running to the glimmering sunset in the horizon. All of these runners, these liberated people, were moving fast, fierce, and free. There were few of them, but those who were indeed unshackled, were passionate about their freedom - they were radical, they were empowered, they were changed. You could see the joy on their faces as they ran towards freedom instead of bondage. I wonder what it would look like if those who proclaim that they are indeed free lived like these people? If "they were radical, they were empowered, they were changed" shouldn't we mimic this as we live in freedom also? Those of us who are free from our enslavement to sin - by his relentless grace - how are we living like these radical runners, running towards freedom and never looking back at what the world says to look to? I begin to ask myself, does my life proclaim the freedom that He paid for us? Do people see my story of once being in shackles and now being free? Is that how they truly see me? These questions I ask myself.. and my raw and hurtful answers are redefining many things in my life.. why do I worship so many things over the one who actually released me from my bondage in the first place? Isn't He the one who made me free? The only question to ask now is where do we go from here? We are no longer in bondage as followers of Jesus, but that doesn't mean we aren't broken people. We are still broken. We still need Him. Most of all we need to want Him more than anything this world offers. We need to want to share his eternal glory with those who are still in the shackles, emerging from dust. We must want to share this more than what is going to be our next tweet, more than our complaints about the food we just ate, more than how someone is annoying us.. we need to share this radical truth of Jesus more. But first we must want it. with love + joy, -gcg
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