For His Glory - Wednesday - April 15, 2009 - Free Indeed

I was e-mailing with a dear friend recently about the many years (16) that I spent emotionally separated from my parents and sibling and spiritually separated from God and how God was merciful in bringing me to a point of reconciliation - to Him and my family, because of His grace. During those 16 years, a LOT happened in my life and a LOT of it was not very good. My life was filled with those kinds of things that build a testimony of God's grace but also can imprison us to a life of shame and guilt. As I shared with my friend - not details necessarily - but the general tone of how my life had been, before God's grace redeemed me, I did not weep any more but was able to rejoice at the reconciliation and healing that God has brought to pass in my life. I am finally free from the chains of my past that had for so long brought me humiliation and tears. I look back and wonder how I could have made some of the choices and done some of the things that I did and know it was out of personal pain and ignorance to God's love and will that I made the choices I did. Now, mind you, God has not spared me all of the natural consequences of those choices and those consequences, because I am hard headed and willful at times, have been painful but have allowed me to learn differently and do differently. Sprinkled liberally throughout the consequences of MY choices, is the evidence of God's love, grace and mercy and I have been spared a lot of the pain that could have been. I am now no longer a slave to my past and the pain it brought to me, my parents, my sibling and, unfortunately my children when they were very young, but I am free to be enslaved to the yoke of Christ. A yoke that brings TRUE FREEDOM. There a number of verses in the Word of God with the word "Free" in them but one, I believe, sums it up for me here:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty

by which Christ has made us free,

and do not be entangled again

with a yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1

Through Christ, we have liberty and we are truly free because the Son has set us free. It is my prayer, my friends, that whatever choices you made in your past, that you will make a choice and take a stand for the one True God - regardless of the personal cost. It is my prayer that we will all stand fast in the LIBERTY we have because of our Freedom in Christ and take on HIS yoke which would tell the world we are FINALLY FREE for our Good and to be used For His Glory. Loving you with His Love! AA