STANDING FIRM

There was a time in my life about 6 years ago when all I wanted in life was freedom.  I remember saying over and over "I just want to be free".  I didn't want to be trapped in the prison I realized I was living in and had been my whole life.  I didn't want to feel the pain rising up unexpectedly whenever someone would unknowingly push on my open wounds that had been sitting unhealed and stacked up for years.  I wondered if insecurity would plague me for the rest of my life. Big fears, little fears, and inconspicuous fears were driving all my decisions.  All these things were affecting every relationship I had.  I was living in a prison, I felt trapped, and longed so much to get out from behind those prison bars and live my life free from wounds controlling me, insecurity ruling me, and fears driving me.  I pleaded with God to bring me freedom!  I pursued after it with everything I had.

What I didn't understand until recently is that from the moment I was saved through Christ, I walked from being a slave to sin, the law, and my old master, the devil, into complete freedom and a new master, Jesus Christ.  I've had the freedom all along not to live under Satan's lies.

What God has shown me is a deeper understanding through Romans 6 and Galations  chapters 3-5, that I am no longer a slave to sin and the law, but under grace.  God revealed to me that I've been going back and forth in different areas of my life from living under grace to living under the law.  As I continued to read the Word of God along with my personal experiences, God graciously showed me that before belonging to Christ, I was a slave to sin and the law, and Satan was my master.  There was no getting out from that slavery on my own. (As I tell this story picture yourself as a slave when slavery was legal).  I was doomed to die there, as a slave, to my own sin and the law.  Someone else would have to come and pay a high price for me in order to free me.  The only one who could pay a high enough price that would allow me to go free, was Jesus.

I didn't go to Jesus.  He came to me.  Through suffering and dying on the cross, taking upon himself my sins and God's wrath for those sins, and rising again, he came to me in my slavery.  He put out his hand to me and said " Come with me.  I have just bought you with a high price and you are free from ever being a slave to your current master again."  In that moment as I stepped from death and despair into hope and new life, I was free!  In that very moment, I was a son, and held all the rights to being a co-heir with Christ.  All these years I've had the freedom to stand firm and not be burdened by the yoke of slavery, but I didn't fully understand it.  I have been giving Satan permission (when he has no authority because of my position in Christ) to bind me, over and over again like his slave.

Satan is a liar.  He will keep putting his lies on you and weigh them down on your chest until you can hardly breathe...telling you that you have to walk around with shame and guilt for sins you've already repented of, or try to keep you under law alone.  As you believe those lies they fix themselves like a very heavy metal harness around the back of your neck and lay over your chest.  You then begin walking around slouched over from the weight of it and dragged around by the chains attached, as if you were still a slave.  But you're free!  Christ declared you to be! 

I have come to recently ask myself, "Why, am I... a free woman...still slouched over at times with chains around me, allowing myself to be treated...by my old master...like the slave I once was, but am no more?"  Christ, my new Master keeps telling me,  "Stand up tall.  Take off that harness.  It was put on Me so that you can now walk away from your old master with no chains attached to you and experience God's limitless grace on you."  Paul in the book of Galations chapter 5, says this to the Christians in Galatia as they struggled with falling back under the law: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

This is the new covenant that Christ is inviting me and you to walk in every day if we belong to Him.  When Satan tries to pull on those chains and says "come this way," don't give him permission.  He can only bind you if you give him permission.  If you stand firm in the freedom Christ has already given you and tell Satan "no" those chains will fall right to the ground, because they are no longer wrapped around you.  He can pull all he wants, but all he will get is the chain that you have stepped out of into complete and total freedom through Jesus.

Know the word of God and stand firm in what it says.  If we don't know who we are fully in Christ we provide Satan cracks in which to hook his chains.

Don't give Satan the power he has no right to possess!!!!!!

God Bless you and I hope my journeys and struggles and things learned will help you in the glorious name of Christ.