This week I have started to think about what a high value I place on freedom. It’s so easy to become tangled and to become trapped. We become trapped in anxiety, insecurity, fear, doubt, sin, and small thinking. I think lately I have realized that you can become trapped in a web of unfulfilled dreams and circumstances that you don’t understand. Right now, I’m in a season where so many chapters are closing. While I’m excited to embrace what’s new, I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part of me that wonders why things couldn’t work out right where I was.
When I think about the dreams God has given me and His promises for my life, I always have a certain idea of how things are going to unfold. Even though I know that God never works according to my plan, I can’t help thinking ahead about how things are going to work out. God is incredible. The more and more I walk with Him, the more and more I realize that you can never pinpoint Him or figure Him out. He has more in store for us than we can ever imagine. Before I can get too comfortable in any one spot, He opens a new door and closes another. It’s always bittersweet. There is something unnerving about stepping into new territory and leaving what’s familiar behind. I am a person who loves hard and holds on tight, so letting go has never come naturally to me. Letting go is always the point where I need to trust God the most.
So what does this have to do with freedom? If I were to do life without Jesus, I know I would never be strong enough to let go of what’s old and familiar. I would always cling to what I knew, even if it hurt me and made me bleed. It tells us in 2 Cor. 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” He doesn’t allow us to stay in bondage to the old at the expense of never experiencing what’s new and beautiful and wonderful. He cuts out the things in our life that are inhibiting our growth and preventing us from seeing our dreams become reality. He trims and snips away at those things we hold onto until we are uninhibited and free to live fully alive in Him.
That’s the thing about cutting ties with the past. Although there is always a certain sadness of letting go of a good season, you are never more alive and free than when you step into the new thing that God has for you. Your past cannot confine you. You are not limited by what has always been. The things of old lose their grip on you, as God makes you more and more beautiful as you take each step into the path He has laid out for you.
When you are tempted to retreat into the past because it is comfortable, choose freedom in Christ over enslavement to the old. Choose to put your confidence in Him rather than situations that have always let you down.
You won’t regret it.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Gal. 5:1)
