There is a difference between
understanding something in your mind.
And understanding something in your heart.
An understanding of the heart begets movement.
I'm starting my third week
of being home from Africa.
Initial adjustments have taken place,
but my heart hasn't quite been able to rest.
It has been hovering and striving
for a place to lie its head.
The enemy has attacked
in every way he knows how.
Sins from my past have crept
in leaving me lonely with guilt and shame.
Insecurities have made their way
up my neck, trying to drown me
like the undertow of an ocean wave.
But there is something bigger happening.
I look around.
And my heart aches at what is before me.
The people I love most are striving, too.
There have been a countless number of spiritual
attacks I have been made aware of both
while I was in Africa
and upon arriving home.
I feel as if the evil one is working
harder than he ever has
to corrupt every good thing.
To assault the beauty that is so
delicately trying to emerge.
I think about my boyfriend
who is on the other side of the world.
My Kingdom teammate
Christ has so graciously blessed me with.
He is in Cambodia
working with the Rapha House
in their efforts against Human Trafficking.
Their journey will take them into
some of the darkest places of the world.
I think about the rescued little girls who are
safe now but are so desperate for healing.
I think about the girls who have not yet
been rescued from this horrid act of evil.
This week I've been burdened
by the incredible amount of bondage
that is happening in my city
and in a country on the other side of the world.
Then I reached
a place in my spiritual journey
that cannot go uncelebrated.
I have maxed out my ability.
I have reached overcapacity.
I have been introduced to my human limitation.
And praise God.
Jesus continues to whisper one word to me:
FREEDOM.
I have finally understood in my heart where my striving stops.
My striving stops where freedom in Christ begins.
I'm not just free to confess to Jesus enough sorrow to make me feel better.
to only reveal the parts of me that I know people will accept and want to see.
to open my heart only to the things I find to be safe and then to guard the remaining dark parts.
I am free to an extent without measure.
Jesus Christ is my expanse.
And I am the being that expands within Him.
He never reaches capacity,
and I have no ability to fill Him anyways.
His freedom is limitless.
He is a place my heart can truly rest.
It can find true freedom.
And that word,
freedom.
It holds so much,
yet so little.
Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
It's a word that reaches the hearts
of the unreachable.
It speaks to the deepest part
of a hurting little girl
in the darkest parts of the world.
It's a word that carries great power.
The same power that raised Christ
from the dead.
There IS power in the blood of Jesus.
And there IS freedom in Christ.
So I've been challenged not only
with the understanding of true freedom.
But with the idea of living it out.
Of being a free child of God
living in the expanse of my King.
Free to run, dance,
laugh, cry, rejoice,
scream, be angry,
hurt, heal, discover,
want, dream, and most of all...
rest.
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