a lovely kind of freedom

Over the course of my life I have found myself subject to a certain amount of anxiety and tension based upon a fear of not being good enough. I had this standard burned into my head that would never let me rest on a vacation, sleep in late, walk through a mall without sharing the gospel or live normally without debilitating guilt. It always pained my conscience to tell people of the amazing freedom they could find in Christ, for my actual life bore no witness of this freedom. Instead, I lived with the ambition of being good enough for everyone. I did not want people to hate me or look down on me for being a bad Christian. Ultimately though, it was my view of God and misunderstanding of the gospel that fueled this lifestyle I grew to hate.

For as long as I can remember, I have always looked at other people and wondered why it was so easy for them. Why and how on earth were they liked when they messed up all the time? How was it that those who were the most immature got the most patience and attention from the youth group leaders, while I had to be perfect to get attention and praise. I lived in this fear of messing up. I never pin-pointed what that ultimately would look like, but I could tell you exactly how it would feel to have everyone disappointed in me.

I never realized how much these thoughts and desires completely ruled my life until this last year. I moved away from home, away from everyone who knew me, anyone who had any standard of normal for me, and slipped into a community of people who knew absolutely nothing about me. It was quite blissful to be surrounded by people who did not know me well enough to have expectations of me. I simply was, just as they simply were, and thats all there was to it.

As time passed on, and acquaintances became close friends, those familiar feelings began to tempt me again. Having wrestled through the importance of pleasing God and not others however, these fears found little foundation to rest upon, and slipped aside, unveiling an even bigger fear of mine, the root system of every fear in my soul, the fear of not being able to please God.

While this fear was not blatantly dressed as a fear of disappointing God, it took on many shapes and forms in my life that led me to that conclusion. It was not until a breakdown about a week and a half ago that this realization not only hit me, but finally resolved itself.

The very things I knew I needed to do were the things that I had to fight the hardest to enjoy. Reading my Bible for instance was and has been a struggle for me periodically throughout my life, and particularly the letters of Paul. As God would have it, I am taking two classes this semester, Romans and 2 Corinthians, that brought me down to the very pit of my fear of Paul's letters and the Bible. My fear was simple really, when reading those books, all my heart found was a discouraging discourse of everything I could be doing better in my life. I could be wanting to suffer more, trusting God more, serving more, giving more...etc. In my mind, every time I read them I felt like more of a failure. How on earth could God love such a failure. While everyone else was excited for how they were being challenged and humbled, I left class the first few weeks on the brink of tears, overwhelmed and wanting to just give up.

Perfect. Actually, I really think thats exactly where God wanted me. I finally got to the point were I stopped thinking, "ok I know what I am doing wrong, I will just suck it up and fix it." I got to the point where my heart was crying, "I just want to give up, everything seems impossibly hard. I don't even know what to do any more. I don't know who God is, I don't know what he wants for my life, I can't even suck it up and do it anymore. I am done. I want to actually want to live this life spoken about in the Bible, and only the Holy Spirit can do that through me, because I am done, I have reached the end of myself."

After that point, this beautiful thing called the gospel slowly started to become alive to me. The terrific wonder of the penalty of my sin being taken away suddenly had new depth, as I found myself to be a helpless wreck, wallowing in her own sin, waiting to be saved. No longer was I the person who could pull it all together, now I was a paralyzed sinner who had been set free. Finally realizing this completely rocked my world. It was not until I realized how helpless and sinful I actually was that the gospel became alive to me.

This new freedom that took hold of me lifted a veil from the Bible I never knew I had put on it. The veil was that I thought I knew it all already. Now, feeling like a brand new Christian, I am excitingly reading through my Bible with a fresh perspective on everything, and have abandoned my old fears of not measuring up for excitement in learning how much God loves me anyway.

My life had been heavily influenced by a prideful insecurity that was terrified of letting others down, or disappointing God. I am now realizing that my only standard to live by is to live in the beauty of the gospel. I am realizing with unspeakable joy and wonder the love my Father has for me. To think of God in any other way, or to doubt such love is making God into something he is not, a scheme the devil has used since the very beginning of time.

All day long I have been in-dwelt with a sweetness that I could feel in my arms, legs, hands, everywhere. It was the absence of anxiety, and I cherished every second of it. It is unspeakably great to know that no matter what I do, God will love me. That statement now has meaning behind it, a treasure I now hold inside my heart.

For those of you who strive every day towards a standard of which you can't even define, living in the breath of defeat, accompanied by guilt and a fear that every moment you are disappointing a God that can hardly put up with you, stop defaming the name of God by diminishing the love he has for you! If you only knew that it is the devil reaching into the most valuable treasure you own, tainting your reason for living in a way that is subtle, yet slowly killing you... you would find a lovely kind of freedom.

yes. a very lovely kind of freedom.
quite simply: you would find God.