Sometimes we're up, at other times we're down, but we need each other. We need others to let us be ourselves--specially those of like faith, on whom we can depend and to whom we can be able to turn for solace. By the same token we need to allow others to be themselves. Maybe what I'm looking for among a body of Christians doesn't exist. Maybe Im hoping for too much.
What my spirit reaches out for is that group of people who accept me as I am ---warts and all! I'm looking of that support team. I'm looking for that kind of encouragement. Im looking for a church body that won't always knock me dead with scriptures or spiritualize everything in my life. And tell me, aren't you looking for the same thing?
If the church has thought me anything, it has---in a strange, unintentional, back-handed sort of way--taught me to value my freedom. Freedom is the natural (and supernatural) by-product of God's grace, It is a gift for me to be myself.
Through some bitter reasons I have learned that no church member, no fellow Christian has the right to press me into his or her performance mold. More important, I don't want them to do it to me anymore, nor do I want to do it to them.
When i latched into the knowledge of grace, I also latched onto the liberty that comes with it. I lived how to live abundantly, and that, once and for all has killed the desire to go back to a narrow, misery, predictable existence.
I'm free now, and I'm loving it. Im free from bondage. Free from the law. Free from prejudicial living. Free from wanting to judge others. I've learned the truth. and it has set me free.
So Christ has made us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don't get tied up again in the chains of slavery. Galatians 5:1 TLB
Adapted from: The Alchemy of the Heart by Luci Swindoll, 1984 by Multnomah Press.
