Freedom in Christ - a real reason to rejoice.

About a year and a half ago, I realized for the first time that I had spent the first 16 years of my life living as I slave.

Born and raised in a Christian home, I never gave a second thought to the idea that things might not be all peachy. I had Jesus, and figured that I just had to follow this list of rules, and boom - super Christian. What I failed to realize, though, is that I was making myself a slave to the very set of rules that I thought would set me free.

The thing is, no matter how hard I tried to mind my p's and q's and be the perfect little Christian that I thought I was supposed to be, I couldn't. I failed -- a lot. The weight of the world was on my shoulders, and I kept letting it all crash to the ground.

Then, I got involved with Eight Oaks. As I prayed for the freedom of eight little girls who were in slavery in Ghana, Africa, I took a step back and started to really look at what freedom in Christ even meant. It was a term that I had heard before, but it was not one that I had yet experienced. I prayed every week that those girls would someday get to laugh  and sing and dance and be free in Christ, but nobody had ever told me to laugh and sing and dance in the freedom of Christ.

Eight little girls taught me everything I know about freedom while they were still slaves. I have learned so much from those precious little girls over the past year and a half.

I have learned to live in freedom by learning to rejoice in the promises of God. He has told me that I am a new creation, and I believe him. He has told me that I am free from sin and death, and I believe him. No longer is following Christ about following a list of rules; rather, it is about loving he who first loved me, and then living my life completely for him -- a life overflowing with joy.

I still mess up. A lot. But I rest in the assurance that the grace of God is enough. I can mess up, and I will mess up. That's just the way it is. But I am free from all guilt and condemnation through the precious of blood of Jesus Christ. I am free to mess up and make mistakes, and I rest in the fact that God can never love me any less.

Jesus loves me, he has saved me from myself, and in the end, everything is going to be alright. My God will win, and I will be with him forever. There's nothing I can do to screw that up. That is freedom, and that is something to celebrate.

Wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So laugh until your stomach hurts, sing at the top of your lungs, dance like nobody's watching, and live in the freedom that is found in Christ alone.