How to Live in Freedom

Sometimes you just don’t know how bound you are until you have a moment of exhilarating freedom and you think to yourself, “This is what it means to be free”. And it feels so good. Fresh. Wholesome. Alive.

And you promise yourself you will never go back to regulations and expectations. But somehow you do. The latest cause was compelling and needed so you joined. The newest homeschool trend has convinced you that you were doing it all wrong. Pinterest showed you how plain your life, home, and food really was. The threads of contentment are being clipped one at a time and soon you are going to be standing in a trench of ungratefulness and self-loathing. It happens. It happened to me.

There is this perfect family and life image that I have, and then there is my reality.

What I’ve finally come to see is that it is never going to be me + God on any equation. God is never going to set things up so that we are sharing the glory on anything. Not on how awesome our summer was, how great my family is, or the success of the last week or two. There is no shared glory. So that leaves me on the other side of the equation. The direct recipient of all of His good things. There is immense freedom in this for me. For us, as women, wives and mothers.

We can stop trying so hard to put ourselves on the working side of God’s grace. We don’t belong there. We are the tool He uses to make things happen in our homes, but we are not the source. Taste this freedom, dear friends!

Enjoy this summer and stand in the freedom you are given in Christ. Stop working so hard to produce the grace and just be the vessel it flows through. You’ve got a bit of time left before school starts again. Stand in your glorious freedom where the only expectations are that you are the conduit of blessing. Refuse the burden of expectations and regulations.

And by doing this, your remaining summer days are going to look glorious and blessed. It won’t be the activities and events that nurture the seeds of God in the hearts of your children and home. It will be the ease and peace in your home. That ease and peace that is crucial to those tender hearts doesn’t come from toiling and striving to produce. It comes from standing in the sun, arms outstretched, and saying, “Lord, I stand here in Your incredible freedom! Freedom to receive my inheritance and Your loving favor.”

It’s your birthright, Daughter of God. You are free. Step quickly away from the to-do lists the online world and well-meaning Christians place on you. You live on the receiving side of the grace equation. You are free indeed!

Photo Credit: Jenni Marie Photography