In this chapter Hayley takes us into looking at what it really means to live free in Christ. She creates this amazing list of things I want, but haven’t really lived the last couple weeks:

• She can laugh at the days to come,
• She is content,
• She abides,
• She rests.

Then she writes something I can totally relate to:

I have always had this underlying fear of the other shoe dropping. Sometimes it feels like life is just too good. P. 151

My personal testimony is one of being protected from. Because I came to know and love Christ at a young age, God protected me from many things. I didn’t rebel in high school. College was a pretty straight line. My career started with a heart for being used by Him. He lead me to a man who loves me and challenges me. Life hasn’t been easy or sin free. But I have been protected from much because my heart has been toward Him. Yet there is always that corner of my mind wondering what if? What next? 

Do I really believe in the goodness of God? It’s a question that is important to wrestle with. When I had my first miscarriage, it absolutely rocked my world. I can remember being curled up in pain and wondering where God was. Why had He allowed the pain and death?

I found I had to wrestle with everything I’d ever said about God. Did I truly believe what the Bible said? Did I really believe He was my Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Jireh, the El Roi?

It was a time of sifting and coming to the core acknowledgment that in a broken world God allows pain. It was never His original plan because He is good. But when sin entered the world, pain, despair, and all the other ugly things came with it. Now the promise is that God in His goodness can turn the pain and evil and ugly into something good. 

Freedom also means we get to choose whether we are going to join God in His work in the world. I love that. I think Henry Blackaby in Experiencing God puts it this way: Look for where God is moving and join Him in that work.

Here are a few more things that the free woman is:

• She is content and rejects comparison, knowing she’s free to walk as God made her. P. 156
• She is not paralyzed by decisions, because she’s indwelled with the Spirit o peace. P. 157
• She is not frantic, because God has numbered her days and guided her footsteps. P. 158
• She is filled with the Holy Spirit, so she’s able to love as He loves. P. 159
• She is steadfast in her call, knowing her great weakness, tied only to God. P. 160
• She is unbound from final fear. P. 161

Here are a few questions for you as we close this week:

• How is God moving around you?
• Where is He breaking your heart as His heart is broken?
• Is He asking you to do something?
• Stop doing something?
• Join Him in a new work?