Breaking Chains

God intends five benefits to be the daily experience of every child of God. He wants you to live and breathe each of these blessings:

     -1. To know God and believe Him

     -2. To glorify God

     -3. To find satisfaction in God

     -4. To experience God's peace

     -5. To enjoy God's presence

However, there are five major obstacles that block our access to the benefits God wants for us:

     -1. Unbelief, which hinders knowing God

     -2. Pride, which prevents us from glorifying God

     -3. Idolatry, which keeps us from being satisfied with God

     -4. Prayerlessness, which blocks our experience of God's peace

     -Legalism, which stops our enjoyment of God's presence

-Beth Moore, Breaking Free

^1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; ^2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; ^3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. ^4 They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 
-Isaiah 61:1-4 ESV

 

Only Christ can set us free from bondage of sin. Only through Christ we can experience the blessings God wants us to as His children. What obstacles are blocking your access to these blessings? What is keeping you from truly knowing God?

The Lord has continually been showing me how much my past has affected my present relationship with Him and others around me. Here is small picture of what I have experienced and how the Lord has started breaking chains to allow me to experience His freedom. 

I know this sounds kind of strange but death has been a major part of my life, especially before coming to the Lord. I have been to about 15 funerals between the age of 7 and now. Most of these funerals have been for people that had big influence in my life and had shown me love and guidance in great amounts. Growing up, I lived in a home where God was not mentioned ever and my family never really went to any type of church service. I have one younger sister but my relationship with her came with constant verbal abuse. I was told almost everyday that I was worthless, ugly and that no one would ever really love me. On top of this, rumors were spread about me at school by my own sister. My parents and I have never really had a close relationship either. There has never been doubt in my mind that they love me greatly, but they definitely have more distant ways of showing it. Because of these relationships with my family, I became very independent and learned to strive for others’ approval of myself. I constantly sought after perfection because I felt I had to be the perfect older sister in my family and not cause my parents any burden. I felt successful in this perfection when others approved of me. The search of approval continued and it was not until the summer before my sophomore year of high school that I first went to church with a friend. After attending a few times, I didn’t know much about who God was but I felt Him pursuing my heart. I kept going to church and also got involved in the youth group that allowed me to attend a youth conference in the middle of my sophomore year. It was at this conference that I decided to accept Christ into my life as another person to love me at a distance. For the next year and a half I grew in knowledge of who God was but I didn’t really know God. My senior year of high school started out with a strong passion to have a deeper, relationship with God instead of just knowing about Him. But, this desire became less important when I started dating a guy who I eventually put above God and everything else. Throughout this dating relationship I struggled with sexual impurity in order to feel more loved. When the relationship ended, I found myself in the start of a deep depression and disappointment. The lies from my childhood constantly rang in my head and I started struggling with disordered eating to try to fix how unwanted I felt. I went into my first year of college at UW-LaCrosse feeling completely empty and alone but I never showed it. I ended up transferring to UWSP to be back home after one semester in hopes of finding joyful life again. Not being able to experience healing and happiness using my own strength, I turned to heavy drinking trying to forget my depression and struggles. All these things I kept putting faith into to allow me to feel alive realistically pulled me further and further away from that feeling. After a summer of spiraling deeper in depression, disordered eating, and drinking, I found myself at rock bottom realizing that all these things actually took away life. I went into my sophomore year of college with God showing me His hand in a new way. God blessed me with better understanding and I was able to believe how much God loves me and that His plan is better for my life than being dead through my own ways. God allowed me to have a deeper understanding that my own nature is full of sin causing my brokenness and creating my life to be dead and unfulfilling. God allowed me to have more belief that Jesus’s statement in John 14:6 that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, is true and that Jesus died on the cross to take away the punishment of my sin for me. Through accepting that God loved me much more than I could fathom and that Jesus died on the cross to give me life, I started to become filled with the joy and peace that only comes from the Lord. 

Although the Lord continually blesses me with joy and peace, there is still a daily struggle in my life to break free from sin--past, present, and future. I am seeking the Lord will everything I have to break free of the things that prevent me from truly knowing and glorifying the God that loves me so much. I challenge you to allow the Lord to reveal in your own heart what prevents you from experiencing Him in such a deep, intimate way.

 This truly comes down to trust. Do you trust the perfect Abba Father who created the universe with your life?

I ask myself this everyday. I am challenging myself to grow in vulnerability and trust the Lord to break me of one of my own biggest obstacles--pride. Pride prevents me from truly experiencing deep relationships with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I fear showing others my flaws and the junk in my life because I still want to put up the front of perfection that I learned to do so well growing up. Pride prevents me from truly hating my sin and desiring to be broken from it. Pride prevents me from truly experiencing the Spirit in every moment and every situation. The Lord is just starting to break me and reveal to me all the obstacles in my life that are holding me back from Him. As the Lord continues to reveal these to me and as I process, I will be continually writing in this blog to pour out all my pain and junk. I desire to be real with each of you. I desire to trust the Lord to break this front of perfection that has been built up the past 22 years. Feel free to join this adventure with me by reading what the Lord is teaching me. 

He alone can rescue and save. He alone can lead us out of death. Do you truly believe that?