You Are Free: Be Who You Already Are

by Rebekah Lyons

Bind yourself to Christ and you are free from everything else that binds.

Love always asks you to give up some freedoms to get the greatest freedoms of all: Security. Safety. Intimacy.

Freedom is not about doing whatever we want most—but the opportunity to do w...

We weren’t made to keep up. We were made to be free. To be who we already are.

We cannot prioritize our doing before being, our assignment before healing, our service before freedom.

Meaning follows surrender.

We often insist our setting must change before we can live fully, but perhaps it won’t change until we live fully.

When we thirst for what Jesus offers, he shows us what he wants to set free.

I’d known I wanted him to revive his church, but I now realized revival began in individual hearts. I asked him to revive me.

What if disciple-making is not just talking about God, but inviting others to talk to God, to confess, repent, and then, with boldness, to petition him? What if disciple-making is about giving people the freedom to ask, no matter how big or impossible the request?

As we follow Christ and confess the truth that he is our home, he makes his home in us. He leads us into our true home, a place of union with him. What a promise.

our true home is wherever God leads, and true freedom is only found there.

God sometimes calls us to wait as he refines us, as he shows himself to be our redeemer, rescuer, and healer. We must confess that his timing is best, and trust and declare that the waiting will bring us into a place of readiness.

Here, in the waiting, God gently responds: I am working on your behalf even now. In the tension I hold you. In the waiting, I walk with you. In the not-yet, I carry you. Rest here, in green pastures, by streams of living water. In this place of utter safety and comfort. Let me shelter you with the wing of my mighty hand. Let me flood you with complete safety. I see you and I will cover you. I will hold you fast.

God has something in store for you and only you. Waiting is a critical part of your anointing. It prepares you, strengthens you, equips and trains you to step up when the moment comes.

Sometimes it takes a stripping away of what we know in order for us to be willing to stop and learn.

Stop performing for love.

God cares more about our presence than our performance.

Jesus wept from empathy, from disappointment, from pain. He mourned, and when he was finished mourning, he surrendered to the work of God—work that brought great freedom to all of us.

Deep grief can take us to new depths of brokenness and surrender. In the depths of grief we realize mourning brings the comfort of God, and above all, God is waiting to rescue us in our darkest hour.

There is a God sized hole in all of us, waiting to be filled.”10 But here’s the truth I’ve found: we only find that wholeness, that unity, when we allow ourselves to mourn the death of our worldly expectations.

It is hard to heal what has been hidden, and sometimes God calls us to sit in the emotional pain for weeks, months, or even years before the fullness of his healing comes.

Heart examinations are powerful.

Joy is not the absence of darkness. Joy is confidence that the darkness will lift.

Courage is meant to en-courage others.