Living Free Not in Appearances

Published by Deborah Negron M.A.

April, 2018

There was a time in my life when I lived as if though I was trapped…
My own choices, and my ill path
Had led me to a point of great regret.
The worst in you can be in Life…
Is to live beneath God’s Will and purpose for your life. To live below his standards for you is awful. I was there.
The tried desperately to fulfill God’s plan in your own strength. I understood that I had a calling.
But I chose to reach it in my own way.
The outcomes or not favorable.
Many times of disillusion and of trying to appear as of Bill all was well.
The sin of omission is a horrible thing.
When you live consistently under duress,
It has physical and psychological effects on your body. you feel weighed down and consistently pressured.

I thank God for and his Mercy to look Beyond all of my shortcomings, my wanderings, and my trying desperately to serve him on my own terms. See the Bible tells us to not be unequally yoked together with those that are not his.
You can stand in a garage, paint yourself as a bright red car, make every possible sound that you can imagine a car would make. but regardless of how hard you try you will not be a car.

Today I live in transparency. It used to be a scary word to me. But falling in humiliation and in regret and finally in Repentance…
I can tell you it is a beautiful thing.

God knows we’ve messed up. God knows that we are incapable of living right our own.
This is why he surrendered himself in our place. And this is why the babe in the manger, the cross on a hill, and the empty tomb means so much to me. Jesus left the state of perfection, of peace and beauty. He came to a place of Chaos and pain and loss and Shane.
He did it for you and he did it for me.

So when I look up in the mirror now. I don’t see regret anymore. I see the person God is shaping and molding and remaking into the image of his son.

Ay a pensar free so that I can lead others to the freedom that Christ offers. No, I’m still not perfect. Yes, I am still flawed. But it’s okay I don’t live under a false weight of appearances.
Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…

this is real to me. I pray you have the opportunity to come clean. To know the Love of an unfailing God. To have the contentment of a life of liberty in Jesus. My sins, though many, he has taken from me. And he affords me the very presence of His Holy Spirit daily.