When I was a kid we liked tongue-twisters, one of
which is “Betty bought a bit of butter, and the bit of butter was bitter so
Betty bought another bit of butter to make the bitter butter better”.
Recently God has been speaking to me about slavery and bondage. Isa
52:11 (NLT) says “Go now, leave your bonds and slavery. Put Babylon behind
you, with everything it represents, for it is unclean to you. You are the
LORD's holy people. Purify yourselves, you who carry home the vessels of the
LORD.” As I read this, I felt
God speak and say to me I need to leave my bonds and my slavery behind. I am
not a slave in terms of the how the Israelites were in the Old Testament. But I
still have things which bind me, we all do such as: fear of rejection,
mistrust, fear of loneliness, unforgiveness, shattered dreams, fear of what
other think of us, brokenness from our past etc. In Exodus we see that although
the Israelites were set free from Egypt, their thinking was towards Egypt and
still thinking like a slave.
Romans 8:14-15 “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of
God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but
you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by who we cry, "Abba!
Father!" Here we see Paul contrasting the slave to the son. The
slave reacts out of a place of fear and does things because he has to; while a
son is free and responds out of a place of love and wants to do the Father’s
will. The slave is worried about lack, and may mistrust the master; a son does
not worry about lack and trusts his father’s heart. Do you think like a slave
or like a son?
In Exodus 15:23-27 the
Israelites found bitter water; God shows Moses a wooden stick to use to make
the bitter water sweet. In this passage God is revealed as the Healer. He is
also the one that can take our bitterness (difficult upbringing, fear of
rejection, our loneliness etc.) and make it sweet through the wood of the
cross. So let’s bring Him our hurts, pain and all that causes us to be bitter
and allow Him to transform us to make our hearts sweet again. And sometimes we
need a person (like Moses) to help us in the process of healing.
“Holy Spirit, speak to us; remind us that we are sons. Transform our
thinking, so that we will not be bound in slavery but live freely as sons.”
Listen to this song
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My prophetic painting: From chains to sweet freedom |
May God bless you in the knowledge that you are a
son
May He keep you from bitterness
May He make His face shine upon you in the
transformation
And give you peace as He makes your bitter water
better
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