God, I just want to live.

Right now, I feel like I am living in one of the best times of my life. Or what could be the best time of my life. I’m living out a dream, a God-given one, in another country, learning to speak another language and interacting with people I love.

I live with a native family. I love them to pieces and they love me back in more pieces.

I get to teach English to two delightful Catholic nuns 3 times a week at an HIV orphanage.

I have a pet monkey.

I get to walk beside new believers and see their faces light up at learning the simple, yet amazing truths of God’s Word.

I get to tell the story of Jesus to those who don’t know him.

I get to watch the passion of native evangelists as they seek to bring their own people back to their Creator.

I get to watch the potential of young children being unlocked and blossoming.

There is so much joy in every day.

Opportunities abound. It seems like no door is left unopened. Except one. So many others are open that I find it difficult to know which door  to walk through.

The one door I want to walk through the most leads to deeper freedom.

Healing.

Belief.

Hope.

Freedom from a tangled, messed up belief system that is self-focused, confused, forgetful and ungrateful, fearful, carrying guilt and expectations and “shoulds.”

Not the kind of belief system that a follower of Jesus should have.

Sometimes I wonder if in this journey of seeking and searching for a deeper communion with my Father, if God might want me to stay in  this bondage so that I continue to thirst so badly for Him, because I know I didn’t used to be like this.

And yet, God never wants us in bondage. It is for freedom that He has set us free.

It is His passionate desire that we can experience that freedom.

Freedom from doubt.

Freedom from past mistakes and regrets.

Freedom from double- mindedness.

Freedom from anything that strangles or smothers or suffocates that connection with the God Himself who created the world.

Just think- the God of the universe wants you and I to be free, and free, not just for the sake of freedom, but that we would be trees of righteousness that He might be glorified. (Isaiah 61:3)

God, I just want to live.