Dear Ones,
Hope your day is lived in freedom. Al will soon be going to men’s group, and I plan to make bake bread; Ann may come, and later we have Bible Study. No snow yet but we hear it is coming on Sunday.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
 When we know the Lord, our life is changed from one of imprisoned to self to a life of freedom in the Lord. Of course, our culture tells us freedom is doing whatever we want and whenever we please. But we know that it is not so. We read in Romans 6, “You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer ourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourself to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in His freedom”

  Eugene Peterson shares how when Paul writes about freedom, he doesn’t give us a formula; instead, he gives his own story for us to think on. Paul tells of his former life when he persecuted Christians in his zealousness but then how God revealed Himself and set him apart before his birth for His purposes. Instead of Paul depending on his knowledge and all he has done, he came to experience God blessing him, saving him, and loving him. God was at the center and Paul’s part was to believe and obey. The same is true for us because we can’t be free by earning but by trusting the Lord and obeying Him. We simply respond as God touches our lives. And we all live it out differently, because of God’s grace in our individual lives. Paul was certainly much different than Peter, but each was used in a special way. Aren’t we glad we don’t all have to be a carbon copy of someone else, but that God sets us free to be who He made us to be. He uses even our past, so nothing is wasted as we are transformed to be more like Him.

We each have a work to do in life that is unique, that expresses God’s love. He had a plan for us before we were born. Even those parts of our lives that we regret or feel inferior, He can transform and use as an expression of His power and glory. Let us not resist His voice to our hearts that calls us to be free in Him and free to be the person He created us to be.

Challenge for today: Ask the Lord to work in you and change you to be what He has all the while planned, and then live daily for His glory.
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy