Are you a believer in Jesus?

You know He’s your Lord, you’ve been in church all your life, but you feel trapped?

You wrestle with constant feelings of not being enough, not being pretty enough, strong enough, organized enough, smart enough, never enough?

You feel obligation, to people, places and things that you don’t even really like or enjoy- people that snub you, are rude and arrogant, and you occupy time with things that are not bringing life and light and the love of Jesus to you?

You feel there are unspoken expectations, unspoken rules that must be followed, guidelines that must be met, that you never even got the memo about anyway… it always seems you don’t measure up, you don’t fit in with the others, no matter how hard you try?

If you public school your kids, you’re not quite spiritually mature enough to see that the devil is in the public schools, and why would you knowingly dangle your kids over a cliff?

If you homeschool your kids, you’re going to make them socially awkward and they will not know how to relate to the world around them, how to relate to their “such a time as this…”?

You have an appearance to keep up, a standard to meet…

God forbid, if they only knew the real you…

I was bound like this.

Bound to the rules that I believe come from the religion in our southern roots, the religious doctrines of man.

Be at church every sunday, sunday school, choir practice, sunday night, wednesday night… don’t miss a thing.

Put on your pearls, your dressy black and high heels, make sure that make-up is just right. If you’re having a knock-down drag out fight all week, all night, all the way up to the church doors, you shake it off, put a smile on your face, and get inside and be pretty.

Whether you feel good or not, we can’t let these people know we are broken.

Because if they knew, we may not belong, we may not be welcome to rub elbows anymore, we may not fit the requirements that make us a part of their club, their group, their holy circle…

I’m sorry, but where in the bible are these things?

I missed the verse of ‘thou shalt wear your sunday best, with no hats or holes in your pants…’

And heaven help us if our kids mess up.

Yikes.

You better get them under control before they mess up your reputation with your church clique, before they rub off on other kids and make you look bad… you heathen, you.

Nevermind the fact that if our kids are having a hard time, they need our love and attention so much more during those times without all the added pressure.

We are too busy keeping up appearances, neglecting the true work that needs to be done which is loving our kids back to Jesus.

I myself have heard mothers say about other children when they act up at church, “well, I guess we see what their home is like…”

Self-righteousness gone to seed.

If we, the church, do not start being bold, speaking the bold truth of the word of God that BREAKS these chains, the church will stay bound.

I guarantee you that some of the most bound, un-free people in the world are sitting on the front pew of the sanctuary in church every single sunday, every single service, and we don’t even see it, because they look okay.

They follow the rules and smile and think they are supposed to be okay, because they’d rather die than walk in looking unable to perform the part that is played by the others, week to week.

I’m so sure, because I was one of them.

We must be willing to present the power of God that can break this stuff off of people, it’s only the surrender of our everything to the Holy Spirit.

We must not care more about what the elders will say about our message of freedom, of grace, than about the freedom that is here to set them free.

Freedom breaks the traps.

Freedom breaks the chains.

Jesus Christ the Nazarene is the only true freedom.

We must give them Jesus.