Emma Miles Writes:

Jesus is passionate about our freedom. Our whole life’s journey, from our first encounter with Jesus is one of continual transformation and our job is to surrender, to trust Him with our lives, through active obedience.

Trusting God is not always that simple though, is it? Our transformation, more often than not, is worked out through the struggles and the battles we find ourselves in and it is often our internal struggles that need confronting before we can produce any external change.

Every kind of brokenness can be placed in Jesus hands, and it becomes something different when we do that. To be broken is to be opened up to the grace of God.

Grace becomes more to us than just a word, it becomes this experience

Our experiences with God’s grace bring us out into this open space where we are able to confront the lies that are enslaving us.

I once read in a Bradley Jersak book that ‘All theology is grown in the soil of experience between you and God and anything other than that is probably nonsense.

Knowing about God is just not enough. On an intellectual level we can learn about Him and quote Bible references till they are coming out of our ears…

But only our personal experience of God, in alignment with scripture, will reveal to us His true nature. Over and over again throughout scripture, lives are changed through encounters with the living God. Encounters with God in the flesh, relating to the personhood of God, that’s what transforms our lives.

As Simeon lifts up the baby Jesus in his arms in the temple he says ‘For my eyes have seen your salvation’ This fleshly and emotional effect on Simeon, reminds us that salvation is more than just a concept or an idea, it is something to be experienced. Something that is real, it’s something that can be held, it’s something that can be seen.

Where are we seeing the salvation of the Lord in our lives?

Where is He wanting to bring freedom.

Testimonies of salvation are so good but salvation is not a static thing. It’s not just a onetime thing. We are saved and we are being saved, we are not only transformed but we are being transformed. There is movement. Even in the darkest valley there is movement. We don’t lay in the valley or sit in the valley, We walk with Jesus through it. We learn, we change.

A few months ago, I continually heard the words from Isaiah 30.21

21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Have you ever tried to shut off that voice because it just didn’t fit with your agenda?

We can easily deceive ourselves and try to manipulate the outcomes to what we want, but God predestined us to be conformed into the very image of Christ and if that thing He is asking you to let go of is keeping you enslaved, rather than producing transformation, then it’s not the way He is asking you to walk.

Our salvation walk with God is not linear, it’s not formulaic… We discover there is room for grace and that God is patient. It has been suggested that the Hebrew word for salvation means to ‘bring into a wide-open space’ it’s the opposite of trying to live in a restricted, tight, cramped space. It’s a place of Hope and Freedom, a place where we can live and breathe. The direction of His voice is the way of salvation. It’s the invitation into a wide-open space.

Around about the time I went to New Wine, and I encountered God. I heard very clearly a fresh call to deeper surrender and obedience. That voice was saying to me that left and right were no longer viable options for me. That today was the day of salvation. This was an invitation to ‘follow’ His voice into a wide-open space…so that I could breathe and live again. The invitation was in to freedom.

Are there any situations in your life where left and right no longer viable options?

Where is God asking you to follow His voice to?

Emma Miles Community Development Leader