breaking free

have you ever had a moment when you know the Lord has ordained your steps to a particular place, to do a particular thing? i had a moment like that last night. it was 5:00, dinner was in the crock pot (mexican chicken...so yummy, so easy, and fairly healthy), i had been partially successful at taking down christmas decorations, and i had just sat down to check email as i waited on hubs to get home from work. all of a sudden, something i read online reminded me of a bible study starting at my church for the winter semester and i felt compelled to dig the email out of my deleted emails to find out when this bible study started...january 6 . wait, what was today's date? ....oh, it was the 6th and i noticed that you had to register for the class. having worked on church staff for sometime, i understand the reason for registration deadlines and i was hesitant to just show up. i sent a text to my friend who is leading the study...thinking it was a long shot that she would even see the text because i was sure she was hurridly trying to make it from work to church to prep for the study. i emailed our women's minister but knew the chances of her seeing the email before 6:45 were slim. so, i sent hubs a message and asked if he would mind if i attended the bible study at church that night and he encouraged me to go. we actually went back and forth for a while about me going because all of a sudden i had cold feet. what if the study was already full? what if i didn't know a soul in that room? i had almost talked myself out of going but something compelled me to take the chance...to get ready and just go.

can i be honest for just a moment? i knew, deep down inside, that the Lord had something big to do in my life through this study and last night before i took the plunge and walked into that bible study room that knowledge scared me. have you ever experienced that? it's such a weird thing to at one moment have such a deep longing and desire for the Lord to deal with you and take you deeper and then the other moment you know that times like that aren't necessarily easy or pain-free. sometimes the deeper the journey, the more painful it can be to get there.

but, i did it. i took the plunge and just decided to go for it. even though i hadn't registered, it wasn't a problem. i didn't know any one at all in the room but i've been talking about wanting to make new friends at church, right ;). most of all, as i sat in that room and listened to beth moore talk on the video, it felt as though we were the only two people in the room. i felt like she had been listening to the most recent conversations i've had with hubs because as i took notes last night, i saw myself all over the page. the bible study i'm doing is breaking free and the promise of truly understanding and living in the freedom Christ has for me in this journey called life overshadows all that will have to take place in my heart and in my life to make that a reality. Christ came that we may have life and have it to the full....and i'm excited to see where He's going to take me over the next 10 weeks.