Fear or Faith?

I have been thinking about what I shared yesterday and I was remembering these awesome women I met at the Women's Prison in CT.  Twice a month for six years I lead a Bible study in the Drug and Alcohol Rehab building.  The women in my group changed through the years and unfortunately some came back, but I learned so much from them.  

In keeping with the "Be Awake and Live Your Life" theme from yesterday, I have been remembering how they fought to be free from who they were told they were by family, society, men and themselves.  How in the midst of being in physical prison, so many struggled more with the emotional, spiritual and mental prison they were in.  They knew they were guilty and deserved to be there.

I saw so much talent in those ladies.  You would not believe the poetry, drawings and paintings, murals on the walls, knitting and crocheting and man, could they cook! (on their radiators from things they had from the commissary). 

Their tears and heartbreak over their children and what they lost, but the hope they found in a relationship with their God!

We know that Hebrews 11  is called the faith chapter, because it tells the stories of ordinary walking out the extraordinary "by faith." I was struck by vs 15 tucked away in the middle of all 22 "by faiths" and 1 "through faith."

 vs. 15: "If they had been thinking about the country they had left, they would have had opportunity   to return." 

How many times have we started out for that place that God called us to and not reach it because we decide that the road is too hard?  We miss what is familiar?  We question if we really heard God and we turn around and return to where we were before He touched us?

I have learned that if someone has another option, even an unhealthy one, they will take it if they think that where they are is too hard or they don't see it as worth the sacrifice.  

 In vs.16 it says: " Instead they were longing for a better country ~ a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has a prepared a city for them."

We need to have an eternal focus with things we walk through on earth.  In face of old habits, people who refuse to let us change and keep us in the old boxes, circumstances and the curve balls we are thrown.

We each have a choice to walk out our faith story like in Hebrews or we can allow the fear, that I'm sure each one of them felt, to imprison us.  

I don't know where my prison ladies are right now, but my prayer for them is the same for me and for you: that we walk out and be all that God had in His heart when He created each of us.  

Live Your Life Today!!!

Thank you for allowing me to share mine with you and taking this step in my faith story.  I am glad to have you on the journey.  Someone make sure to pack the chocolate!!!  ;) 

Have a fab day!

All my love ~ Jodi  xoxo