Stripping Away My Independence

So a little while ago I did a {post} about losing my physical ties to my independence but there is still a need for me to leave my independence abandoned on the side of the highway of life.

This is an exert out of a blog from over two years ago:

“I had never realized how much fear there actually was in my heart. I figured since I was confident to travel alone to places most people wouldn’t dare go to that there was no fear remaining in me. Man, was I wrong.

My fear was not of going somewhere, dying or being alone. On the contrary my fear was of letting go of my independence and allowing myself to need someone else. Someone to depend on and trust in. I could say sure I trust God but have I fully relinquished all of me to Him? Have I said to God, “Here You can have it ALL. Even my right to do it all alone.” and then actually lived out the words I spoke?”

I wrote this at one of the most confusing times in my life, I had fallen in love with Ian, we were in a weird place and all I wanted to do was run.  Doing it alone seemed so much simpler at the time.  Countless girls dream of the day when they get to join their life with a man, I dreaded the very thought of it.  Giving up my freedoms for another human being was not something I wanted to do but at the same time I was at a point where I was so in love with Ian that I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

This is when God began talking to me about my independence and how I needed to let go of the dreams I had created for myself and hold fast to His dreams for my life.  I thought marrying Ian meant I had done it; I had mastered my independence and now I must know how to need someone else, which even thinking about now makes me chuckle.  Need probably is not the best word to use, its more about trusting that other person with your whole heart.  I have nearly been married for two years and I am still learning how to fully relinquish my independent streak, how to dream the dreams God has for my life.

Saying yes to God and surrendering your life to Christ means you die.  So if I am dead to sin but alive in Christ (Romans 6:11) then the sin of independence should have no hold on me, and the hold it does have I have given it.  I have heard multiple teachings on baptism and how it is a symbol of us dying and being buried with Him and raised to live in Christ (Romans 6). {watch one of my favorite teachings here}  The trick is to remember Colossians 3:9-10 which says, “Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.”(NLT)  I can hear God saying, “Lauren, you have to choose to strip off the old and put one the new.”  This means I have to choose to strip off my independence and put on my trust in Christ and my husband for that matter.  To believe they have what is best for me in their heart.

The process of being transformed in the likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18) although glorious, at times feels a bit painful.  To have to remind oneself constantly that the old man is dead and that sin has no place is not the easiest thing to do.  That means every time fear, worry, independence, pride, jealousy, frustration and so on comes in I have to tell myself that this does not line up with my new nature in Christ.  That I am filled with the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Heres to stripping off the old and putting on the new!