My 16-year-old daughter was able to participate in a six-week program in Hungary called “A Vision For Life.” It’s basically Bible college condensed into six weeks for high schoolers. It was a mix of Bible classes, outreaches, dorms and general “parent-free living”. She had some incredible opportunities to share her story of hope in Jesus. My heart smiled when I saw photos of her talking to a group of hundreds on the streets of Vienna, hosting Vacation Bible School for kids, making new friends, and I knew she would come back changed. I’ve been on multiple mission trips in my life, and the effort is always to go touch other people’s lives, but in the process, it completely changes who we are and what we believe. The same happened for my daughter, and I was so ready for her to come home; we really missed having her around. There was one thing I had forgotten when it comes to mission trips, especially as a teenager…the culture shock.

I remember the first time I went on a mission trip was to Juarez, Mexico. I had never seen such poverty, and when I returned home, it was Christmas time. Talk about culture shock, I was angry at every bit of American excess I saw around me. I had just seen firsthand people who literally didn’t have anything, and I didn’t understand how people didn’t feel guilty for having all they had. The culture shock my daughter faced was different. They didn’t really visit poverty stricken areas, but she had done a lot of really important things for the kingdom of God and coming home just felt, well…ordinary.

It’s no fun coming home to parents and rules and chores, after you just spent two months with a group of awesome new friends who were on fire for Jesus and couldn’t wait to tell everyone they met about Jesus. Now she was back home, picking up her school schedule, locker combination and getting ready to start her junior year of high school. Along with the regular jet lag that comes with international travel, there was a bit of an aimless feeling of, “What am I supposed to do now?” I could totally understand where she was coming from, and my mama heart started asking God how I could help her navigate this moment of uncertainty. I thought about Isaiah 43:18-19 that paraphrased says, “Don’t look back on the old times as if they were the best of times, I have more ahead for you!”

God has promised that He is always doing something new in us, and so, if we keep our head stuck in the past, we may miss the new that is coming.

It would be pretty mean of God to give us all just one highlight reel to keep looking back at our entire lives. Thankfully, that’s not what He does!

What a great encouragement to us! It’s ok to reminisce about the good old days, but we can’t dwell there as if that’s as good as it’s ever going to get. I received a tea towel from the famed Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas, that reads, “The good old days are still to come!” I love the thought that in the future we could be looking back on these days right now saying, “Oh man, that was an awesome time!” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get so stuck in the past triumphs that I leave no space for new victories!

Let’s hold on to this Scripture and to the knowledge that God is doing a new thing today!

God our Father has given us an awesome, divine, eternal and precious gift that will take us into an adventurous, exploring and very secured joyful ride, filled with wonder and with all the provisions we will ever need. That gift is Jesus Christ who is filled with unlimited promises that are one-hundred percent true and real. He is also filled with unlimited, radical and super powerful grace to help us with all our needs in our time of need, regardless of the severity and gravity of our need.

One of the great needs of the church today is that many Christians have become spiritually frustrated and extremely ineffective because of where they look for answers for their needs. They continually look to others rather than to God our Father through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit for the answers they desperately need. The reality is that they treat God as a paramedic, asking for His help only when they have a need.

It has become evident that a great number of Christians are shallow because they are confused about what they believe. This causes Biblical disunity. This also leads to a long list of consequences that affect them very negatively. Consequently, there are more prisoners in our churches in America than in all the prisons and jails put together in the whole world. We have become rebels and captives to our own sin, and we refuse to see the exit door, who is Jesus Christ. He will empower us through the Spirit, to run out the door to the safe and secure everlasting arms of our good Father, inside His fence!

We as a church in America, hence society at large, are in a desperate and critical, spiritual CRISIS! What are we to do?! We must look to the gift God has given: Jesus Christ. He offers to all Christians, in His unlimited package called the Gospel, a bullet proof plan of protection with an impenetrable fence of love.

There are the five Biblical, practical and essential components of God our Father’s fence of love for us to use as our application for life:
1. The fence is the Word of God. The fence is our righteousness. This fence is wide and spacious because God our Father gives us a lot of freedom and space in which to move and be happy and free in Christ. This fence is not restrictive, but it protects us (Deuteronomy 32:46-47; Hebrews 4:12-13).
2. The Body of Christ. Your community of believers are locking arms tight and standing tall/high, as our protector inside and around the entire fence. We serve as vigilantes, looking out for and defending our own with our very lives. Jesus died and bled to establish His church (Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 3:10, 5:25; Colossians 1:24).
3. The Holy Spirit our Helper and Counselor illuminates the fence with the brightness of Christ Jesus and empowers us with resurrecting power, so none of us will miss or jump the fence. The Devil will try his hardest to get us to jump the fence of righteousness, but since he has been defeated, we have no excuse to jump the fence! (Luke 10:35-37, 11:13; Ephesians 1:13-14).
4. The cross right in the middle of the fence for us to cherish, value and tightly embrace, never letting it go (Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:6).
5. Then go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey ALL the Word because you are strong and equipped with the cross and with Christ! (Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 10:1-3).

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright” (Leviticus 26:13).

A remarkable young woman named Amy, who I met in Singapore, told me her story. Hers is a story of heartbreak and confusion, as she was drawn into a lesbian lifestyle and a series of painful relationships, including one with a man for seven years. She bravely and simply describes her journey.

But what struck me the most about her story is her courage and her humble and sincere way of explaining what it means to “come home” to the Father’s love. After her last painful break up, she said, “This was one of the toughest things I have had to do. I questioned God in my heart as I cried out. The pain was real.”

It can feel impossible to leave behind a lifestyle and mentality that has captured your heart and mind, and that has become a way of life.

This verse in Leviticus where God said, “You should not be slaves; I have broken the bonds of your yoke,” was a reminder. Nine times in the book of Leviticus the Lord reminded the people how He delivered them from Egypt. After 400 years in captivity, slavery had become a mindset, a learned, generational way of life.

Sin and deception can do that. They trap us into a mindset of slavery that not only shackles our lives but is passed down from generation to generation.

The young ones held in captivity in Egypt learned from their elders, “Never lift your head or make eye contact. Never be yourself or speak your mind. If you do, you will suffer consequences.” After Moses pleaded, “Let my people go,” over and over on the night called Passover, freedom came. In one night God delivered them from Egypt. But their mentality, their perception of life and the way they thought of themselves—that would take a lifetime. To realize they were elevated to being God’s chosen people, the sons and daughters of the Almighty – that’s a radical change of life and thinking.

Many of us live in a slave mentality.

A slave to habits and broken lives, slaves to past wounds, slaves to our flesh or the false peace the world offers. It takes time for your mind to start thinking like a free person. But first, you need to know two important truths: Know your identity and know the authority God has given you. You are the sons and daughters of the living God who uses His power to love and bless you. The enemy doesn’t even have to work hard to discourage and deceive if he can lie to you about who you really are. Then the devil wants you to doubt the authority God has given you. You need to remember —you are the living, breathing mobile carrier of the Holy Spirit of God. Your presence in the world breaks up spiritual darkness wherever you live and walk and proclaim Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

My friend Amy described her newfound freedom like this: “I hardly know best how to describe it. I felt God literally gave me His heart. There was this heart wrapping around mine. It is a heart filled with loving tenderness, forgiveness, and I could feel His pain for me. He knew of all my painful relationships. Then He spoke into my heart. Why have you put all your time and affection into one person after another, thinking they can heal or restore you?

It was at that moment that I knew no man or woman could ever heal me or restore me. It was this love, this forgiving heart, that deep conviction that I knew I had to surrender my emotions to Him, to take God’s heart and walk back into His arms. And that is what I did and have never been the same. ”

Amy describes her surrender and her freedom as “coming home.” “Coming out is never easy,” she says, “But coming home is worth it. Coming home is coming back to the Father’s heart, a heart that is filled with love, embracing you. A Father whose arms are wide open, waiting to receive you home. I know it is tough, and that many of you are struggling. You think you need the courage, or to be in the right setting in order to do things right. You don’t need to do that. Because God will put that courage in you already. He has. So let’s come home together. Let’s come home together.”

Amy struggled with a specific lifestyle, just as many of us are caught up in things that are destructive and enslaving, even as believers. That’s where God wants to remind us: You are free! You can come home! It has been said that salvation takes a moment, but sanctification takes a lifetime.

You can step into your true identity.

You are God’s precious son or daughter. Walk in the power and authority of your true identity. Learn what Amy discovered: The power of being free in the embrace of your heavenly Father.

The Jews asked Jesus how He dared to promise freedom and He answered, “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. A child of God abides forever, free. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). We are no longer slaves.