The Recording For Today’s Session:
- Day Three -
Be Redeemed
For thus saith the Lord, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money. (Isaiah 52:3, KJV)
Compliance may seem like the answer.
Going with the grain may seem like the key.
Unfortunately, turning a blind eye to the gray areas
is the surest path to forfeiting your liberty.
No more hiding in comfort. No more remaining silent.
No more ignoring that still, small voice
that the world is trying to keep quiet.
Your freedom is priceless. Your rights are inalienable.
It will always cost you something
to accept the easiest option available.
Livi Anderson, Be Redeemed
Freedom. It seems like such a common concept and in many cases a right. However, we are in a generation where “freedom” is so easily defined and re-defined. Not in the literal sense. The definition of freedom has not changed. The sweeping changes to the definition of freedom have happened in real-time in our everyday lives. The freedom that we are so hungry for is often a step outside of comfort and a word spoken just beyond our silence.
This is the challenge that you are facing right now. Do you speak up in the face of injustice? Or do you let it go? After all, it's no big deal. Right? This logic is so ingrained within you that you don't realize that the things you know are injustices are wrong. Wrong for you, wrong for your family, and wrong for your life.
Day after day, one decision after another, and one painful release at a time, we decide to give up on anything that rocks the proverbial boat. Anything that is deemed inappropriate and that happens to float outside of what is widely accepted as “right” is flat-out rejected.
Terms such as “crazy” and “crisis” are used to help fit you inside of society’s parameters of normal and acceptable behavior. I encountered this form of limited thinking as soon as I realized the Lord was calling me to actually build a ministry. Not knowing what the inner structure of a ministry looked like, I knew this was something that was going to be challenging and had to be created now.
In the fall of 2012, coming to grips with the failure of everything I built with my own hands, I landed in a faith-based mission home. It was there that I rededicated my life to Christ. It was there that the niggling idea to launch my online ministry, A Queen’s Worth, was born. Resurrected is probably a more appropriate term. I began to see women of every race and age in the same socioeconomic situation I found myself: homeless.
Women with careers, husbands, and families. All of us were at the bottom and relying on the facilities, staff, and beliefs of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission to help heal the brokenness many didn’t know they had. It was there that my heart began to break for the very things that broke God’s heart. I began to see generations of women who were lost and needed to be set free.
It was in this place of lack and extreme poverty, that God began to show me the way to be free. It wasn’t about money, cars, marriage, and having a family. Many of these women had an abundance of those things, but life still happened. Jobs were lost. Marriages fell apart. Medical issues began to destabilize the lives they once knew and all of us landed in the same place with varying stories and a desperate need for grace.
It was there that I found redemption wasn’t in a new job, a new house, nor was it to be found in a new marriage. These things are all good and have their purpose but, true redemption is in forgiving yourself for becoming your worst enemy. It’s in releasing the need to “be” everything and attending to everyone else’s needs. The redemption that you so desperately need is found at the feet of the King of Kings.
It is here that you are forced to come to terms with the poor decisions you've made and the costs you’ve paid for selling yourself into a life that looks and possibly feels distinctly like slavery. You’re enslaved to your fears, your ego, your decisions, the concessions, circumstances, all of those years, and those times that you just “needed” to have things go your way.
It is in this passage of scripture that God is giving you a second chance to change and to grow. To become more than the mistakes you’ve made. Oftentimes, you may hear people say to make the best of a bowl of lemons by making lemonade. My prayer is that you take those lemons to God and make room for the freedom to be authentically you.
No more “dealing” with the brokenness, the mistakes, the sin, and the oppressive weight of silencing the woman within. I challenge you to do what I decided to do and dare to grow, build, and flow into the woman God intended when He created you. It is this belief that allowed me to grow from a homeless single mother in a mission home to being a published author, international life coach, and founder of a ministry with over 200,000 followers all over the world.
You must decide now to change your life and be free. It’s never too late to be redeemed.
You Shall Be Redeemed Without Money.
- Livi Anderson
What would you do right now if you knew that there were more than enough resources to get things done? What would you change? Why?