“Hi Elizabeth!”  I heard as my daughter and I were shopping in a local chain store. I stopped in my tracks. What? Who said that to my daughter? We just moved to the area and hardly knew anyone, so how could there already be someone who knew my daughter by name in a store around here? And then I looked up and saw her. It was the sweet tween girl from our neighborhood who had played with Elizabeth, just several days before. They had jump roped together outside, just down the street from our house. Her name was Samantha. She went by Sam. She was several years older than my daughter – definitely old enough to be “too cool” to give a 9-year-old the time of day. And yet, Sam had stopped riding her scooter that afternoon when she saw my daughter struggling to jump rope across the street, and she sweetly offered to teach her how to skip rope. She patiently stayed and played with Elizabeth for at least a half hour. And the whole time, I could not get over how kind and polite she was. She was...

“Eleutheria.”

That's the transliteration of the Greek word for “freedom”, used in the FINDINGbalance key verse Galatians 5:1, which says "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (ESV) In context, this verse is actually about whether we should be living under the Mosaic law and thereby be saved by it (impossible!), or whether we should be saved by Christ and see Him as the fulfillment of the law.

There are so many implications of the freedom talked about in this verse; the point of freedom is not just about what we are saved from. It is about what we are set free for.

We are set free to live for Christ; to live the life He calls each of us to.

Before discussing this freedom, I want to share an anecdotal thought. It seems to me that different people can be prone to having insecurities about specific parts of their bodies. For me, I can find myself struggling with my thighs. Some time ago while I was on mission in a h...