Walking in Freedom: Finding Our Relational Security in Christ
FROM THE DESK OF RAMA ZIEGENHALS
When I was a young girl, my family lived on a farm. I would often spend all day playing outside & as the second oldest of four, I followed my older brother everywhere. I wanted to be just like him, & we often got into competitions as I wanted to prove that I could do everything he could do.
My father had told me I could do anything I put my mind to & I believed him. Yet, as we got older, organized sports entered the mix. For the first time, I was told that I could no longer do everything my older brother did. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was a girl. I was crest fallen & confused. All I could hear was, “You’re good at everything the boys do, but we’re still not going to let you do it.” And so began my crusade. I needed to prove that I was not just as good, but better. And so now my young life began to be formed & shaped by proving & pushing & striving so that I would be seen & not excluded.
If you are familiar with the enneagram, you may already have picked up some early signs of an enneagram 3.
A 3 is the achiever, the person who is success oriented & good at making things happen. Their key motivations & desires are to be affirmed & seen as valuable. There are many beautiful attributes to the true & healthy 3, but at this time of my life, I was living out of my false self & putting on a mask that I could achieve everything on my own without help from anyone else.
So often, God works in our lives in ways that are counterintuitive & the narrative that I needed to & could do everything on my own was not the story He was writing for my life. A significant scene in Scripture for me is in John 20 where Jesus appears to His disciples as they huddle in the upper room behind “doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders,” & Jesus appears & says, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19).
With those words, in the midst of their fear, what if Jesus was not referring to the disciple’s circumstances, but to their relational security? What if in the chaos & confusion swirling around them, Jesus wanted to remind them of His promise that He would never leave them & that nothing could separate them from His love? What if our freedom as Christians is not based on who is in power in this world nor our achievements, but based solely on our relational security with God as God’s beloved children?
What does this mean for us, for me? Well in my life, it has meant everything to find my worth in my relational security with God. That young girl who thought she needed to do everything on her own, is now a person whose relationship with God is rooted in not wanting to do anything without Him. My constant refrain with the Lord is “if you are not going with me, I don’t want to go.” In God’s unfailing love, I found my true self & that was a beautiful & transformative discovery.
In the cohorts I teach for PAX & as a spiritual director, I want to live into the truth that the rock we stand on is our relational security with God. I am loved just as I am. I do not need to prove who I am or what I can do. When I might feel excluded, or when circumstances are painful & hard, I cling to the truth that God will never leave me & nothing can separate me from His love. Love is the freedom that we walk in as we follow Christ; it is our peace in all that we do & who we are as God’s beloved child.
Love was the plan, is the plan, & will always be the plan & way of Jesus. And as His followers, we daily walk in the freedom of our relational security as God’s beloved children bearing the fruits of justice & peace.