Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
March 1, 2015, as The Gate In Our Fence.
"God has put a gate in the fence. His name is Jesus.
If you follow Jesus long enough and far enough, you'll eventually trespass into the impossible."
~ Mark Batterson
I opened my computer, still a bit groggy from dragging myself from the depths of my dreaming and out of bed, and got ready for my morning reading. The Facebook tab came up before the email tab where I have my links to my readings, and I glanced at the page while waiting for the others to load. A rodeo cowgirl I know posted a photo of a book page and mentioned that it talks about Jesus and some things she'd been teaching. I took a look at the photo. Someone had underlined the above quote, and I can see why.
I didn't take the time to read the rest of the page after the quote jumped out of me, but I did look up the book and added it to my "to read" list. I'm surely taking it out of context, as I have no clue about the context, but this is where the quote led my thoughts.
The statement is so very true. We all have walls and fences in our lives, fences between people and relationships, fences built in the past that block where we can and cannot go today and in the future, fences that keep us in bondage to substances and or activities rather than roaming free on the thousand pastures our Daddy owns, and fences between where we are and where God wants us to go. If we try to tear down the fence, we may get some temporary freedom and movement, but the fence is usually rebuilt quickly and stronger. After the one who wants us fenced in sees we have an area of escape in our strength and will, he adjusts his fence building to remove it.
Now we are even more fenced in. So, we can attempt to climb over the fence, but the fence gets built higher and higher, and each time the fall of failure to make it to freedom hurts more and more until we give up on going over to freedom and settle into captivity. Or we try to crawl under or through the fence and somehow just end up scratched and cut up from the barbs and covered in dirt and muck and stuck.
The simple fact is that the fence builder is more cunning than we are, and he just won't quit trying to fence us in. Freedom is fleeting, and failed escape attempts discourage continuing to try. But God made a gate in our fences that the fence builder can't touch. Not only did He make a gate, but He made it where even a child can open it. Jesus is indeed that gate, the Way, the Truth and the Life that leads to relationship with the Father and freedom. We can leave the pen of pain and bondage into the freedom of the Father's green pastures.
The gate of Jesus leads to the impossible. That ruined relationship can be restored through Jesus. Barriers caused by who we've been and what we've done in the past no longer set the limits on us and how God can use as as the old is transformed into something new, a feat truly impossible for anyone other than He who created all in the first place. Bonds of addictions of all kinds that keep us miserable and trapped in selfishness slip away as we walk through the gate God made.
And we who have been locked away behind the fence until we're skinny from starvation and disease, worthless on the world's market, can feed on the green, living richness of relationship with God, which is greener and more plentiful on His side of the fence after all. Suddenly, in Jesus the impossible is accomplished. But the trail through the gate starts the impossible journey of freedom and restoration, it doesn't end there. It gets bigger, more fantastic, more impossible. As we are restored, we grow healthier and realize our freedom through Christ, we become someone God can use to help others learn about The Gate, and we can help God build The Gate in the fences around the hearts, souls and lives of others.
Whatever mountains stand in the way God setting the captives free and healing the wounded can be leveled, razed and thrown into the sea by a word of faith. Nothing remains impossible. Our oceans between where we are and what God wants to accomplish split and move out of the way leaving a path of dry land through the barrier. Even death loses its sting as we find resurrection and life in The Gate. When we accept that God the Father provided The Gate for us, as we are, trapped, starving and sick, it opens for us. We can freely walk from held back and fenced in to freedom and power that makes the impossible possible.
Abba, thank You for The Gate of Jesus, made from love covered in precious blood. Help me to never take it for granted or be apathetic about the miracle of freedom and possibilities that has and continues to provide in my life. Thank You for the restoration and freedom and ability to serve I've already experienced, and thank You for that which is yet to come, which seems even more impossible than the miracles of yesterday. When the impossible of my life is overcome in the sight of others, may it bring You all glory and praise. In Jesus' name, amen.
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