Off the Plantation

FREE, INDEED!

A minister at a Prophetic Presbytery once said to me, “You know how to lead women off the plantation; teach what you know.”   I have come to believe that the “plantation” is thinking that your feelings, thoughts and actions are completely tied to those of other people (this is sometimes called codependency).  Someone in this condition is not free to act on facts or principles or beliefs, but only to react to the perceptions, feelings, actions,  or crises of others

 

Christian women have been set free.  We have the choice, by the emancipation of salvation, to go and come as we please, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.  We have been set free of the requirement to follow the dictates of the whims of our circumstances.  Choosing to marry, Christian women are guided by the instructions of scripture.  We are, therefore, free to choose to follow and submit to our husbands without resentment or fear or defeat - to be provoked and not become provocative, to be angry and not sin, to be excellent and not competitive, to be joyful in our relationships with Christ and with others.  A wonderful woman modeled this for me. Her husband was a demanding, self-centered, unhappy man.  She, in contrast, was a joyful, peaceful, accomplished woman.  She ministered selflessly to her husband.  She was also active in her community and gave encouragement to everyone who knew her.   I never saw her allow herself to be led into sin or despair by her husband’s behavior.  I would love it if all women everywhere knew what she knew.  She was not a slave to the world, the flesh, or the devil.

 

Our path to freedom is our love for God, and our trust that, if we believe and obey and love biblically we can overcome all weapons formed against us.  Following Christ, we suffer daily and die to ourselves, to the captivity of our emotions, to the tyranny of having to have our way, to our need to fix everything, control everything, confront everything.  We enjoy the wondrous resurrection of obeying the Word and knowing that each death brings life – abundant life, joyous life, life everlasting.  We leave the plantation and emerge gloriously, irrevocably free.