Bound... but Free.

For miles, all I can see is cotton and tobacco...I am a slave. It is of my own choosing... not forced upon me by societal norms... but rather, I force it upon myself. My skin color makes no difference nor is my servitude dependant on my race or ethnicity... but choice. I am a sharecropper. Although I have been unshackled by Christ’s Emancipation Proclamation, the one written in His blood, I choose a form of slavery that is somewhere between sin and righteousness... working the fields that I was bound to, freely on my own accord because I will not allow my mind to make a clean break from the nature I was once bound by. I choose what benefits me... and this depends on what I want... what is more attractive to me. Sometimes, I choose slavery to sin... sometimes I choose slavery to righteousness through my obedience to Him. I desire to be a bond-servant of Christ... I really do... but it seems my desire for benefits that fulfill selfish gain keep me from making a wholehearted commitment... It is as if the deal that I have made with my Master is revocable at anytime and then reinstated whenever I will it so. This symbol of my Master that is dangling from my ear is interchangeable, somehow... not permanent.

My dilemma is my will.

And as a result, I am enslaved to something that is not steadfast... that changes on a whim.

Lord I choose you... bind me permanently so that my own freedoms and choices do not nullify the decisions I have already made. You have made my choice irrevocable... and although I wrestle with these chains that I willingly allow you to place on me... make them unbreakable.

I place my assurance in You and in the fact that Your grace is an unbreakable chain.

Romans 6: 14 -18
14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.