I have talked infrequently about someday completing my lifetime story I started with my autobiography being published in 2015. The book ends with the section called “Finding Freedom”. In order to complete this autobiography I’d need to write what I’d call “Living in Freedom”. This last section would start in 2020 when I went to my prayer warrior Lois. She had given me the book, I Give You Authority. The author talks about what I call the 3-R’s. (I’ve written about these several times in the past few years). They are, Recognize, Reject and Replace. We need to recognize our struggle, reject it and replace it. In my case I was struggling to believe I could ever be a new creation. I wanted to believe what scripture says is true for me, but I had to many lies going through my head. I recognized them and rejected them, but I couldn’t find anything to replace them with.

When I shared all of this with Lois, she prayed over me with her hands on my shoulders asking God to help me find, self-love, self-appreciation, and self-confidence. These became my 3-S’s to follow the 3-R’s. The voices would scream in my head that to love self and appreciate self were arrogant and selfish just as my father had pushed me away telling me to go off and do my thing. I didn’t care about my family. I just wanted to live for me and do my thing. This was never true, but the hurt of the message had never left me.

As I began to pray for the 3’S’s to be real for me–they began to become real. Amazingly, this truth of believing (more than just knowing) we are fearfully and wonderfully made (as stated in Psalms 139:14), is real. It doesn’t make me arrogant, but instead, it has made me grateful. I can more than know this truth, I can believe it for me. Living in Freedom has so much gratitude in it and a genuine absence of self-doubt and ridicule. How grateful I am for God’s faithfulness to each one of us!