Slavery v. Freedom

This morning I was reading in the book of Romans, and came across an interesting biblical paradox. I don't normally dig into scripture as much as I probably should during my morning quiet time, but after I found out I didn't have to go into work, I decided to look at the text more closely to see what I might find. My mind was blown...

"Do you now know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to life?"

- Romans 6:16-17

So whatever we are obedient to, we are also slaves to. The word slavery has an immediate negative connotation, especially in our politically correct society that is still wounded by an ugly history of slavery. We have been studying the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism in my West and The World class, and so my emotions are a little bit raw concerning the evils of slavery. Although the ESV translation of this verse uses the word "slave" the footnote says the Greek translation is "bondservant" which I know has other connotations. I have not done a word study on this, so I'm not sure what all of the implications are. Regardless, the next few verses are what captured my attention...

"But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.... For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.... But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life" (v. 18-22).

Paul clearly states in these verses that as believers in Christ we are not slaves to sin anymore, but to righteousness and God. So therefore slavery to God, is in fact freedom from sin. I wrestle with this paradox because it is hard for me to reconcile the two, and the proclivity of my heart is to harden at the thought of being enslaved to something or someone even God himself. I suppose you could attribute this to my innate sense of "God given rights". But that's a whole other blog... I also at times wrestle with how this even plays out practically, in day to day life. But the other amazing thing is that according to this passage, the fruit which is produced from being a slave to God leads to sanctification!

We discussed the idea of slavery in my Christian Scriptures class a few weeks ago when we were studying Exodus. We talked about the transition from the Israelite's enslavement to Pharaoh, to their enslavement to Yahweh after God liberates them from Egypt. I was a bit disoriented by this statement, but Paul clearly echoes this same sentiment in this chapter in Romans. He is, however, speaking to the Christians now under grace, not the law (v. 14).

So how then do we live as freed sinners under grace? Paul ends chapter 6 with a brilliant statement which reminds us of why we need to be freed by Jesus' work on the cross in the first place.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (v. 23) This gift (Jesus' death on the cross) is free! We get to receive it. A free gift that brings freedom? Now that is evidence of an amazing God. And so I can confidently embrace my enslavement to God and righteousness. The alternative, the enslavement to sin, however, is very costly.

Home again home again...

After more than 30 hours in the car (that's a total of over 100 hours of car time for me this summer) we are back in Seattle! It is good to be back. We have both missed the beautiful city, and our friends and family. Our time in Texas was short, but very sweet. As anticipated our time there went extremely fast, and as much as we wish we could have spent time more time with our family and friends in the South, we were able to get a lot of wedding planning done in a short amount of time, and had a lot of fun catching up with and being loved on by everyone in San Antonio/Dallas.

We hit the ground running so to speak as soon as we arrived. Right after driving in, we semi-unloaded the car, threw a mattress down on the ground for me to sleep on, and went to our respective houses to get some much needed rest. After a series of unfortunate events JD had to sleep in his car the first night, and I am currently subletting a room out at a friend's house filled with all of our boxes. It has been chaotic to say the least. I jumped right into work the next day, and we are anxiously awaiting to close on the condo we will be renting from JD's parents to move all of our stuff in. God faithfully continues to show his provision and grace to us by providing us both with a place to live for the time being, and very loving and gracious friends to stay with on the long drive up to the Northwest.

I am continually reminded of God's faithful pursuit of my heart as I have struggled to adjust to the craziness of this season, but continue to feel his peace and experience the blessing of loving community as we move towards marriage. We have had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of people since we have been back, and it is good to be reminded that we are surrounded by people who love and support us, both near and far.

JD is in the process right now of looking for a full-time job, on top of doing a wonderful job at supporting and loving me through this time in limbo. I am working a short term summer tutoring job until the end of August, and then am hoping to continue tutoring when high schools in the area start school back up again in early September. We are also still doing some wedding planning from afar, and will be starting our marriage counseling class in October. I start school September 27th and am getting geared up for that. Fall quarter will be crazy busy to say the least, but we are both looking forward to what God has in store for us in the season of preparation for marriage. We were able to buy my parents car from them before we left, which has been a huge blessing and it has been so fun to have a car in the city. We have also had the blessing of enjoying the summer months in Seattle and hang out around town in the beautiful sunny weather.

Reflecting on all of the chaos today I was extremely encouraged by a verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 4: "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you."

Christ has done such an awesome work in both JD, and I, and in our relationship, and we are encouraged by the change that has already taken place, and excited about the transformation to come.

Engagement!

As most of you know, since my move up to Seattle last year life has been anything but boring, and there have definitely been some unexpected, yet wonderful surprises. One of the many, and probably the most important being that I am getting married!

Being far away from close friends and family has been a rough adjustment this year, but I feel now more than ever that I am right where the Lord wants me, and even though it has been hard and a crazy transition, there has been so much joy in the growth I have experienced in the past 10 months, as well as gaining a new understanding of God's grace and provision.

J.D. and I both wish that we could be close to all of the people who we love, and who have meant a lot to us over the years, but unfortunately distance prevents us from being able to spend time and connect with all of our loved ones as much as we would like to. With that said we would both like to keep everyone up to date on what is going on in our lives, especially in this exciting season of planning our wedding, but instead of keeping in touch through facebook, and knowing that phone calls and face to face meetings are usually few and far between, we decided to start a blog to hopefully keep everyone in the loop and to feel somewhat connected to the people we want to continue to walk with us on our exciting journey as we start our lives together.

J.D. and I will both be posting updates as much as we can, but as most of you can relate I'm sure, life is crazy and busy, so they may not be entirely consistent. We just wanted to let everyone know you are in our thoughts and prayers and we want you to know how things are going with us as well as what God is doing in our lives as we begin our life together.

So I thought our first post would appropriately start with our engagement story, in case I haven't gotten the opportunity to update anyone yet. After all it is a great story. This version of the story was actually written by J.D., so it is from his point of view...

Over the weekend of the 4^th of July we were in Dallas, Texas staying with some of Hannah’s close family friends, the Rojas’. As most of you know I was planning on proposing to her on the 4th. The day started when I put her favorite flowers and a letter in her room for her to wake up to in the morning. The letter ended with a list of events that were take place that day, such as a nice dinner, getting dessert, and a “special” gift. We had already discussed celebrating our nine-month anniversary on that day, so the goal was to play the evening off as just that. Through the letter I also made slight hints about the ensuing proposal that would take place. The day continued with a failed attempt to attend The Village church on time (we showed up for the last 5 minutes of the service), meeting up with one of Hannah’s close friends Emily, and having a relaxing afternoon eating Columbian food and shooting guns. Hannah and I then got all dressed up, and ready for dinner. Right before we left Ernesto Rojas, the dad of the family whose house we were staying at, asked me if we wanted to use his Mercedes convertible for the evening. For obvious reasons I said yes, so Hannah and I set out all ready for our date.

I had made dinner reservations at Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse in Dallas, the restaurant offers a salad bar, complimentary sides, and thirteen different kinds of steaks brought to your table by waiters. Throughout dinner we reminisced about the last nine months of our relationship, and had a good time talking about how God brought us together and the ways in which he has provided in our relationship. It was a lot of fun J. Towards the end of dinner I began to get really serious (maybe a little too serious), and tell Hannah how much she meant to me, and told her that I had something special to give her, but first I had to ask her a question…”Will you wear my ringpop?” I had joked in the past with Hannah about buying her a ringpop instead of a real engagement ring to be able to afford getting engaged sooner. She never thought that was funny…she still doesn’t. But the idea of the day was to build up anticipation for the actual proposal and the whole ringpop idea was not to tease her with a fake proposal, but to build anticipation for when I actually would propose. The problem was that I may have played up the ringpop a little too much and so when I gave it to Hannah, she was a bit crushed. It took some time and a fair amount of schmoozing, but she started to come around and we left Fogo de Chao a little on edge but getting better and headed towards our final destination. (As a disclaimer, though it wasn’t the most enjoyably experience, immediately after the actual proposal Hannah said that she wouldn’t want the evening changed one bit. So don’t be discouraged, it now is one of our favorite stories to tell. And you can ask us about some of the details in person which added a whole lot to the overall entertainment of the ringpop moment.)

Up until this point, I had been feeling nervous about the whole evening and had felt a little stiff. But now after the ringpop incident, I started to loosen up and we both started to get really silly which made the evening take a turn for the better. Upon almost reaching our final destination I began to explain to Hannah that dessert for the evening was a special coffee shop that one of my regular customers back in Seattle who frequents Dallas had told me about. This all was a lie but Hannah was very intrigued and so I continued to tell her about the amazing coffee they served there as well as the really cute mugs they serve their coffee in. All this made Hannah excited because we often head to coffee shops for pre or after date relaxing. What she didn’t know was that I had already contacted the coffee shop and had a beautiful mug engraved with: “Hannah Maria, will you marry me?” sent to them which they would serve Hannah’s coffee in. Hannah’s brother Emilio and Vanessa Rojas, Ernesto’s daughter, were also waiting there on the balcony ready to take pictures of the whole event. We arrived at the coffee shop and after ordering our drinks, Hannah did the unexpected and went to the restroom. Not completely planning on this, I panicked again for a second time but was quickly calmed when Emilio and Vanessa peeked out from the balcony and told me where to sit for the best lighting and angle for the pictures. What seemed like forever was only about two minutes before Hannah came back from the restroom and our coffee drinks were finished. As Hannah got up to grab her coffee, I quickly headed her off and told her that I’ve got it and gave a quick pause to make sure she was going back to sit down. Now if you talk to Hannah about this, she will say I aggressively headed her off and told her to sit down, but I think all the excitement was getting to her and she struggles to really remember the truth J. I then grabbed the coffee drinks, set mine down first and then headed over to her side of the table and set her drink down as I stood and waited. It didn’t take long for Hannah to realize the writing on the mug. I then got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. For those of you really wondering, she did say yes, and we spent the next twenty minutes with her asking me questions and me telling her about everything that had lead up to the evening. We then headed back to the Rojas’ where we celebrated the event with family and friends and partied long into the night. Best night of my life.

So that was almost three weeks ago. Wow how time flies. Now after much prayer and talking with Hannah’s family about just the relativity of life and logistics, we have come to some conclusions about our wedding that we wanted to share.

Because of the season of life we’re in with Hannah still in school and we just leaving, as well as the dynamic of our families and friends living across the country from each other: we decided that we’ll be having a family-only wedding in December. We then will be having two reception/parties, one in the spring here in Texas and another in the summer in the Northwest, where we can then celebrate with all of our friends. It has been a hard last two weeks coming to this conclusion because there are many people we love and care about. But God has given us a great amount of peace in this decision and we are excited to have the opportunity to hopefully really celebrate with our many friends over the next year of the wonderful blessing that Hannah’s and I’s union will be.

So that’s what’s been going with us and with wedding planning. Please continue to pray for us about loving our family and friends well in this time and ultimately loving Christ and seeking his will for us. We’d also just ask for peace and joy in this season and we are excited and anxious about our wedding but know that Christ is here with us today and now and we don’t want to miss out on the joy of being engaged and any other blessings the Lord has for us.