#167 Breaking Free: Lindy's Transformation from Religious Oppression to Spiritual Freedom

What if your strict religious upbringing felt more like a prison than a path to God? Join us as Lindy shares her journey from a conservative religious family to finding genuine faith and community. Facing the pressures of purity culture and a judgmental church, Lindy felt isolated and fearful. Her turning point came at an 18-year-old summer camp where she experienced unconditional love and the true spirit of Christianity.

Lindy's faith was reignited through deep Sabbath school discussions with her brother and his friend, but was tested again in a conservative environment at massage school. The pandemic added challenges, but an online seminar and a transformative prayer experience with Eddie renewed her spiritual fulfillment.

Lindy's story of spiritual freedom and healing includes confronting her past and drawing strength from spiritual teachings and symbolic rituals. Listen to Lindy's inspiring transformation and join the upcoming Death to Life Bible Studies for your own spiritual growth and community connection. Don't miss this episode filled with hope, resilience, and divine love.

0:00 - Finding Faith Beyond Religious Expectations
16:17 - Journey to Understanding God's Goodness
21:28 - Faith Journey and Spiritual Awakening
37:37 - Journey to Spiritual Freedom
51:46 - Death to Life Bible Studies Sign-Up

💰 DONATE & SUPPORT our Ministry: lovereality.org/give
👍 LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alovereality
📷 FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riyoung31/
📚 LEARN more at our site: lovereality.org

https://www.lovereality.org/podcasts

Looking for discipleship and fellowship? Join a Circle at lovereality.org/circles

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is Death to Life.

Speaker 2: 0:59

I got real angry and was crying and I said to God I hope you're worth it. Yeah, I hope someday this will be worth all of it. This will be worth all the sacrifices and I was making for what I didn't know. I was a kid and I didn't fully understand that God was good. He was just there, like another person in my life. He can occasionally call him up through prayer.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Yo, welcome to the Dead to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young, and today's episode is with Lindy. Lindy is so sweet and she's quiet. She's reserved, but she has a story to tell, and I remember seeing her, meeting her a few years ago and seeing the lights come on in her eyes. Her story is about being caught up in toxic religion and the do's and don'ts and not seeing and understanding who Jesus is and what he has done, and so this story will be a blessing to you If you've ever experienced that or know anyone who's experienced that. I've experienced it, I know what that's like, and I think you're going to get a blessing from this testimony. So we're about to go in. This is Lindy. Hear ye her Buckle up, strap in Love y'all, appreciate y'all. Lindy man, when we were just chatting a few minutes ago about where your story starts, where did you decide that your story starts when it comes to your spiritual life? Where does it start when?

Speaker 2: 2:40

it comes to your spiritual life. Where does it start? I guess my childhood, because I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist church and yet I'm a fourth-generation Seventh-day Adventist.

Speaker 1: 2:56

That's almost all the way back, not almost. We're a pretty young church, but four generations it takes you to at least the turn of the century, right Like into the 20th century.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, one of my great grandmothers actually met Ellen White.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Okay, do you know where they met?

Speaker 2: 3:13

No, that's the only thing that I know about that meeting.

Speaker 1: 3:17

That's still pretty cool, though. Okay, fourth generation.

Speaker 2: 3:23

Yeah, my whole world was pretty much Seventh-day Adventist I, my parents, my entire extended family. So I basically grew up in this Adventist bubble and it was good. Like you know, my parents were great and that we didn't have to go to church if we didn't want to. We didn't have to basically do anything that we didn't want to. But my dad was kind of strict with the rules, didn't want us to go swimming on Sabbath or spend money on Sabbath, that type of thing. Sure, I was mostly taught to go through the motions as a kid just read, pray your bible, read your bible and pray, grow grow grow and grow, grow, grow.

Speaker 2: 4:11

Yeah, and it was the 90s. So I went through a lot of purity parties and meetings and my mom hosted a few and those I I liked it. Sometimes it did help because I read somewhere in a purity book that you know, relationships that start in high school don't last. So I decided not to date in high school from a very young age and honestly I think that did help somewhat. But as I got older it started to make less sense. It felt like there was so much responsibility on me as a woman and as an Adventist to be like essentially perfect and you think you learned that from purity culture?

Speaker 2: 5:07

I think a lot of it. Yeah, because it's the. If I wanted to find somebody anybody I had to be aware that I was like an object of lust. Basically I had to dress correctly or someone would sin, and that was a lot of responsibility. And then you've got the responsibility of trying to convert everyone, and so that was a lot for me to handle. I was also a very quiet kid because I felt like I was going to be judged everywhere and I was In my family. At church, I experienced a lot of bullying at church. I saw a lot of judgment going on in my family, for for me, the church was very judgmental, which was even more pressure to be perfect are you naturally an introverted person oh yes, oh yes, uh, I always say that when I was a kid, I used to.

Speaker 2: 6:12

Anytime someone walked into the room, I'd go run and hide, and it's just that anxious, intro, introverted and scared of judgment, you know. And so it wasn't until I was like 18 and I got to work at summer camp that I really experienced true Christianity, I would say, because these people were just good. There was no judgment, there was no expectations of me. They were just whenever I needed something, there they were and they just did things for me out of the goodness of their heart, and that was a new concept to me.

Speaker 1: 7:10

There's something about camp that it lends itself to. Everyone seems to be pulling on the same rope, especially at the beginning of the summer. If you have a good leader, if you have a good camp director, and it can just be this beautiful, amazing environment where you forget about the cares of the world and you're just like, yeah, we're here to love these kids and it can start off amazing. Obviously, some camp seasons end up being terrible, but it has so much potential because you're like we're just going to tell these kids about God's love, right.

Speaker 2: 7:44

Oh yeah, we had a great camp director. Yeah, the morale that year at camp was so high. Everybody was such a team. They were so good at teamwork and just loving on each other and that was just crazy to me.

Speaker 2: 8:03

So I really learned to come out of my shell a little bit there, but I was still living in a lot of double-mindedness. I would go home, I would go to camp and I would get on this really great spiritual high. I would go to camp and I would get on this really great spiritual high and then I'd come home and then the rest of the year I would be so upset with myself because I could never sustain that spiritual high. I could never be the Christian that I wanted to be at home because, no matter how hard I tried and it's and I would make promises to God yeah, I don't know. I would just say that I'm not going to sin anymore, I'm not going to be a bad person anymore. I'm just going to try to be the best that I can be and I'm going to try to hype myself up and just sustain that all year and it just never, ever worked. And then I'd feel so guilty and condemned and all that stuff and what did you want it to look like?

Speaker 1: 9:11

What were you expecting? Like when you're leaving camp and there's a spiritual high, you're out there for eight, nine weeks. You're coming home. What was the expectation that you're like okay, now my life is going to look like what?

Speaker 2: 9:22

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I didn't really know what it was supposed to look like. I guess I just hoped that I would follow the Bible better. Or you know what I thought was following the Bible better lying, not, you know, hurting anybody uh, not have, which meant not having to set boundaries or not having to bother anybody, but just be a good, what I thought was a good christian go to church every week, that kind of thing yeah but I already was, like I was a deacon at my church or deaconess.

Speaker 2: 10:00

I was a. I sang for a praise team. I did a lot of stuff and adventure club pathfinders. I was active. I just didn't. I wasn't getting anything out of it Any at any point in time.

Speaker 1: 10:18

Can I ask you did you want to feel something different?

Speaker 2: 10:23

Yeah, there was something missing and I just couldn't figure out what it was. I have great parents, I have a great family, or so I thought, and I had great church family, so I thought, and my life was pretty great, I should be really happy, but I just wasn't. There was something missing and I wasn't sure what it was, and so I kept trying to figure it out. And where else you didn't go to figure it out other than church or camp, or I don't know, your pastor, yeah. So I just kept going to church, hoping that eventually, and camp, hoping that something would change along the way. But it didn't really.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And after I left camp and I moved to Lincoln, nebraska, to be with my boyfriend at the time, things just kept getting darker in my heart. I was getting so tired of the double-mindedness of the cycle of I sin, I pray for repentance, and then I would behave better for a day or two, and then I feel guilty and then I pray for sin, and over and over, because that's what everyone's said to do at church. They don't tell you how to go about doing the things that you should do. They really just tell you to pray and read your Bible, and yeah, that's pretty much it. So that's what I was doing. I was doing my devotions every day, but still nothing. Nothing. I listened to sermons. I read a lot of Ellen White books in my spare time.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Who was God that you were praying to? What was he about? What was he like?

Speaker 2: 12:26

I didn't think that much about it back then. I guess I expected him to be like my earthly family and my earthly dad, which my dad's a great dad, but he is human. So I expected him to be like every other human, I guess. And I actually went to the pastor of a church in Nebraska and I talked to him about it. He said you have a bad image of God because he's not your father, he's not like any human on earth. But he didn't give me any other picture. He didn't. I was like I left there and I was like what do I do with this information? He didn't offer me anything else. So it's like I left there and I was like what do I do with this information? He didn't offer me anything else. So it's like I was.

Speaker 2: 13:18

I felt like I was trying so hard to seek God and to be a good Christian and do everything that I was supposed to and be perfect, but none of it was getting me anywhere. Perfect but none of it was getting me anywhere. Um, I guess growing up like before that god was just a nuisance because he, I guess I grew up with the impression that god was the rules. God was the reason that I couldn't go to a gymnastics tournament on sabbath. God was the reason I couldn't swim on Sabbath or do knitting or sewing or anything that I enjoyed. It was just a matter of waiting for the clock to run out every Saturday, and that made me miserable, because you just got to sit around and can't do anything fun.

Speaker 1: 14:11

God is the fun police.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Yeah, exactly, and so I hated Sabbath for a long time and my friends were in the same place. I was back when I was like 24 or something. We were all in the same place. We weren't getting anything out of church. We weren't getting anything out of devotions out of church.

Speaker 1: 14:35

We weren't, uh, getting anything out of devotions. I would say that there might not be anything worse than?

Speaker 1: 14:39

the sabbath without jesus? Yeah, it really is. Do boring stuff that you don't want to do and you can't do the stuff sabbath without jesus. And then people wonder like why don't you like the Sabbath? If there's no Jesus, there is no reason to enjoy the Sabbath, unless you're going to sleep all day or something like that, if it really is just rest. But if you don't understand the Sabbath man, it could cause resentment, it could cause just you're like missing out.

Speaker 2: 15:13

Oh yes, yes, I remember I. It could cause just you're like missing out. Oh yes, yes, I remember I. I got very upset with god one time because I had to once again miss out on a gymnastics tournament and I really love gymnastics and even picture day was on sabbath and I got real angry and was crying and I said to God I hope you're worth it.

Speaker 1: 15:36

That's interesting. I hope you're worth it.

Speaker 2: 15:39

Yeah, I hope someday this will be worth all of it. This will be worth all the sacrifices and I was making for what I didn't know. I was a kid and I didn't fully understand that God was good. He was just there, like another person in my life. He can occasionally call him up through prayer. Yeah, my view of God was totally mixed up back then, and my boyfriend at the time when I lived in Nebraska he was really struggling too because he grew up with parents stricter than mine in the Adventist church. They were very conservative and he didn't have God in his life really either. We were in the same place. I was trying to help him out because I had always been on this power struggle of trying to find God, trying to get all the resources I can to be the best Christian. So I was trying to help him with what. I's atheist now. But I didn't know. You guys, were dating no, he left after.

Speaker 2: 17:05

but that was the reason he broke up with me was he wanted to not be religious anymore and I wanted to stay christian. Even though I had gotten to such, uh, what felt like a dark place where I was just doing all this work for seemingly nothing, I still I knew god was real and I knew that he was good, at least part of the time. So I stuck with it. And that is about when my brother started a sab school with his friend Ryan, and it was at this little tiny church in lincoln nebraska, and, uh, I stopped going to church. At this point I didn't see any point getting doing all the work of getting ready and going to church when I could just watch it online and either way, I probably wasn't going to get anything out of it because I never did, uh. But you know, my bro said he started the sab school, so I I wanted to support him and I went to that sab school very skeptical that I would get anything out of it.

Speaker 2: 18:31

But in that step school they talked a lot about things that I never thought of. They brought up deeper stuff that I had never even thought to think about before. Usually, you hear just a lot of surface level stuff and that I've heard a million times before and it's just never. Somebody has like a slightly different perspective and it's great as it's nice to hear the history, it's nice to hear all the different perspectives, but still it's the same exact thing and I don't need the same exact thing. I had a superficial understanding of God and I needed something deeper and that's what I found in the Sabbath school and Tyler was there and Ryan and several others and it was the best Sabbath school I'd ever went to, even though it was just like eight people in this tiny little room in the upstairs of this tiny little church.

Speaker 1: 19:45

for the first time in my life I felt fed, like really like I was able to drink so deeply of what they were saying. And do you remember some of the early stuff like that kind of just got your attention, like this is different than I thought it was, or what was some of the stuff that was being brought up? Oh, I haven't, like you said you hadn't thought of it, do you remember? I mean, that was a long time ago now, but do you remember anything that had sparked that interest?

Speaker 2: 20:17

It was a long time ago. I could probably remember if I thought about it for a while. But let's see, I think we were going over the Old Testament and yeah, I can't remember.

Speaker 1: 20:32

I mean, it was a long time ago, but there was a lot to it Super deep.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Yeah, it was a lot to take in for my mind. I couldn't really make sense of it entirely. I couldn't make sense of why it was different, because it was the same stuff, but it was a whole new perspective and so I couldn't really explain it for a very long time. I just knew that I finally felt fed and I got into that step school. I started bringing muffins. I started inviting my friends and bringing whatever snacks I could To help out, yeah, and it was great.

Speaker 2: 21:18

My sister-in-law started going too, and my bro, and it started getting huge and we finally had to move to a different church. But I didn't get to go to a whole lot because I had to. I moved to go to massage school in South Dakota and that was rough because it was just very conservative. You know, everyone wears skirts, long hair, lots of Ellen White involved. And going from that Sabbath school to that level of conservative ism was hard on me because I started to see, like everything that I didn't like about the church. Um, like right there in my face I started to see so many issues, uh, that I hadn't seen before, like how they just emphasize, emphasize Ellen White so much over the Bible and how they don't really separate the two, ellen White and the Bible. They're intertwined.

Speaker 2: 22:26

And there was a bunch of my classmates that weren't Seventh-day Adventists and it was a huge culture, so I had to help them learn why they do this or why they do that, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me either. Having to think about that to explain it to another person didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, why do you go to church on Saturday? That's a pretty routine answer, but then later I get to thinking about it and they're great Christians. They're doing everything they should as a Christian, why does it really matter what day you go to church on? Uh, so that, yeah, I had those kind of convictions all throughout the six months and then I graduated from there, went to Denmark for a few weeks, came home and the pandemic had started big time.

Speaker 1: 23:30

The worldwide pandemic, March 2020. I remember that.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Yep, so that was all in 2019. And so the yeah, the pandemic started. I couldn't find a job because I had to pay my school back before I could get job. Massage it was a whole big ordeal, but anyways. So I couldn't find a job and I ended up getting stuck in this job that I really didn't like with adventist church members and back in missouri, or is this in nebraska?

Speaker 1: 24:05

where are you?

Speaker 2: 24:06

and back yeah, back in missouri, and I almost went to California, but decided to stick with Missouri because that's where my family was and I ended up working out because the pandemic hit. Yeah, I was in Missouri. I was working with some church members and they were nice people, but they're not the best business people, so I hated that job and I hadn't been to that Sabbath school in a long time. So, because we couldn't meet anymore in person, I couldn't go back to Nebraska to visit. I was just stuck at home, which stunk. But then my bro told me that the people that started cyber school were having an online seminar, and that was Tyler and.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Jonathan and all of them, and it was the very first wave one seminar and I remember I was helping my dad work on the roof at the time, like during the day, and then in the evenings we'd have that seminar.

Speaker 2: 25:30

And after that first one I kept telling my dad we, we got, we can't miss that. I gotta go down now. I didn't want to miss a single sentence of that webinar, all throughout it because I finally felt like my soul was getting fed again after like 12 months, something that and it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at first again, but then the pieces started clicking into place. Over the course of the whole seminar had all these puzzle pieces in my head that I got from the church my mom, my dad, family, friends of the Bible and what it meant and the gospel and all these different things and I had a cluster here, a cluster there, but I didn't know how they fit into the overall big picture or what the overall big picture was. And at the end of it it finally hit me. All the pieces came together in this one beautiful, glorious picture of Jesus and I had never seen him or thought of him this way.

Speaker 1: 27:02

What is the way? What is it? It was that God, like out of wave one? We talk about freedom from sin on the first night. Then we talk about always son. We talk about the two Adams on the third night. Who the law is for, like all of these, and sometimes it's like heavy theological talk, even just breaking down forgiveness. We break that down. What was the thing out of all those that was hitting you the most?

Speaker 2: 27:30

I don't know, it was all hitting me at once, I think, because it was very overwhelming. But yeah, it just all hit me at once. But then, eddie, at the end of it, they asked if we wanted to pray with somebody. So I said I did. I didn't know why, I was just following the spirit there. And then Eddie said he wanted to pray with me, and so so we did, and I had so many thoughts going through my head I had everything from the seminar was just swirling around my head and these feelings that were overwhelming I couldn't identify. It was just all so much so I was crying a lot. I'd never known Eddie before this and this was the first time we met, and he asked me what I wanted to pray for. I couldn't tell him. I was sobbing so hard.

Speaker 1: 28:42

Something You're just like. I'm just emotional.

Speaker 2: 28:46

I need something but then he started getting things from god. He started telling me these things about myself. He couldn't possibly know because he didn't know me before that. So he he said that I love animals, that, oh, he had me pray a little bit or just listen to the Holy Spirit and God said you're mine. And that made me cry even harder and God was telling me everything he loved about me through just that statement and Eddie telling me things about myself. He couldn couldn't possibly know. It must be the devil or something like that. But I could feel in my heart that this was God, no doubt about it. And I was just yeah, that was my birth, my whole rebirth, right there was, oh. And then he gave me some homework. Eddie gave me some homework. I had to go, I had to tell my bro, I had to tell my mom and I had to read Evisions 1 and put my name in there. And so I went and I told my bro about it and he was very happy. He was three long before that and I told my mom, but she wasn't as receptive. But that's okay, you can watch her episode later. She talks a little bit about it and it was great.

Speaker 2: 30:47

I felt so free of all of my burdens. I felt like the Holy Spirit filled me, just filled me so much, and in a way that I had never felt before, like I experienced him occasionally in my life, with long, long spans of time in between, but this time it was just so much, more full than I'd ever been, and I knew this was what I had been searching for my whole life. And it sounded so good. To be true, it sounded like another religion. My Adventist brain was just like I probably shouldn't be receiving this, because it's not Adventist and that's never good. But I didn't care. I was happier than I'd ever been. I was filled with the Holy Spirit more than I'd ever been. I knew this was God talking to me and it was the best experience of my life.

Speaker 1: 31:57

So you say it wasn't Adventist because it just didn't fit into what you had understood before.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Yeah, it felt like a whole other religion Because, I don't know, it's just so very different from what I'd heard growing up, mostly just because I'd heard the same Bible stories over and over again and I'd heard historical background on the Bible or I'd heard characters or people's, various people's perspective on the Bible, but I never I don't think I'd ever had a time where the Bible got to interpret itself for itself.

Speaker 2: 32:39

There was always somebody else's opinion thrown in there, whether it's pastors or alan whites or whatever. And yeah, this was very different, especially the part about the prodigal son, where the son was always son and I'd heard that story so many times. But I had never heard anybody say that the son was always son. They were always focused on him going away or coming back or his brother being angry and then about 500 different perspectives on that. But this was like totally new to me the son always being son and his identity as his father's son, and so that in the two laws I had always known, there was only one law and that was the ten commandments, and you had to stick to it, otherwise there was no salvation. It was all about obeying the law. And now there's not just that law, there's two laws, and this other law is a thousand times better.

Speaker 1: 33:53

And it's like you were released from the law to be married to Christ, and now you're obedient to Christ.

Speaker 2: 34:03

Yeah, yeah, and it's. The irony is I tried so hard all throughout my life to keep the law, to be a good christian and I and now I am a christian. I am a good christian, I've, I'm the best christian I've ever, and I haven't had to do any work whatsoever. That's just insane to me. Even after four years, it never ceases to amaze me how much rest is involved in freedom. You just believe and God does all the work for you. And even that back then it sounded way too good to be true. I was so suspicious of freedom If there's got to be catch here somewhere, but there wasn't and I still haven't found one.

Speaker 1: 34:55

It's just God being the best God ever, all right, we're going to take a real quick break from the podcast. I'm going to bring on my sister, kelly. Kelly, how long is it that you've been rocking with Good Gospel? About five years. Five years and what has Good Gospel done? I mean, has it changed your life?

Speaker 4: 35:18

It has. It's set me free, because now I know that I am a beloved daughter of God and whom he is well pleased, and I can live that out knowing that I'm enough.

Speaker 1: 35:30

That sounds pretty good. You've decided to partner with us and give up of your finances to keep this movement going forward. Why is that important to you?

Speaker 4: 35:46

Because of the difference it's made in my life and the lives of so many others, and just knowing that God is using this ministry to do big things for his kingdom.

Speaker 1: 35:56

Man, I just want to thank you and if you are listening and you want to partner with us moving forward, you can go to loverealityorg. That's loverealityorg, and you can help us keep doing this. We really believe and I know you've heard me say it that if we keep preaching the gospel, we're never going to run out of podcast episodes, because there's always going to be people going from death to life. So, loverealityorg, slash give and you can partner with us moving forward. Thanks so much. So this is you're getting this. You have this conversation with Eddie. You go talk to your mom and I know she's been on the podcast. That was maybe two or three years ago when she was on the podcast. Yes, how did you see her start to get this? As you're like you're believing this, you don't know the whole totality of it now, but how did you, how did she start seeing it from? Did you just keep talking to her?

Speaker 2: 36:58

Okay, as a week after that or so, maybe not even that I called my brother up and I said, bro, we got to get mom on board with this. She needs it so much because she had a really traumatic past, as you'll hear, and it was getting. She was getting more and more unable to cope with it, because it doesn't matter what I was talking about. If I was just talking about the weather or going to town or whatever, she would, somehow every conversation we had would circle around to her past and how horrible it was. And I just I felt like she really needed this. So I said to my brother we got to get this through to her, because during the seminar she would go in the other room and listen. She wouldn't stay in the same room and she was keeping the message at a distance. I see that very obviously so, and anytime I tried to get her to come in the other room with us, she was like no, no, no, you guys, you guys enjoy, or she'd go do dishes or she'd do something else to make sure to keep it at a distance.

Speaker 2: 38:19

So my brother and I were thinking of ways we could get this through to her. We could get her to talk to Eddie, get her to talk to Tyler and Morgan, who was also living in Nebraska at the time, and we could just try to convince her ourselves. But convincing her ourselves wasn't working very well. I tried to. She would identify a lie or something in her past and then I would tell her that's not true. But just neither of us really have experience with that kind of trauma that she's been through. So I was looking for somebody that could relate to her and hopefully get that out of her head.

Speaker 2: 39:07

But we ended up going to having Tyler and Morgan come over to my brother's house and she had this long list of lies that she'd believed, trauma that she'd been through, and she was thinking that Tyler and Morgan would go through it one by one and tell her how it's not true and whatever else. She had all these expectations and stuff. But then they get there. We all say hi and they sat down with her and they had her read Ephesians 1 and put her name in there and me and my bro and everybody were just praying so hard for her because we just really wanted to get this.

Speaker 2: 39:57

And as she read through Ephesians 1, you could see it dawning on her that this was for her, that this passage was talking about her, and she even said that's for me, what? And she didn't even look at the list that she brought. And then they just it was our prayers and our, and Tyler and Morgan just following the spirit, and so it was great. They took her list and they had a little ceremony where they burned it in the trash can. And she has been so free ever since. Her past hasn't bothered her nearly as much, and so that was when she got free.

Speaker 1: 40:52

When you saw that and you're experiencing this freedom, and then you see your mom, who you love so much. Experience that, what was that like?

Speaker 2: 41:02

It was awesome, I loved it so much. But when she got free, she pointed some things out to me. I'm a very emotional person, okay, but and so is she a lot of times but she pointed out that it's not just a, it's not a feeling, it's a state of being, and I was like, oh, that's so true, it makes sense. And it got me reflecting a little bit on my freedom, because you feel really great for a week or two and then it starts to like, fade out a little bit. The feeling starts to fade out a little bit, but then and then it starts to feel like you're back to square one before you got free, but then you just have to keep believing that you are free, no matter how you feel so.

Speaker 2: 42:00

So that's where I was, and so she's been able to help me and encourage me ever since, and it's been great.

Speaker 1: 42:10

I remember showing up to your crib. I remember that room. I'm looking at that room. We were there in the fall of 2020. I think it was Eddie and Jayla, natalie and myself. I think we brought the kids with us. I don't remember if we yeah, we brought the kids with us and we had a little bonfire. Was it raining or snowing during this bonfire?

Speaker 1: 42:33

I remember a little bit and we just spent the whole day at your crib just talking with you guys and seeing you and your mom get this thing was such a huge blessing for us to see that. Do you remember that weekend?

Speaker 2: 42:50

oh yes, that was the weekend my cousin got free and, since then, talk to me about life since then.

Speaker 2: 43:05

Since then it's yeah, it was so awesome that we can getting to hear my brother tell his story, and then me and then my mom, and then hear all of you guys talk Eddie told his story and you and Natalie told yours, and we got to share it with some of our friends as well. Um, yeah, it was a really great weekend for all of us here as well and, like I said, my cousin got, so we got to follow up with him and that was pretty great. But I used to go up on, go to camp and have spiritual highs and then come down and me condemn myself for that. But I have gotten up on this spiritual high and I have never went down.

Speaker 1: 44:03

I have gotten up on this spiritual high and I have never went down. It's because it's not a high, it's just I guess the floor just got raised all the way to that. You're seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, right? So I don't care how far you fall, where you land is that you're seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus and you have every spiritual blessing in Christ and you are sanctified in Christ and you're righteous in Christ and you've been redeemed in Christ, and so that's where you fall to right. If you want to go high and come down, the come down is, oh yeah, seated in heavenly places oh yeah, amen, it's so true.

Speaker 2: 44:47

And so I've just always had this peace and this joy under aligning all my other emotions. Ever since then, and even when I went through a bit of a trauma a couple of years ago, I was able to not question him Like why did this happen to me? Why did you allow it? I never doubted God through all of that. I never yeah, I never really questioned him because I knew that I still had that joy. I still had that joy, I still had that peace, and I knew that he wasn't as my protector. It could have been a lot worse and it wasn't. So I was thankful for that and even through trauma, my faith, my seat in heavenly places has never gone away and, if anything, it's just made me more, made me stronger, made me more reliant on god, which has actually made me stronger because I realized that I don't need my strength. I don't have to be strong, I don't want to be strong. He's strong enough and he is way better than I am. So I just I rest, and his strength is my strength.

Speaker 1: 46:19

Absolutely. You just quoted Romans 5, james 1, and then 2 Corinthians, right at the end, where Paul says in my weakness I am strong, and the trials and the tribulations that come in life, they all come to build you up into who you are in Christ. I'm trying to think where are we going to take you back? Maybe if you wanted to give old Lindy a pep talk, if you wanted to put your arm around old Lindy and you knew the time where old Lindy needed that pep talk about who she was in Christ the most, what time would you go back to?

Speaker 2: 47:07

I, honestly, I have thought about this lately and if I could say one thing to myself back then I would say he is worth it, 100%. He's worth it and everything that you go through is 100% worth it. But also, he loves you more than you'll ever know. It sounds cliche, but it's true. He is better and he is so much more than you'll ever know. And honestly, there have been many times where I wanted to go back and talk to myself and say and tell old Lindy what I know now. But I don't think I would, because old Lindy wasn't ready for that. Old Lindy found him exactly when she needed to, and not a second later.

Speaker 1: 48:14

That's so awesome. Remind me of that time that you said you better be worth it. God, where were you? Was this said in the story?

Speaker 2: 48:24

better be worth it. God, when were you? Was this said in the story? Yeah, I was in my room and I was crying because I'd once again missed my gymnastics.

Speaker 1: 48:29

Oh, that's right. You better be worth it. Praise God, lily. Let me just say this I see you on the Facebook group and I see the encouragement that you give to people and the way you live your life and you and I have talked in the background a few times through the years and I just see you growing in this truth and being just rock steady in it, and it's such a testimony because it's not written in stone that even if you receive this understanding of freedom that you're going to walk in it, it's not written in stone. Being surrounded by God's people and being encouraged in the truth, like that's important being in community. You could do it all by yourself, but it wouldn't be the smartest idea. Paul's always telling us to gather more and more often with the saints and, as I've seen you, you've just been a blessing to us, to our community. You're a valued member of the body of Christ and we were just blessed by you and I want to just thank you for sharing your story today.

Speaker 2: 49:33

Thank you. I can't tell you guys how much I've been blessed by you and the entire community. I never would have gotten to where I am without you guys, that's for sure, and all the great people who have talked to me in the background and encouraged me and kept me going. It's just been like freedom would have been amazing without it, but it's 10 times better with it.

Speaker 1: 49:57

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Lindy you thank you, thanks for having me yeah, man lindy, her story it I.

Speaker 1: 50:09

I quoted this verse in the podcast episode where we're talking about being released from the law, dying to the law so that we can be married to another, jesus christ, so that we may bear fruit. When we were under the law, we could not bear fruit, but now that we are in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit is ours to walk in. He produces that in us and we bear that fruit. So if you're struggling with that, this prayer is for you. Father in heaven, sometimes I struggle in understanding that I am tied to your son, jesus, so that he is the one producing the fruit and I just get to bear it. Give me a revelation that I just get to bear this fruit that you are producing in me through the Holy Spirit and that I've been made right with you through Jesus and that we've been reconciled. Thank you for revealing this to my spirit through your spirit. I believe you will, because I'm praying it in Jesus' name, amen.

Speaker 1: 51:19

Don't forget about the Death to Life Bible Studies on Monday nights at 8 o'clock Central. It's my brother-in-law, elias, and myself. Go to our circles page at loverealityorg. Sign up to get notifications for the Death to Life Bible Study with Elias and Richard. You will be blessed. I promise you that. So we will catch you next time. Love y'all, appreciate y'all, bye.