Galatians 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.

Do you ever feel trapped? Sometimes, I look at our saltwater tank in our family room and I think of the vast ocean where these fish were made to be, deserve to be and there is part of me that  feels bad that the fish are trapped in 180 gallons of water. It seems like a lot of water and they seem happy to be fed everyday but I wonder what they would do in the ocean? Would they swim around in 180 gallons of sea or would they venture out past the boundaries and check things out? Just like those fish we find ourselves trapped in a limited space.

Only unlike those fish we can choose to swim beyond what we’ve always known and test the waters of the vast ocean of opportunity set before us. Freedom of a multitude of choices is the benefit of being human. Maybe we just want to explore the possibilities that are set out before us, only what keeps us from moving out into the great unknown? Fear. Fear and freedom are two opposing words.Fear keeps us from exploring what the Lord has for us.

My mom is a play it safe kinda gal. She’s been a great mom, in her, I know there is security and love and warmth and a safe place to fall if I need to. I know she isn’t going skydiving anytime soon and her big adventures consists of an occasional cruise or an occasional nickel or quarter slot machine in Vegas. She sees danger around the corner and as her daughter, she is always saying to me things like, “You are crazy! You need to remember you have kids!” Mostly it’s when I say things like, I went snorkeling in the Carribbean, (she sees sharks), or parasailing, (she sees a me crashing into the ocean), or a preaching trip to Africa, (she sees me being eaten by a lion) and when I told her that there were signs saying “Beware of Baboons” in Africa, she said, “Well, you BETTER be careful!”, in her mom voice which means business! When my daughter Casey went off to Midwest for college, my mom said, “Are you nuts? That’s too far!” And yet, she is proud of her girls on some levels. There is a streak of adventure in her as she sees an airplane up in the sky and says, “I’d sure like to be on that plane going wherever it’s going.” In those moments her sarcastic daughter (me) wants to say, “What if it’s going to AFRICA?!”

I think she found happiness in her life. She has been bold in her career as moved up the corporate ladder. She loved her career in banking and as promotions and new offers came in she never hesitated to take them. She showed me that my potential was only limited by my fear to go for it!

So where are you today? Are you swimming around in that 180 gallon tank of your life looking past the glass wishing, thinking about, but never taking the chance to swim past? Ask yourself, what the worst that could happen could be? You may fail and have to go back to the tank, but you might make it, and swim past things you never even knew existed. Are you living your life to its full potential or are you allowing fear to trap you? Resolve to live your life without regrets of things you should have done.

Take a chance to travel, take a chance to change careers, if your heart really wants to, take a chance in your life! You may find the freedom you were called to. Listen to that still small voice in your heart that leads the way to big adventures. Listen to it carefully as it guides you. No one ever promised you a safe life but you were promised a life worth living to its fullest!