You're Not Naked

In the past weeks, a group of the most lovely, Jesus-like people I’ve ever known have stumbled into some conflict amongst themselves.

With desperate eyes, pleading voices, and even pointing fingers, my faith heroes said, “Kacy, you must tell us and our leader what to do and how to run the feeding program.” They proceeded to outline a list of specifics that they expected us at Ten Thousand Homes to assume power over. 

I was devastated.

They were asking to be enslaved. Again.

Because, almost 20 years after apartheid ended, this is still new.

Oppression covers and smothers like a cloak. You learn how to live under it. 

Freedom still feels naked.

All the promises that Freedom made from the cross have come, but they are still coming.

Freedom removes what smothers and give you breath.

But freedom isn’t naked.

Freedom’s Spirit comes. It clothes and fastens to our own spirits – our mantle of promise and our guarantee that fully dressed, robed with righteousness, crowned in glory freedom is coming.

Last week, I was picking up a friend in a local community to give her and her baby a lift into town. I was going anyway and was happy to save her the long wait for the taxi to fill before it would leave for town. (Local taxis are similar to 15-passenger vans that wait until they are completely full so the driver can make maximum profits. It should also be noted that they aren’t typically known for being highly reputable businesses.)

Before she could even close the door, my car was surrounded and the whole road was blocked off with taxis. They told me I was stealing business from them. And that I didn’t have a permit to take people to town.

Anger and injustice flared in me from a voice I didn’t even know. “She is MY FRIEND! This is MY car!”

Truth and justice did not win that day. The taxi barricade would not budge until that sweet lady and her baby crawled out of my car. The taxi drivers are oppressing their own people.

Oppression is coming from the inside out.  

We dispense what’s in us.

Tears and rage carried me into town that day over a seemingly meaningless occurrence, but one that screamed out the reality around me.

People who were designed in Freedom’s image are waking up and clothing themselves with chains, with weapons and words of vengeance.

You can be given the gift of freedom, but you have to know Freedom to be free.

Otherwise, you just have a different platform to exploit and to be exploited.

The oppressed oppress. The slaves enslave.

Stories and circumstances can strip us down to nothing.

But the Truth that sets us free adorns us and covers us with what lasts.

Remember the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

(Here’s a reminder in case some of you did not have the good fortune of growing up in a family that considers children’s literature a lifestyle.)

That king wanted to prove his superiority by flaunting the greatest garments. It was irresistible for the emperor to hear that someone was knocking at his door offering to make clothing that only the wise and competent would be able to see.

People of all status and stature did not want to be incompetent. So they ooed-and-awed over invisible clothes. The king pompously paraded his stark naked butt through town to the cheers of praise of pretending people.

Until that one kid spoke up.

      “A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

      "The Emperor is naked," he said.”

It’s a good story. With a great moral.

You don’t have to get dressed by the words and measurements of the world.

You don’t even have to prove your competence or worthiness. In fact, you can’t.

There’s an even better story and an even better moral. It’s a story of Freedom entering into oppression and cutting off the chains for you. And dressing you in freedom’s garments from the inside out – where chains can’t reach and lies can’t smother.

If you read far enough you’ll know…

Just in case you don’t…

(Spoiler alert)

YOU’RE NOT NAKED!

If you bow before Freedom, He will give you new clothes.

The parade, the people, the humiliating back-story won’t matter. You have a king who’s done it all.

The King of Kings was stripped naked.

He was paraded through town with a cross on his back.

And no one spoke up.

That formerly-naked carpenter king carried your suffering and oppression to the grave. And then He stood up, shook off the grave’s clothes, and put on Freedom’s garments.

We don’t have to put on slave clothes.

We don’t have to wear chains.

Stories of the past have no grip on the promises for today and for tomorrow.

I’m asking today to not feel naked in this thing called freedom.

I’m asking for me, for my friends here, and for one little boy among thousands who is still waiting on one piece of paper to unlock opportunity.

Freedom has come. And Freedom is coming.