1 John 1:7
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
One day I was on my way home from speaking at my friend’s church in Huntsville when I saw a sign that read “Independence Cemetery.” It reminded me of a time in my life a few years ago when I was lost and alone in spiritual darkness. It was my first year in college and I saw myself as independent. I was on my own, which meant no rules!! I could eat cake for breakfast because my mom wasn’t there to tell me I couldn’t. I also felt like because I had no church community or accountability, I had a little more free reign on what I could do. Nobody knew that I was the “church girl” because I thought that I was given the chance to “create my new identity.” I was i-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-t! In my naive mind, I didn’t need community (people telling me what I should or shouldn’t do) and I didn’t want God’s list of rules that held me back from my “freedom.” Oh brother, was that further from the truth? In my independence from like-minded believers and God, I found myself depressed and had daily suicidal thoughts from a lack of purpose or fulfillment from the world.
Identity is everything. Prior to really walking with God, I only knew who He was, but didn’t dig to find out who I was in Him — my true identity. Through neglecting to find my identity in Christ (a daughter of the one true King), I attempted to “create my new identity” by becoming what I thought a college student should be — young, wild, and free as pop culture would tell me. Every morning I would check my social media to see who liked my posts and if my follow count went up or down. Minutes later I would also contemplate whether or not I wanted to live. There was a whirlwind of things surrounding me that made me question for months if I even had a purpose. While people on Instagram I had never met “liked” me, people I thought were my friends abandoned me, switched up and left, and were flat-out cruel to me. I sought validation and identity from tiny symbols on a screen rather than from our Almighty God who, by the way, created the whole universe. While I was surrounded by terrible thoughts looming around me, God was still right there with me waiting for me to look up and see Him as He sang over me. *Cue Upperroom* “It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by You.”
Running away from God’s love to pursue heart emojis left me isolated and feeling spiritually dead, because I was. This allowed the enemy to whisper lies into my ear. “Don’t read your Bible or else you’ll be a hypocrite. Don’t go to church because those people are way more righteous than you. Don’t pray because God is angry at you for walking away from Him. You’ve sinned too many times for God to ever love you. You wanted your independence and that’s just what you got. You’re screwed.” And I believed it for too long. I was in the Independence Cemetery — dead with no church community, no fellowship with believers, and shying away from accountability. In my “freedom” I was actually in bondage.
I was not the first person to be isolated. In fact, when Adam was the only human to exist in the garden, the Lord God even stated in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” It was God’s intention for us to be in community with Himself and each other, but that’s the opposite of what Satan wants for us, so he will do anything he can to keep that from happening. In Genesis 3, we see how the devil has planned to separate us through lies and distortion of God’s Word from the beginning. When Adam and Eve were clearly commanded not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan deceived them to put man against each other. God’s design for community was severed, and Adam and Eve blamed each other for bringing sin into the world. Due to man being separated from each other and from God, there had to be something done about it to reunite us. God had it all already figured out.
When we failed time and time again at trying to obey the law of Moses, God was planning to do something drastic to take the burden off of us and put it on Jesus; God sent His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we may be in fellowship with God and learn how to be in community with believers. All the shame is paid for too, by the way. Romans 8:38-39 says, “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We weren’t meant to be independent from God or others. He created us for community and to be free of shame, not conviction. He always wants us to feel His love. Hebrews 12:5-6 says, “And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
If the enemy has convinced you that you are too far gone, that God wants you to clean yourself up before getting into His presence, that He’s mad at you, or whatever else you’re believing that isn’t aligned with God’s heart, please know that they are lies. In your isolation, you will find it incredibly hard to stop sinning. The lack of accountability will feel like you have a little leeway to sin. Sin only leaves you feeling dead, but Jesus came to bring you life more abundantly. In the backwards way of the kingdom, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” as Matthew 16:25 says. When we die daily to our own sins, meaning we crucify our flesh and don’t always get what we want, we actually get to have freedom from the deadly snare of sin and live in the light. So, maybe independence cemetery doesn’t just mean isolation breeds spiritual death; in our death to our sin, we actually find freedom in Christ. That’s the only kind of Independence Cemetery I want to find myself in.