When I (Lacey) was 12, I got my first pair of glasses.
They were pink tortoise shell.
I have reddish-blonde hair, freckles, and very fair skin, so this was an unfortunate choice. Apparently my mother did not love me enough to intervene.
But I loved those glasses.
Mostly because for the first time, I could see.
On the drive home, I kept pulling them on and off my face, amazed that there were actual words on billboards and details on buildings I had never noticed before.
Nothing around me had changed.
I had.
Or more specifically, my lenses had.
I think we all walk through life wearing lenses. Some were formed in childhood. Some came through rejection, loss, betrayal, or disappointment. Others came from moments we barely remember.
And without realizing it, we begin interpreting everything through them.
Someone leaves, and the lens says: Everyone leaves.
Someone rejects us, and the lens says: There must be something wrong with me.
Someone we trusted hurts us, and the lens says: People aren’t safe.
And sometimes those lenses even change the way we see God.
We can love Jesus and still struggle to believe that God is actually good. That He really delights in us. That we can trust Him. That freedom, peace, and wholeness aren’t just promises for someday when we get to heaven.
Jesus spent a lot of time challenging the way people saw things.
He was constantly saying, essentially: There is another Kingdom. There is another way. What you have experienced is real, but it doesn’t get to define what is true.
That is really the heart behind Cultivate Ministries’ Freedom Groups.
For 6 weeks, we walk together through the process of identifying some of the lenses we have picked up along the way — recognizing wounds, confronting lies, and allowing God to show us what is actually true.
Not because your story doesn’t matter.
But because your wounds were never meant to write the rest of it.
And you don’t have to do that work alone.
Freedom Groups create a safe place to walk through this process alongside other people who are doing the same thing.
Maybe it is time to take off a lens you didn’t even realize you were wearing.
Because freedom isn’t only something God has promised you someday.
It is for you. It is here. And it is now.
Learn more about our Freedom Groups by visiting CultivateMinistries.com/Freedom-Groups
With love and hope,
Lacey
