This We Believe: Freedom Ministry

Oh man.

Hey, I want to welcome our Zion Online family.

Can you put your hands?

I know we've been asking you to put your hands together a lot, so that's why I'm pausing.

But we love those that are streaming online.

There are people that we meet all the time that are like, I'm a part of the Zion Online family.

And so, can we put our hands together?

We love you.

Come on, we can do better than that.

They're streaming right now.

We pray that this message and this worship, um, it just encounters you with God's love and his life-giving presence, and that you get built up in his truth.

Uh, today we're gonna be stepping back into our This We Believe series, and we're going after um really unpacking the core essential beliefs that shape who we become.

And today I want to preach a message about the freedom that Jesus brings.

And uh I want us to actually say this title together.

The message title today is Free Indeed.

Let's say it together.

Free indeed.

And the title of our message and really the content and the context for everything comes from Jesus' words in John chapter 8, verse 36.

John 8:36

He says, So if the Son, he's talking about himself, so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Not kind of free, not free-ish, but totally free, completely free, consistently free.

And we're gonna be talking about the present work of freedom that Jesus offers today.

We're gonna talk a little bit about um how he came to set people free from bondage areas in our life that um are struggles, hurts, and hangups and things that we can't seem to get beyond.

And we just believe as a church that Jesus is still on the freedom business, that Jesus did not just do that 2,000 years ago, but he's setting people free today.

And if you're going through anything, if you're struggling with anything, if there's any hurt hangup or addiction or secret sin or wounds, or we're medicating pain in any way that is uh maybe, maybe not in God's will, man, you can experience the freedom that he offers today.

Amen.

It's an incredible promise, but it also confronts us with the uncomfortable possibility because if Jesus has come to set us free, then why are there still so many areas in our lives where we're still living bound?

Having four little boys has taught me that children have an incredible ability to normalize chaos.

I walk into a room and I see that toys are all over the place, and there's there's dirty laundry and there's half-built forts that they're in the midst of, and there's there's sticky, smelly stuff on the ground that I cannot identify.

And I ask, what's going on in here?

And they go, what's going on with what?

Like I'm the unreasonable one, I'm the crazy one.

Because what what I see as chaos, they have normalized is just another Tuesday.

Any parents out there?

And this is the truth, this is the reality.

If we're honest, adults can do the same thing spiritually.

We can live with fear, carry shame, or repeat a destructive pattern for so long that it just feels like who we are.

We can't imagine a life without it.

We become so accustomed to the mess that we don't even recognize it as bondage.

But Jesus did not come merely to help us become comfortable in our captivity.

He came to bring us out.

I came with good news today.

You don't have to just live managing the sin and destructive patterns in your life.

The gospel is that we who are dead can become alive with Christ, and forgiveness is not just a moment we experience that salvation.

Sanctification means that there can be a momentum of healing and victory in your daily experience.

That's why this theological distinctive matters so deeply to us at Zion Church.

We believe that Jesus still sets people free.

And we have been experiencing this as a community week in and week out.

He doesn't just forgive our sin, he breaks its power.

Jesus heals what's been wounded, he exposes in love what's been hidden, he breaks what has held us back because he wants what's best for our lives.

He brings every part of our lives under the freedom of his lordship.

It raises in us, though, this important question if I genuinely belong to Jesus, why are there still patterns in my life that I can't seem to break?

Why why the wounds?

Why the thoughts?

Why why the influences in my life that that that I know I have freedom, but but all this stuff doesn't look or feel like freedom.

And I just want you to know it doesn't necessarily mean that your salvation is inauthentic.

It means that there may be areas in your life that have not yet been fully surrendered to the healing rule of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, hear me, saves us completely, but we spend the rest of our lives learning to live in what he has given us.

In other words, salvation happens in a moment, but freedom is learned through surrender.

Jesus, he addresses this tension head on in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

And I want you to notice who he's speaking to.

He isn't speaking to outsiders, he's speaking to those who believe in him.

Jesus says, if you hold my teaching, you're really my disciples.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

But listen to their response in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

They say, We are Abraham's descendants, and we've never been slaves of anyone.

How can you say that we shall be set free?

They respond defensively.

They don't respond with curiosity, they respond, they respond with a a like they're they're offended, they're defensive.

Why?

Because they were so comfortable defending the appearance of freedom rather than confronting the possibility of bondage.

And hear me, because bondage doesn't always look like bondage.

Bondage actually can convince us that we're already free.

So Jesus answers.

He says, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

See, they were focused on the change that they could see, and Jesus was confronting the change that they could not see.

It's still true for us.

Just hear me.

The most dangerous strongholds in your life may not be the ones that you're fighting.

It may be the ones that you've stopped noticing.

It may be the stuff that you've become so comfortable with that you just don't even notice that it's causing you wreckage in relationships.

It's causing you dysfunction.

It's causing you depression and anxiety.

It's it's causing you thoughts and feelings of worthlessness and discouragement and disappointment.

It's it's leading to a life of fatalism and defeatism, saying, This is just who I am, and I guess this is what it's like to be a Christian, and I guess this is just how it's supposed to be for me.

See, you cannot walk out of a prison that you refuse to acknowledge.

This is the first step to freedom acknowledging that there are patterns that we all excuse in our lives.

There are wounds that we all avoid.

There is bitterness at times that we justify because it feels good to hold on to that bitterness.

There is fear that we accommodate, there are secrets that we protect.

But hear this and hear the heart of Jesus in this.

Jesus doesn't reveal bondage to embarrass us, he doesn't expose what's hidden so that he can condemn us.

He brings it into the light because he loves us too much to leave us there.

The good news is that the one who is exposing the prison is also the one that is holding the key.

It brings us to the first truth that we believe today, and it's just simply this Jesus came, why?

To set the captives free.

Can I get a witness at the 9:30 service?

He came to set us free.

It's good news.

Look at this.

When Jesus announced his ministry in Luke chapter 4, he said, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, and he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and to set the oppressed free.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Freedom wasn't a side project for Jesus.

Freedom was central to the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus confronted what sin had done to the human experience on a daily basis.

Everywhere he went, darkness lost ground.

He forgave sin.

He healed bodies.

He restored dignity.

He confronted demons and he brought people back into healthy, safe community.

In fact, 1 John 3:8 says, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy, I love that word.

1 John 3:8

Destroy the devil's work.

He came to reverse the curse.

He did not come to improve the conditions of you when you're experiencing jail time.

He came to pull you out.

So if Jesus came to free us, we got to understand what he's freeing us from.

I want to unpack some theology for us today.

Scripture gives us a real and a balanced picture of the battle that we all experience.

The Bible identifies three sources of conflict.

And you're going to see it on the screen.

What we experience in terms of the conflict in our soul is the world around us, the flesh within us, and the devil against us.

The world is in a state that is fallen and broken because of what sin has brought into the human experience.

And so we live in the already but not yet kingdom because Jesus brought the kingdom of God, he inaugurated it at his first coming, he will consummate it, he will complete it at his second coming.

So we're already stepping into the kingdom of God, the newness of the new creation, but it's not already there.

So there is a culture of the world, an ideology of the world, there is a philosophy of the world that is against the will and the word of God.

So every single day there is the world that pressures us to conform to its ways.

Then within us, because of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and their sin, we inherited a sinful nature that scripture says is at war, at odds with our spirit man and our spirit woman.

And so though we are saved and we belong to Jesus, there still is this stuff inside of us that creeps up from time to time.

Usually it's at 10 p.m.

when the ice cream is in the fridge.

It's called the flesh that wants things and craves things and desires things.

And so the flesh pulls us away from God's best.

Then the devil, the devil is real.

It's not a fictitious character with a pitchfork that we just see in caricatures.

There is a very real enemy to our soul that the Bible talks about.

His name is the devil, and he rebelled against God, and so a third of the angels fell.

And the devil and demonic forces, their job is John 10, 10, Jesus says to steal, kill, and destroy.

But Jesus again, he says, I have come to give you life and life to the full.

So here's the war that we're in.

The devil, what does he do?

He's the father of lies.

So he's gonna lie to you.

He's gonna lie about your identity.

He's gonna lie about your worth.

He's gonna accuse you.

He's called the accuser.

He's gonna accuse you and condemn you and make you feel like you're not good enough.

You'll never amount to anything.

He's gonna speak accuracy speaks in the language of lies and accusation.

He's gonna tempt you and he's gonna oppose everything that God wants for your life.

But I do want to say that not every problem requires the same response.

Why?

Because there are at times it's the world, we're dealing with the battle of the world, the flesh, sometimes the devil.

So sometimes we need deliverance, other times repentance or counseling, healing, forgiveness, or new habits.

See, sometimes what you called spiritual warfare was simply just staying up too late, eating the box of nutter butters like me, plus Sour Patch kids.

That combo's amazing, horrible.

And then you forget to set the alarm in the morning, and you wake up and you go, oh man, I'm just uh the enemy, the devil's at me again.

I just feel like ah, I feel a heaviness.

Yeah, it's it's because you pounded ice cream and you didn't stop pounding that gallon of ice cream.

But here's the deal: if we make everything demonic, we avoid responsibility.

If we make nothing demonic, we ignore reality.

We gotta stay balanced in our approach.

And freedom ministry, the ministry of freedom that Jesus offers, is spirit-led, scripture-grounded ministry that helps people identify and remove strongholds so that they can live fully alive as sons and daughters of God.

Whatever the struggle involves, freedom doesn't begin with our strength.

I want you to know freedom begins with what Jesus has already accomplished.

Paul says in Colossians 1 chapter 13 that God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

At the cross, Jesus forgave our sin.

He canceled our debt, he said, it is finished.

And we've preached on what that word tatalisty means.

The debt has been paid in full.

Because scripture tells us that believers still need to consistently repent of sin, turn towards God, allow the Holy Spirit to cleanse us, wash us.

The theological term is sanctify us and renew our minds so that we can actually continually become what we believe.

That's why freedom requires confronting what keeps us bound.

Second Corinthians chapter 10 says the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

And we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

A stronghold is an entrenched pattern of thinking, behaving, or a spiritual influence that resists God's truth and his love.

A stronghold can be developed over um years of just believing lies, repeated sin, unhealed pain, withheld forgiveness, or destructive influences.

And I want you just to think about um your life as a house for a moment.

When Jesus saves you, the deed changes hands.

You belong to him because you've been purchased by the blood of the Lamb.

So you belong to Jesus.

You're filled with his spirit, you're transferred into his kingdom, but there can still be rooms in that house where you're allowing the enemy to operate and create a mess.

And here's what we do just like when guests come over, we clean all the spaces we want them to see, and we shut the doors of those places where we threw everything into.

Don't look there.

Because I don't want you to see that stuff.

I don't want to be exposed for that stuff in that room.

I don't want you to judge me.

I don't want you to condemn me.

I don't want to be humiliated.

So we'll shut those rooms off.

Let me tell you, Jesus doesn't only want ownership of the house, he wants access to every room.

Because any room he doesn't have access to remains unredeemed and unhealed.

Jesus is a fierce advocate for your healing and your wholeness.

He is a fierce advocate for your freedom to live as an overcomer, a victorious one.

That's why he wants access.

He doesn't want access to expose you or humiliate you, but to heal you.

See, Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 4 don't let the sun go down while you're still angry.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Just an example.

And do not give the devil a foothold.

Paul is writing again to Christians.

He's writing to believers who belong to Jesus, but he warns them that unresolved anger can give the enemy an opportunity to get a foothold and begin operating in a room in the house of your life.

And as the enemy gets more and more footholds and handholds, he can begin to form ways of thinking, bitterness, resentment, anger, rage, jealousy, comparison, you know, criticism, comparison, all this stuff in us.

And after a while, if you allow the enemy to have a foothold or a handhold long enough, he will develop and build a stronghold in your life.

And so he's like, Don't give them even, and like don't even let the sun go down if you're still angry at someone.

Text them, reach out to them.

If you're married and you're laying in the same bed, roll over and say, Hey, I'm sorry.

That was dumb.

Men, please, I'm preaching myself.

I needed to do that last night.

But because we want to close that door.

We don't want to open that to the enemy.

We want to surrender that to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

The question is where is the enemy?

And this is personal today, where is the enemy exercising influence, not for your neighbor, not for your spouse, not for someone else, but we all have areas in our life where we're allowing the enemy to have a little bit of this.

Where is that where the enemy is exercising influence?

And how do we bring that area under the Lordship of Jesus Christ to experience freedom, healing, and victory?

I want to give you a simple biblical pathway.

I'm gonna give you five words.

They all start with R because I'm a preacher.

This is what we do, and I want to make it sticky and memorable.

And so the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna recognize.

We're first gonna invite the Holy Spirit to reveal what's really happening.

We're gonna ask the Holy Spirit, why does this keep happening?

Show it to me.

Why does this keep repeating?

What lie have I believed?

What pain have I buried?

What door have I opened?

Freedom, hear me.

It begins with honesty and humility.

It begins with recognizing like what might be holding me back.

If you really want to grow, this is where it begins.

You can't surrender what you refuse to recognize.

So we're gonna recognize.

The second thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna repent.

Once God reveals what's there, we're gonna take responsibility.

For whatever is yours and turn it toward him.

Now I want to pastor you for a moment because not everything that has happened to you or been spoken over your life is stuff that you need to repent from.

You don't need to repent from that stuff.

But we may need to repent from ways that we have responded to trauma, pain, and wounds in our life.

Because for some of us, we have allowed that stuff to then the byproduct of living into it then has been areas where we medicate pain through substances or escaping, or maybe it's turned into anger or rage.

That's the kind of stuff that we need to turn over to God and walk in his freedom in.

And so what we say is, Jesus, I confess this as sin.

Forgive me.

I turn from this way of living and I bring this area back under your authority.

The third thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna renounce.

Repentance turns you toward God.

Renunciation cuts ties with what you're leaving behind.

It's intentionally rejecting every lie, practice, and spiritual influence that's connected to that bondage.

So here's what it looks like in Jesus' name, and these aren't magic words, but this is a deliberate declaration that I no longer have agreement with this, and I am I am bringing my life under allegiance to God.

In Jesus' name.

I renounce bitterness, I renounce shame, I renounce secrecy, I renounce every influence that doesn't belong to this life that is surrendered to you.

This no longer has place in my life.

I belong to Jesus.

The fourth thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna receive.

Because freedom isn't only found in cleaning the room.

The room now has to be filled with the goodness of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the truth of God's word, what he says you are, your new identity in Christ as a son and daughter of the King.

And so now we, Jesus, I receive your grace.

Jesus, I receive your goodness.

Jesus, I receive the blood that was shed on the cross, that forgives me of every sin, that heals every wound, that restores what was broken.

Jesus, I receive your Holy Spirit, I receive your victory, and I receive a new way of thinking and living.

The fifth thing, the fifth R that we're gonna do is we're gonna resist.

We're gonna learn to guard the freedom that God has given us.

James chapter 4, verse 7 says, submit yourselves then to God.

James 4:7

Resist.

If we say resist, resist the devil, and then he will do what?

Flee from you.

Why isn't the devil fleeing from me?

Because you need to put up a fight.

You need to resist.

See, in the gym, it's resistance that builds strength.

Every single time, spiritually, temptation comes to you and you choose obedience.

You choose to resist.

The enemy comes knocking at your door and you refuse to reopen the door.

Guess what you do?

You strengthen your ability to stand.

You strengthen your ability to stand this time and the next time and the next time.

The enemy can keep knocking, but you don't have to let him in.

God wants us to live in his freedom.

Why?

Because Jesus said, whom the Son has set free will be kind of free?

Sometimes free, sometimes bound, free-ish, truly free, at the deepest possible level, free from the generational hurts and hangups and practices and lies that people before us have passed down to us, free from wounds that we keep reacting towards, free from the need to get back at other people that have hurt us, free from a life of secret sin, guilt, and shame, so that we can experience the beauty of healthy relationships where nothing has to hide anymore.

Free at the deepest possible level, whom the Son set free is free indeed.

The reality is that we all are gonna face another battle.

But the battle no longer gets to name you, it no longer gets to own you, and it no longer gets to determine your future.

You are who the son says you are, and he says that you are loved and you are chosen, you are forgiven, and as you're adopted into the family of God, you get to learn to listen to his voice and recognize his truth versus the lies of the enemy.

And as you live into his truth, you get to walk from darkness into light and experience the freedom of the Lord that grows and grows and grows over time.

Would you all stand to your feet right now?

Let's all just quietly stand to our feet.

And as you stand to your feet, would you just close your eyes?

And as you close your eyes, I just want to invite you today.

Would you place your hand on your head or your heart?

We're gonna actually not let this moment pass us by where it's just a sermon that you hear about freedom, but then you walk out unchanged, you walk out and you just go back to business as usual today and the rest of the week.

I want to give you an opportunity to actually begin to make one surrendered step today to step into that freedom.

And so we're gonna just respond.

We're gonna respond and just allow the Holy Spirit to work in the room.

Right now, as you have your hand on your heart or your head, I want you just to ask the Holy Spirit, let's just recognize, Holy Spirit, reveal anything in me, a pattern, a way of thinking, a practice that is holding me back, something that I may not have even defined previously as bondage, but you're revealing to me now that it it is it's been operating for far too long in a room that I have tried to keep hidden to God and to other people, but it's causing wreckage in my life.

And maybe it's just a disturbing feeling in my soul, or I just feel numb.

I feel like I can't be real with other people.

Maybe it's like this imposter syndrome where I feel so fake because of what I'm struggling with that I feel like I can't let people in on God.

We invite you to heal us.

If you have your hand on your on your head, just invite the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what lies you may have been believing.

Maybe it's been sounding in your head like you're just not good enough.

Like God doesn't accept you.

God loves all these other people, but there's no way that He could love you.

Maybe you've been hearing thoughts of disappointment because you feel like a failure in business or in your marriage or parenting.

Maybe there's been secret sins that you just can't reconcile, and there's just been such a lie that you're never going to break free from this.

This is just who you are.

We're gonna recognize that.

Maybe there's pain that you've buried and you haven't realized how much that person actually is still controlling your life.

Now we're just gonna we're gonna repent and we're gonna turn to God.

Say, God, I turn my heart towards you right now.

Forgive me, forgive me for trying to solve this on my own, forgive me for trying to fix it, forgive me for for hiding and acting like acting like it's just gonna work its way out.

Forgive me and bring me into your loving grace, bring me into your lordship, and even right now, just in your own way, begin to renounce.

I break the ties of bitterness, I break the agreements that I've made with anger, I break the agreements that I have made with things like lust and pornography.

I break that agreement, that's not who I am, and that's that's not what you've called me into, God.

I break right now and I renounce guilt and shame.

I break the agreement with it.

God, I I renounce and I break suicidal thoughts over my life, and I receive right now, just begin to receive.

I receive your love, Jesus.

I receive your goodness, I receive your truth, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, that I have a purpose on planet Earth, I receive the love that I've been chosen by you, that I am a masterpiece in your eyes.

That's what you say I am.

I receive that truth that I am not forgotten, that you see me and you love me and you're pleased with how you made me, and you got a big plan for my life.

I receive the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, I receive you.

Renew my mind, renew the yeah, just I'm even seeing it right now.

He wants to renew the neuropathways in your mind, and he wants to transform the way that you think and the way that you see.

And God, as I receive, give me the power to resist, give me the power to resist the evil one.

Man, I feel it.

Give me, Holy Spirit, your divine power to demolish strongholds in my life.

Not by my will, not by my strength, but by the power of the Spirit, says the Lord.

He's gonna demolish strongholds and accusations and areas of condemnation in your mind and in your life, and he is going to destroy the works of the devil in your family.

He is gonna take generational curses and things that were passed down to you, and he is gonna restore things so that you're gonna pass on a brand new story to your kids and your grandkids.

So we thank you for the resistance that brings victory.

God, we thank you for that.

Victory is in your name, Jesus Christ.

Not in our power, but in your name.

Whom the Son has set free is free indeed.

We believe it and we receive it in Jesus' name.

Amen.