Free

Well, good morning again.

Uh, if it's your first time at his hands, welcome.

We are so glad to have you here.

We're family.

If you haven't figured that out by now, we love people.

We love Jesus, and we exist to love people to Jesus.

That's why we're here.

Uh, Jennifer is one of those people.

And actually, I just want to take a second to can can we put our hands together for all the people that help out uh in the nursery and all our other kids' areas this morning.

You know, one of the things that we've always been passionate about as a church is being a very volunteer-led church.

We have very, very few staff members, and we have so many incredible people that are giving of themselves, they're giving their talents, their time, their energy.

Um, this month, for the rest of this month, we're gonna be focusing on a lot of our areas, a lot of the volunteer areas here at the church that you can be part of.

And so if if this is your home, if this is your family, but you're not on a team, I want to encourage you to sign up.

Uh, you don't have to sign up for the nursery, it may not be where you fit, but we have a team and you do fit.

At the Connect Desk, every Sunday we've got people to help you find what team you fit on.

And there's there's flow charts, there's all kinds of things, questions you can look at, say, okay, well, I'm more of a quiet behind-the-scenes person, but I like things like this, and we'll find your spot.

Uh, but I want to encourage you this morning to join a team if you haven't yet.

Uh, the nursery would be a great place to start because what happens in there is powerful, it's real, and we get to see some of the results of it.

When these kids uh follow through, get baptized, and go on with Jesus.

That's that's usually the result of years of investing in them.

And I know we have about 130 plus people that volunteer on our nursery team.

Uh we could always use more, especially as we grow, because we keep growing, we keep opening up new classrooms and all that.

And so if you could join that team, that'd be a great one.

They'll give you the details about the time commitments and whatnot out there.

It's super manageable, but it's important.

So sign up today if you'd like to.

I also want to take a second and just say thank you to everyone who's uh who's praying, everyone who's investing financially.

I know we have so many people here who who give to support what his hands is doing.

And if you're new, we don't pass a plate or a bucket.

We give 10% of everything that comes in here back to the community, no strings attached.

Um, but many of you give, and you give sacrificially.

You give, and you could use that money for something else.

I actually got a story about that in uh a few weeks ago.

I got an email.

I don't get emails like this.

It was only two sentences, three sentences tops, but it it like floored me.

I want to I want to read this to you, and I got permission from this gentleman to do this because this blessed me and inspired me.

He said that uh he's been dealing with an alcohol addiction.

And he's wanting to be free of that, and he said that he's making some big choices to be free of that.

He said he feels like he needs chains around him to keep him from going back to alcohol, which is which is kind of interesting because he's actually having chains come off of him at the same time.

But here's what he said the struggle is beginning, meaning the struggle to be free.

I'm happy this week to have given my beer money to the church.

How cool is that?

I mean, honestly, that that's that's real.

This man saying, hey, I want to be done with this, and so you know what?

I'll I'll just give, I'll give to the church what I would spend on this addiction that I have.

And it's interesting because it's a mutually beneficial thing.

He's giving to the church, and the church is gonna use that, and we're gonna bless people and help people, but he's receiving it at the same time, he's it's helping him, and that's how it always is when we give.

And so I just encourage you.

We've got four four stations at the back.

You can give online.

Keep supporting this church.

If that's something you haven't done yet, no pressure.

Give if you feel led to.

But I believe God calls us to give, and he calls us all to be like a family and to chip in and make it work, and you guys are amazing at that.

So keep it up and let's keep seeing what God's gonna do with it.

Let's uh, can we pray one more time?

We've prayed a lot this morning.

Is that okay?

Because it's important, I think.

God, you know, needs to be here.

Um, Jesus, thank you again for this uh this church, these people.

Thank you mostly for you and what you're doing through us and and for us every single day.

Help us as we as we dig into your word, help us connect with what you have for us.

And we ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Anyone in the room, and you don't have to raise your hand.

Um this you can if you want.

It's up to you.

There's freedom here.

Uh anyone hates surprises?

You're the kind of person that, yeah, yeah, okay.

You're you're the person that says, I don't want a surprise party for my birthday.

And when I say that, I don't mean that I I want you to throw me a surprise party.

I'm not hinting, I'm saying that I really don't want you to throw me a surprise party for my birthday.

A lot of us might be like that.

I I don't hate surprises so much.

It just depends on what the surprise is.

You know, a surprise party, that's okay, because I like I like parties, I like to have fun.

So if you know you throw me a surprise party, awesome, great.

I wish I would have known, I would have dressed differently, maybe, who knows?

But I'm at a party, I'm pretty happy.

A surprise physical, very different experience.

Like I don't want, it depends on what the surprise is.

But I'll say this, I think I'm like most people, I would guess, is that for the most part, we may not love surprises, we may not hate them, but for the most part, we would just rather life go as expected.

We would rather things work out the way we think they're gonna work out.

We'd rather sort of know what's gonna happen ahead of time and have things mesh with our expectations.

The problem is, life doesn't tend to go as expected.

Has there been one week of your life that has gone exactly as expected?

My guess is no.

When's the last time something didn't live up to your expectations?

Has it been a while?

Years ago?

That's that's a pretty normal experience, right?

It might be something small.

It might be that there's a movie out and you have a friend that says, you've got to go see this movie.

It's amazing, it's incredible.

And so you're inspired and you take your friend's advice, you spend the money, you spend the time, and an hour in you realize that your friend has terrible taste in movies.

And you are never, ever going to take their advice again.

At least about that, because the the hype was greater than the reality.

Your expectations were high and the movie didn't live up to them, but that happens in so many areas of life.

I think it it's really easy to think about it with children.

If we all go back to our childhood and think about those times where we got so excited about something.

We thought something was magical, we thought something was real, we thought something was gonna be incredible, and the reality just didn't match our expectations.

It didn't meet them.

My son's five, and he's starting to be marketed to.

I'm realizing that now.

Because we'll watch cartoons together, totally for him, not to like let me relive my childhood with Ninja Turtles or anything like that.

It's all for him.

Um, but we'll watch cartoons together, and and these commercials will come on for toys, and and he is the target audience.

They are marketing to him, and it is working.

It is working really well.

His eyes will be glued, and it's not uncommon for him to look at me and just say, Dad, can we can we get that?

And I'll be honest, there are even some commercials that make me want to buy it to play with him, but then there are others where I can tell, I can tell that whatever's being sold is not nearly as good as the commercial is making it out to be.

No way.

And if I bought that for him, I know I'd bring it home and he'd be excited because his expectations are high.

They've been set by this very expensive and well-crafted piece of marketing, but when he'd open it and he'd play with it, it would lose its luster so quickly because it's just not as good as it was made out to be.

I remember being a kid, I loved video games.

I kind of lived for video games as a kid.

Uh part of that's because of the generation I'm part of.

I was born in 1983, so if you were, if you were seven in 1990, okay, and you had a Nintendo, that was that was amazing.

That was the pinnacle of life.

I had a friend named John Mackenzie, and uh, John might listen to this.

I don't know, I haven't seen him since the second grade, so probably not.

But I'll just be honest, I didn't really like John very much.

Um but John had more Nintendo games than any child I had ever seen, and so I would be at John's house every day.

It was all for the Nintendo games.

Sorry, John.

It's the way it was.

I I loved it.

Another part of why I love those was because of my older brother.

I I was I have an older brother that's eight years older than me.

And so if if you have an older brother that's eight years older than you, if you're seven and he's 15, he is by default the coolest person alive.

But if he's 15 and you're seven, by default, you're the most annoying person alive.

That's just how it works.

So it's kind of hard.

You want to spend all your time with him, he wants to spend none of his time with you.

When I was seven and he was 15, he was in a really bad car accident, and I was too young to realize the seriousness of the situation.

But but he came very close to losing his life, and he had to have surgeries on his legs and other areas, and he was really immobilized for about a year, which I'm sure for him was the worst year of his life, because he couldn't run away from me anymore.

But for me, being seven and not really understanding the gravity of it, I just knew that my brother was hurt and that he really couldn't do anything but sit on the couch and play video games with me.

And so I had a really good year that year.

And and actually, some of my best memories as a kid with my brother are those memories, sitting down, playing games with him on the couch.

It's where I felt kind of like his equal, and I never felt like that at other times.

So video games had a special place in my heart, and I measured money with video games.

They were$50 back then, they're a little more expensive now.

But if you gave me$25, my brain just said half a video game.

Sweet, I'm almost there.

If you gave me$100, I would say, what two video games should I buy?

And so I'd save up money, I'd have$50, and my mom and dad would let me go to Toys R Us and buy a game.

And I have these memories, and they're distinct.

And I remember these long aisles at Toys R Us.

They're probably not as long as I remember them to be.

And I'd walk down the aisle and I'd pick out my game.

And the only thing I had to go by to make my decision were the boxes.

The boxes on the front of the game, the artwork that was made to get you to buy the game.

That was it.

That was my only reference point.

And I remember this one year, I was eight years old, and I bought a game for my Nintendo called Dragon Warrior.

Okay, now if you're eight, Dragon Warrior is a really good title.

My son's five, he wants to be three things when he grows up: an astronaut, or a ninja, or a knight.

Those are the three career paths that he's he's really looking into.

Um I'm not sure of the earning potential in knights these days, I don't know, but but that's what he wants.

If he would have seen this box, he would have been just like me.

Because here's a picture of it.

This is the picture of the box.

I'm eight years old.

I mean, look at this.

You've got this dragon, and there's fire, and there's a knight with a red cape, and it's blowing in the wind, and a shield and a sword, and I looked at this and I was sold.

Here's my$50, give me my dragon warrior.

And when I got home, the level of disappointment that I experienced is I I can't even describe it to you, so I'm gonna show you.

This is what the game actually looked like when you played it.

I mean, technology's come a long way.

It's come a long way, but no, you know, and and that was fifty dollars.

And when you're when you're eight, fifty dollars, it takes a long time to recoup that, and so you know, ah, Dragon Warrior, it's a bad, bad thing.

My expectations were here, and the reality was something far, far less.

We do not like it when things do not live up to our expectations.

That's not enjoyable, that's not optimal.

Because our expectations are very important to us, they give us a measure of control.

Let's be honest, we we don't like it when something is simply different than expected.

It's not that it's necessarily worse than our expectations.

If something is just different than what we expect it to be, we have a hard time with that.

It's hard for us to process that.

That's why God can be very difficult for us to relate to sometimes, because he is different than we expect.

We just sang that song, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

That word holy means set apart, it means different.

That's us saying, God, you're you're different, you're greater, you're bigger, you're mightier, you're so completely above us.

God is he's different than us.

He often doesn't match our expectations.

He blows them out of the water, but he doesn't match them.

And we tend to like life best when what we expect to happen happens.

See, our expectations can be crippling at times.

Our expectations can kind of hold us captive, and there are moments in life where we find ourselves to be very disappointed, very frustrated, but it's actually not what's happening to us that's causing the frustration, it's the expectations we have going in.

And if we could see past those expectations, if we could put them aside, we'd finally be able to see clearly, but we can't.

It's hard.

We spent the last month in a series called Who Do You Think You Are?

We're looking at who God says we are in Scripture, and we're gonna move on to a new series in two weeks.

That's always exciting, it's always fun to do something new, but but I have had a blast in this series because it's been amazing to discover who God says we are, to look at who God tells us we are.

God has a higher opinion of us than we can really process.

God thinks more highly of you than you think of yourself.

No one has ever believed in you more than God.

God tells us in Scripture that we are more than we would ever claim to be.

He says we're mighty and we're made to conquer life, that life is not supposed to conquer us, but the other way around.

He tells us that we're equipped for everything, that there's not one thing life can throw at us that he has not equipped us to handle if we will trust him and use what he's given us.

That's that's amazing.

He tells us we're royalty.

The king of the universe says that we are royalty, that's unbelievable.

Jesus tells us in John chapter 8, verse 36, that we're free.

John 8:36

He adds to our sense of identity, he adds to our understanding of who we are by telling us that we are free.

He says, so if the Son, talking about himself, if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.

God tells us who we are.

And in this moment, he tells us that we are free.

No one's clapping, and that's okay, you shouldn't right now, because we hear that, and we're Americans, we know we're free.

We're free, we're like, yeah, I do what I want.

I'm free, but the people that Jesus was talking to, the people that first heard Jesus say this, they didn't have our freedom.

They were not free.

Freedom was something they craved, freedom was something they they longed for.

And so to hear Jesus say this must have instilled such joy and passion and excitement in them because the one thing they longed for was freedom.

The problem, though, is that what Jesus meant by free, and what Jesus means by being truly free, it's different than what they expected.

And they're no different than us.

They have a really hard time when things do not match their expectations.

See, the people of Israel at this time wanted more than anything to have political freedom, to be a sovereign nation.

They had not been a sovereign nation in almost 700 years.

Most of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 700 BC, then in 600 BC, Judah, this last portion of Israel was conquered as well, and from that point on they just changed hands.

It's the Persians, it's the Greeks.

Right now it's Rome when Jesus steps onto the scene.

And what they long for is freedom.

They want to be free, they want Rome to go away, they want to have their independence.

That they believe is the key to their fulfillment and their joy.

That will let them be who they want to be in life.

And they didn't arrive at this concept of freedom in a vacuum.

They were promised freedom by God.

There were all these prophecies about the Messiah.

This person who was gonna come, who was gonna rescue God's people.

This person who was gonna come and set them free.

And these these prophecies spoke often of freedom.

In fact, Jesus used one of these prophecies to sort of announce who he was to the people in his hometown.

He read from the book of Isaiah, which had been written centuries early.

We see this in Luke chapter 4, verse 18.

Luke 4:18

He says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.

So Jesus says this, and here's the thing, it it falls on deaf ears.

Because they've heard this before.

They've heard this story before.

In fact, Jesus is from this area called Galilee, wasn't a very large area, and just a few years earlier, 25 years earlier, a man in Galilee named Judas made the same claim.

And so he raised a small army and he led that army against Rome, and it was very unsuccessful.

That army was crushed, that rebellion was crushed, and so the people's hopes were lifted for a while that they're finally gonna have freedom because of Judas of Galilee.

And now all of a sudden comes Jesus of Galilee, and he's using the same language, and they say, Well, hold on.

We've heard this before, we'll see.

But then Jesus starts to do some things that Judas did not do.

He starts to heal people, perform miracles.

Part of that prophecy, apart from freedom, was blindness, that the Messiah would heal the blind, and so Jesus starts healing people of blindness, and all of a sudden people's expectations get up again.

They're very excited.

They're fine with the blindness thing.

They're like, yeah, that's great for the blind people, but if he's doing that, maybe he's gonna do that other part.

He's gonna set us free, he's gonna raise an army, and they're watching Jesus, and he's you know, he's recruiting a few fishermen here and there.

It doesn't seem like an army at this point, but maybe these are gonna be his like his core guys or something like that.

This is just the start.

But as time goes on, Jesus takes a detour from their expectation of the Messiah.

There's no talk of an uprising, there's no there's no recruitment of an army, there's no revolution at hand.

Jesus doesn't even really talk about the Roman government much.

There's a time when the Pharisees come to him and they ask about taxation, which was a loaded question.

Because Judas of Galilee led his revolt at a time of intense taxation, that's what prompted that rebellion.

They want to see what Jesus thinks, and Jesus says, Well, hey, do you have a coin?

They hand him a coin.

He says, Whose picture is on this coin?

They said, Well, Caesar.

He said, Okay, we'll just give to God what's God's, give to Caesar what's Caesar's.

There you go.

And that is not the answer they wanted.

They wanted Jesus to show his hand.

They wanted Jesus to say, Don't worry about taxes much longer.

I'm about to take care of this whole Rome problem.

And he did not do that.

And so it left them at a loss.

It left them questioning whether or not Jesus could be the Messiah because he was different.

His goals seemed different than what they expected.

This even happened amongst his closest followers.

There was a man named John the Baptist who was Jesus' cousin.

He baptized Jesus, he set the stage for Jesus.

In fact, Jesus' very first disciples became his disciples because they were John's disciples.

And one day Jesus walks by them, and John just says, You guys should follow him.

And they left.

And they followed Jesus.

But even John had doubts.

Even John began to question whether or not Jesus was the Messiah because Jesus was not matching John's expectation.

We see this in Luke chapter 7, verse 20.

Luke 7:20

It says John's two disciples found Jesus and said to him, John the Baptist sent us to ask, are you the Messiah we've been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?

You know when people ask you a question, it's technically a question, but it's really a criticism.

Just masked in a question.

That happens pretty often.

That's exactly what this is.

Are you the Messiah we've been expecting, or should we look for someone else?

And this must have caused Jesus to pause for a moment because this is an interesting question.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, I am the Messiah.

Jesus could have said, but no, I am not the Messiah you've been expecting.

In fact, I'm very different from your expectation.

See, the the Jewish people expected the Messiah to be a conquering hero, someone who would shed blood to free people from their oppression.

And Jesus is that.

He is the conquering hero.

He did shed blood to free people from oppression.

It's that the blood he shed was his own, and the oppression that he freed us from was an oppression far greater than the oppression of some nation or some king.

Jesus tells them that.

If we go back to John 8, the verse we looked at earlier and give it some context.

In verse 34, Jesus replies, I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever.

So if the son sets you free, you are truly free.

And Jesus is saying, Yes, I've come to set you free.

Free, but not from some government, those come and go, empires rise and fall.

I have come to set you free from the power of sin inside of you.

And when the people heard that, they said, Okay, that's not really what we want.

And I understand their frustration.

I understand how they must have felt like this is not a situation where my expectations aren't being matched.

They must have felt like their expectations were not being met.

That Jesus, that the Messiah, was not living up to their expectations because they believed that all of their problems were outside of them.

They believed that what was really holding them back in life was the external.

And then if the Messiah would just conquer the external, then they'd be free.

But Jesus, he knew differently.

This was not spin.

This is not a cop-out for Jesus to say, no, no, no, the freedom you've been promised, it's freedom from the inside.

It wasn't a cop-out, it was the truth.

And you know what's interesting is we're the proof of that.

Because we have everything the Israelites wanted at this time.

We have that freedom.

We are the most externally free group of people that have ever lived in the context of history, which is great.

We should clap for that.

Because that freedom, that freedom was fought for.

But are we truly free?

Because freedom means that you're unhindered.

Freedom means that you're unleashed.

Freedom means that there is nothing holding you back because that's what oppression does.

Oppression holds on to you.

Oppression keeps you from moving forward.

Freedom means there's nothing holding us back from living the life we dream of.

There's nothing holding us back from being who we believe we ought to be.

We have all the external freedom in the world, but do we feel free?

Do we feel unhindered in our lives?

Do we feel like there's nothing holding us back?

Or do we tend to feel stuck?

Like there is something keeping us in check.

And if we're honest with ourselves, if we examine our lives and say, okay, those things that hold me back, are they outside of me or are they internal?

It's very easy to focus on those external things.

If my boss was a different person, if I made more money, maybe we're single and we think if we had that perfect person.

Because our expectations in romance are set by romantic comedies, right?

Mr.

Darcy is not real.

Okay?

I just want to say that now.

Watch my share of pride and prejudice.

That man is not a real man.

Doesn't exist, okay?

So we have these expectations that get set, and our culture just tells us these silly things, like you're gonna meet your other puzzle piece.

And you're gonna fit perfectly together.

You're gonna compliment each other, and it'll just be, oh, it's a match made in heaven.

And what we find is that we're not two puzzle pieces that fit together.

We're like two porcupines shoved into each other.

And that is that is love.

Right?

Truth hurts sometimes.

It's true.

See, our expectations they cause us to experience disappointment that we should never experience.

But if we know the truth on the front end, that's when we have the capacity to go into life and to live life with the right perspective.

One of my biggest blessings in life happened right before I got married.

I was uh interning at a church in Kansas City, Missouri, and pastor's name was Roy.

And Roy, I spent some time with him, and Roy was, he was one of the guys that would just tell you like it is, he just hit you right between the eyes.

And uh and we were hanging out one day, and this guy was talking about his marriage, and I was about to get married, so I was all ears.

And this guy said, you know, I'll just be honest, my my wife and I are struggling, she just doesn't make me happy anymore.

And Roy just said, Hey, do you know the Bible?

And this guy said, Yeah, pretty well.

He said, All right, great.

Find in the Bible where it tells me that that's her job.

So women are all the women are clapping.

They're like, Yes! Yes, Lord, amen, amen.

And you know what's funny is I sat there and I was kind of like, oh wow, like whoa.

But it's interesting because I really did believe that if you have the right person, they make you happy.

And Roy took that expectation away.

And he helped me realize that marriage is really hard.

And if you go into marriage knowing that it is a journey, it's an adventure, it has ups and downs, but you gotta fight for it.

That was the perspective that he gave me.

And I believe, had I not had that perspective going in, I don't believe Megan and I, I don't believe it would have worked.

It's because the expectation had to be changed.

We might have the expectation that the solutions in our lives are outside of us.

That if we had more external freedom, then we'd really be who we think we should be.

But Jesus is telling us the same thing he told the people in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

The freedom you need is freedom from something internal.

You need freedom from the power of sin.

The power of sin is that that force within you that causes you to go where God does not want you to go.

That force inside of you that you feel at conflict with, and the fact that you have this issue with sin, and the word sin just means missing the mark, it just means not measuring up to the standard.

The fact that you have this issue, it's not your fault.

You were born this way.

There are people that believe, and we're all entitled to beliefs, and I'm not trying to challenge that if that's yours, but there are people that believe that we're not born with sin.

And I just don't think those people have children, personally, because I've never had to teach my son how to sin.

I've never had to tell my son, hey, if if if you really want something, and you ask mom and she says no, go to dad and ask it in a little different way.

Just play us against each other.

That'll really work.

Do that.

I've never had to tell him that, but he's figured it out.

And he's good at it.

He's so good at it.

If I'm honest with myself, what has held me back in life, what has caused me to feel stuck, what still causes me to feel stuck in my life has nothing to do with what's outside of me.

It has everything to do with what's inside of me.

The person who holds me back is me.

And what I need desperately is to be free, and I need the freedom that Jesus promises.

I need the freedom from the power of sin.

I know there are some of us here today that feel like we're never gonna have freedom.

We've been battling the same thing for years.

It may be an addiction.

It may be some obvious addiction, one of the usual suspects, it's drugs, it's alcohol, it's pornography, it's sexual promiscuity, or maybe it's one of those addictions that is an addiction, but no one calls it an addiction.

Like when you can't go five minutes in a day without looking at a screen with your phone or your tablet or your computer, and you can't, you can't handle life if you're not constantly looking at the next thing you want to buy to have happiness, the next house, the next car.

You're just living in the next, can't live in the moment because you're always in the future, thinking something else will buy you happiness and you buy it, but it doesn't.

Those are addictions.

We get addicted to entertainment, we get addicted to so many things.

There are too many addictions to list.

Maybe it's not an addiction, maybe you feel captive by anxiety, by depression, by fear.

And you've battled this for a long time and you wonder if you're ever going to be free.

But I want you to know this morning that you absolutely will.

And you should never give up hope that you have freedom available to you because Jesus has already won your freedom.

He's already won it for you.

What we have to learn, and it's so challenging.

But it's completely possible.

What we have to learn is how to walk in the freedom that Jesus has provided.

I have done a really poor job of that in my life.

I battled in addiction for 12 years, 15 years, something like that.

And it's it's interesting.

Uh, when I look back at when my addiction was doomed, when freedom won in my life, it's not the day I admitted that I had an addiction.

That took a long time.

That didn't happen for like 10 years to where I could actually say, yes, I have an addiction.

And it wasn't when I decided to get counseling.

That was a big win.

That was a great battle won that day.

It wasn't when I decided to come clean with Megan about my addiction.

That was a big step forward for sure.

It wasn't even the last time that I struggled and I fell short and I finally said no more.

That was not the day that my addiction was doomed.

The day my addiction was doomed is the day Jesus entered my life.

And I want you to know that if Jesus is in your life, that's thank you.

If Jesus is in your life, anything within you that holds you back, anything within you that has you stuck, that has you feeling captive, it is doomed to fail.

100% doomed to fail.

We looked at this verse a few weeks ago.

2 Corinthians 3.17 says, For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Last week we talked about the fact that God's Spirit is in you.

If you have given your life to Jesus, God's Spirit comes into you.

And we have to learn how to make more room for his spirit to grow inside of us.

Sometimes we we relegate it to very small areas, we give it a very small box to live in.

But the more we let the Spirit of God loose in our lives, the more room we make for the Spirit of God, the more freedom wins.

But there will be a day where you are 100% free, that that day may not happen.

This side of heaven.

But I also don't want to hedge and pretend like, oh, it's only going to be in heaven when we experience true freedom, because I don't think that's true.

I don't believe that's what Jesus is saying.

I believe that there is more freedom available to us in this life than we can imagine.

And that we all have the capacity to grow in our relationship with God to a point where the things that have us bound are gone forever.

Whether it's a mentality, whether it's an addiction, whether it's whether it's anything that you battle with, no matter what, that that thing, that force, it is destined to die because Jesus is in you.

And where Jesus is, there's freedom.

So you will be free.

You absolutely will be free of whatever that is that holds you back.

And you can take that to the bank, you can be excited about that, you can know that freedom belongs to you.

Jesus has told you that you are free.

And we can leave right now.

We can all yell we're free, we can sing a song that says free about a hundred times and be really excited, but the hard thing, the challenging thing is that many of us might say this.

I've been following Jesus for years, and I'm still dealing with the same stuff.

So what's that about?

Right?

Oh, this freedom thing's great.

I like that, but I've been following Jesus.

I gave him my heart, he's in my life, I've I'm dedicated to him, I'm trying my best, but I'm still struggling with the same stuff.

So what the heck, God?

Because that is not what I expected.

I mean, if I'm honest with myself and I pray and say, okay, God, this isn't going like I thought, like, why isn't this different?

God might ask me, well, Justin, what did you expect?

Well, I don't know, you just kind of zap me and all my problems would go away.

Is that too much that you can do that, right?

You have that power.

Why not?

Why not do that?

But that's not that's not how it works.

And it's frustrating that it doesn't work that way, it really is at times, but here's the thing freedom, real freedom, never happens in an instant.

Real freedom, true freedom is always fought for and it is always worked out over time.

I mean, you can look at our country.

Our country was built on the idea of freedom.

In 1776, this nation began, and 1779, I think, is when the Constitution was ratified, and it's freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, but it wasn't another 90 years until that freedom was extended to people of all races.

And it was years later that that freedom extended into the right to vote.

It wasn't until 1919 that women had the freedom to vote for the president.

That's not that long ago.

Freedom is worked out over time.

Freedom has to grow.

It's the same in our lives spiritually.

You are free of the power of sin.

You are free from the power of sin if you have given your life to Jesus.

Sin has no claim over your life.

That's what that means.

It means you can say no.

You're not its slave.

It's hard to say no, but you can say no because you're free of the power of sin.

But even though we're free from the power of sin, we're not always free at first from the influence of sin.

And there's a difference between those two things.

What we struggle with.

We struggle even to the point of doubt sometimes, doubt whether or not we really know God, because if we know God, shouldn't these things be gone?

Shouldn't we be over this?

Shouldn't we be past this?

And we can struggle and hold ourselves to this crazy standard that God doesn't even hold us to.

Look at what the Apostle Paul says about this in Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest followers of God that's ever lived.

Read this and see if you relate to it.

I don't really understand myself.

For I want to do what is right, but I don't do it.

Instead, I do what I hate.

But if I know that what I'm doing is wrong, that shows that I agree that the law is good.

I recognize right from wrong.

So I'm not the one doing wrong.

It is sin living in me that does it.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature.

I want to do what is right, but I can't.

I want to do what's good, but I don't.

I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.

But if I do what I don't want to do, I'm not really the one doing wrong.

It is sin living in me that does it.

I've discovered this principle in my life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.

I love God's law with all my heart.

I mean, how easy is that to relate to, to say, I love Jesus with everything, I love God with everything, and yet it's like there's two people inside of me.

There's one that craves to do what's right in God's eyes, there's one that knows what's right and lives for what's right, but there's this other one, there's this other Justin.

And I'm ashamed to admit how often it's that one that wins out.

There's this battle, there's this struggle, and we deal with so much guilt and shame as followers of Jesus because of that fight, because of that struggle.

But we forget when we feel that shame that we are free.

Because if you're free, you're free to struggle.

We forget for a moment that the expectations we have of us might be different than the expectations that God has.

Does God expect us to, in an instant, be free of every problem?

Does God expect us in an instant to lay down the things that have held us for so long, the things that we struggle so mightily with and just never touch them again?

Is that what God expects?

I don't believe he does.

I'm not saying he doesn't have expectations, he absolutely does, but if that's what he expected, it would be like him telling us that we really don't need him.

That we have that power to do that, and that's not the case.

In fact, he basically says that same thing to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.

Paul's talking about this issue he's dealing with.

He calls it a thorn in his flesh, this thing he just can't get rid of.

He says, Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away.

Three different times I'm like, God, take it.

I believe you can, just take it out of my life.

And each time God said, My grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness.

So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, multiple, plural.

So that the power of Christ can work through me.

That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, the hardships, the persecution, the troubles that I suffer for Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This is God telling Paul, you are free to struggle.

You need to be free from the expectations you're living under, because those expectations are not born from me.

Those expectations are born from that sin nature inside of you that constantly tells you, you'll never be enough, you'll never make it, you'll never do it, you'll never be free.

So let go of those and know that my power, God's power, is made perfect in your weakness.

Be free to struggle, be free to work out your freedom in Jesus.

Let him live life with you.

Every single day with you.

Be okay with the fact that sometimes it feels like you're moving at a snail's pace.

Because this amazing thing tends to happen when we do that.

When we move, slow as it may feel, years later we turn around and go, Wow, I have come so far.

But it rarely happens in an instant.

In the book of Exodus, chapter six, God makes four promises to the people of Israel.

Four very distinct promises.

And these promises are celebrated every year in this celebration the Jewish people have.

It's the celebration of Passover, the time where God delivered them from Egypt out of slavery they had been in for 400 years.

These four promises are celebrated in the Passover ceremonies with four cups.

People drink from these four cups, each cup representing one of those promises.

The first promise was that God would take them out of Egypt.

The second promise was that God would free them from slavery.

The third promise was that God would redeem them, and the fourth promise was that God would be their God.

He would be with them.

And it's funny because those first two seem redundant, right?

I'm gonna get you out of Egypt, first promise.

Promise number two, I'm gonna free you from slavery.

And you might say, well, if I'm out of Egypt, and Egypt is oppressing me, second promise isn't necessary.

I'm already free.

See, this is the same thing that Jesus is talking about.

God knew that getting them out of Egypt was just the first step because for years they still fought like slaves.

They still identified as slaves.

In fact, some of them staged a coup to try to go back to Egypt and be slaves again because they just couldn't handle, they couldn't handle life free and the uncertainty of it.

And it's ironic because it did not take very long for God to destroy the most powerful nation in the world to get the Israelites out.

That happens almost in an instant when you read it.

It's fast.

Egypt puts up a fight, God says, yeah, they're leaving, and they're free.

But it took a lifetime for that second promise to come true.

For them to be free from that internal slavery that was holding them back.

You are free.

So live free.

This week live free.

Enjoy the fact that God loves you so much that He has given you the freedom to struggle, He's given you the freedom to grow, He's given you the freedom to fail.

He's given you the freedom to mess up, the freedom to struggle, the freedom to take time.

He's given that freedom to you.

He fought for that freedom, and he's never gonna leave you.

So be free.

Remember, you are free.

You have been freed from the power of sin.

You will be free from its influence because Jesus has given you freedom.

But you've got to take it, we've got to run with it, we've got to believe it, we've got to hold on to it, we've got to make sure we never let it go, and we've got to make sure that we give ourselves the same freedom that God gives us, because that is the only way to live life and to live it free.

Pray with me.

Jesus, thank you so much for the freedom that you give.

Thank you so much, Lord, for what you do for us, for all you are for us.

God, we could never be free of all the things that hold us back.

In fact, God, we have a greater chance at beating out those external things than the internal.

Those are battles we just can't win on our own, but Lord, those are battles that you win every single day.

And we believe as a church that you have won the battle for our hearts.

And we believe as your church that you're gonna work out that freedom in us and that we will experience freedom from whatever holds us back, whether it's depression, whether it's an addiction, God, whether it's a mentality that we can't get past.

You are going to fully give us the freedom that we need.

We want it, Lord.

We're asking for it.

Help us walk it out every day in our lives.

And God, free us from the expectations that we place on ourselves that keep us from living life free.

We love you, Jesus.

We ask all this in your name.

Amen.