What we need most is a heart ruled by the Lord rather than by "evil desires." We need to be progressively freed from our slavery to the god-replacements that imprison us in self-absorbed pursuit of our own glory.

Every year thousands of supposedly Christian young people go off to residential universities and forsake the faith. I would propose to you that they are not forsaking the faith at all. They never had it in the first place. They grew up under a system of control that forced the faith upon them, but when they get to college and the system vanishes, their true hearts reveal themselves.

For sin, forgiveness; for weakness, strength; for foolishness, wisdom; for bondage, deliverance—such is the way of the grace of Jesus.

When you begin to understand what you have been given in his right here, right now grace, you quit asking people, places, and things to be your savior. Because you know what he thinks of you, you are free to worry less about what the person next to you thinks. That's a freedom many of us could use!

The cross teaches that you are not stuck, not cursed to pay forever for your past.

It contradicts our normal thinking, but the doorway to freedom is submission. When I acknowledge that I am a danger to myself and submit to the authority, wisdom, and grace of God, I am not killing any hope I have for freedom. The opposite is true.

While some say a total shutdown of religions and personal freedoms could never occur in the United States, just remember, the Russian Tzars never realized the impact of the Communist revolution until they were removed. The German people were deceived into thinking Hitler would be a positive leader. In our nation, oppressive and freedom-killing legislation would be the method used to chain targeted groups to the pillar of silence and irrelevance.

Rather than defining faithfulness as absolute conformity to authority and tribal identity, a trust-centered faith will value in others the search for true human authenticity that may take them away from the familiar borders of their faith, while trusting God to be part of that process in ourselves and others, even those closest to us. The choice of how we want to live is entirely ours.

For twelve years they had been subject to Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful fawns.

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness.

He sent them a prophet, who told them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.