Staying Free After Breaking FreeSample

FREE INDEED

When God called upon Moses to set His people free from their life of slavery in Egypt, their trip to the Promised Land should have taken them less than two weeks. So why on earth did it take them 40 years?

Although removing the Israelites from Egypt took days, removing “Egypt” from the Israelites (freeing them from their slavery mindset) took years.

Like it was for the Israelites, our journey to freedom takes time. That’s because there’s more than one dimension to our prison cell. Slavery is not just physical. It is also spiritual, emotional, mental, and relational. Staying free after breaking free involves peeling back layers of toxic thoughts and buried emotions which contributed to bondage in the first place.

Festering wounds ignored or neglected must be exposed and re-dressed properly through the Great Physician, Jesus Christ. Deep healing allows you to enter your own personal promised land without all the extra baggage.

We can open-up our prison door and proclaim we are free, but if we never walk out of our prison cell and believe we are free, we will continue to cower in the corner of our barred enclosure, feeling stuck and all alone. Liberated people must continually come into agreement of their freedom before they can truly seize it.

Here are four critical steps to experiencing lasting freedom using the acronym ASKS:

• Acknowledge you have a problem and visualize your freedom. Psalm 32:5
• Surrender to Jesus, let go of control, trust God’s higher ways. Philippians 3:13
• Know the truth, believe what God says, weed out lies. John 8:31-32
• Submit to the Lord, apply His teaching, walk in truth and freedom. James 4:7

Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

Knowing the truth is one thing. Believing the truth is another. I’ve heard it said that the greatest distance mankind will ever travel is the seventeen inches from his head to his heart. Yes, it can be an arduous journey to travel from your head to your heart, but it is worth your effort in the end.

The enemy will try hard to keep you in bondage because he knows the truth. When you start living in the fullness of the freedom Christ offers, you will be unstoppable.

PERSONAL REFLECTION

Consider the four steps to breaking and staying free from struggles with food and body image. Where are you on that journey, and which steps do you still need to take? Determine one small step you can take today, and then act upon it.

PRAYER

Lord, thank you for being patient with me as I continue this freedom journey. As I continue to work on healing, help me recognize areas I still need to acknowledge, surrender, know, and submit. Give me perseverance to never give up and to keep trusting your higher ways.