Mental and emotional bondage restricts freedom. Freedom that doesn’t reach to your mind and your heart is incomplete. It’s good to celebrate freedom. It’s better to live free — without bondage to thoughts, feelings, or desires.
It’s hard to dance with joy when disappointment, anger, and unforgiveness hold your feet to the ground. People who faithfully self-destruct betray their own happiness. To abandon your conscience is like driving a car with no breaks–you can go fast, but you may not be able to stop. Often the worst tyranny is internal–cravings, compulsions, fear, depression, worry, anxiety, hate, pride, obsessions, guilt, etc.
To abandon hope is to go overboard, into a sea of despair. Instead, abandon thoughts that torment you. Take your mind away from them and don’t look back. Freedom isn’t just a proclamation. It’s a life lived beyond the bondage of tormenting feelings and thoughts.
The living Jesus offers people bondage-breaking freedom from tormenting feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Jesus taught that knowing the truth brings freedom. Fact checking with humility can set us free from deception.
Genuine love is liberating because it takes your mind off yourself and focuses it on someone else. The undercurrents of evil are continually active in the human heart, but freely flowing with the inner rivers of Jesus brings liberty. A joyful heart discovers daily delights.
I believe that when Christians meet, the absence of a prearranged agenda can allow for the presence of Jesus to lead us. However, the internal Jesus stirring your heart is far more powerful than external Christian meetings ever can be.
