Independence Day Freedom

As we celebrate Independence Day in the US, are you celebrating your freedom in Christ? Or, do you ever wonder why that same besetting sin repeatedly defeats you?

Despite your continual decision to stop sinning in that same old way, do you find yourself returning again and again to the identical sin?

Why can’t you find the victory over sin promised in Christ?

The Apostle Paul answers your life questions in 2 Corinthians 10:3-7 as he explains that strongholds are fleshly mindsets burned into our minds through the world, the flesh, and the Devil. They are destructive patterns of thinking and habitual false ways of looking at life without spiritual eyes. Over time they become embedded in our minds like a mental fortress suppressing the truth and habituating our wills to evil.

My mental stronghold sin takes a unique shape because I manufacture or carve my idol in my image—according to my non-God story of my life, according to my personally chosen perception of reality. Each particular act of sin is a branch off the tree from which I carve my idol. The root of the tree is my sinful imagination. The fruit of the tree is what I choose to nourish myself with—God or non-god. In the strongholds of my mind I form and shape the very idol of self that I worship instead of God (Isaiah 44:14-17).

Practical Life Questions

Personal sanctification require us to identify and expose person-specific strongholds.

They force us to ask and answer questions like:

“What is my image of God?”

“What is my pattern of dethroning God?”

“How do I typically try to make life work apart from God?”

“What does my style of relating say about my underlying beliefs about life?”

Since strongholds involve longstanding patterns of thinking, we also need to probe questions such as:

“Where was I recruited into this false belief about God?”

“When did I begin to surrender to this lie?”

“What sinful pleasure have I taken in this lie?”

Repenting of Sinful Strongholds: Our Ultimate Freedom

Repentance literally means a change of mind. I change my mindset from a fleshly one to a spiritual one. I change my mind from a stronghold ingrained in the flesh through the enticement of the world and the allurement of the Devil, to a mindset in which I take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

Dallas Willard explains the prominence of repentance and it’s connection to our spiritual independence from sin as new creations in Christ. “The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon” (Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 95). Repentance is the choice to reject the mental set of our old mind, replacing it with a mental focus in harmony with our new mind.

Repentance and mortification walk hand-in-hand. Repentance is the daily putting off and breaking up of the whole complex of conformity to the world, the flesh, and the Devil. In mortification through repentance, I’m involved in the life-long process of detecting my characteristic fleshly mindsets and turning from them.

Uproot Sin’s Power through the Cross

To repent of a mindset, I must first recognize its insanity, see its vileness, and sense its ugliness. The Puritans labeled this process, “loading the conscience with guilt.” John Owen, in his classic work The Mortification of Sin, describes the process. “Get a clear and abiding sense upon thy mind and conscience, first, of the guilt, secondly, of the danger, thirdly, of the evil, of that sin wherewith thou art perplexed” (Owen, The Mortification of Sin, p. 107).

Owen pictures a Christian struggling to defeat a besetting sin. Victory is stalled. The believer is perplexed, feels trapped, senses defeat. How can this Christian uproot sin? What will motivate this believer to hate sin with a holy hatred? Owen suggests the following principles of loading the conscience with guilt.

Consider the danger of this particular sin. See the danger of being hardened by its deceitfulness (Hebrews 3:12-13) (p. 110). See the danger of God’s discipline (p. 111). See the danger of loss of peace and strength (p. 112).

Consider the evil of it. It grieves the Holy Spirit (p. 115). The Lord Jesus is wounded afresh by it (p. 117). It will take away your usefulness in this generation (p. 117).

Charge your conscience with the guilt of law breaking. Consider the holiness, spirituality, severity, inwardness, and absoluteness of God’s holiness (pp. 119-120).

Consider the infinite patience and forbearance of God toward you in particulars (specifics) (p. 123).

Remind yourself of his gracious withholding of judgment (p. 123).

Pray for and pursue a constant longing for deliverance (p. 124).

Ponder what occasions led to your giving in, and guard against them (p. 128).

Reflect on the excellencies and majesty of God and how far short you are of him in holiness (p. 131).

Place faith in Christ for the killing of your sin (p. 161).

Magnify Christ’s Graciousness

To break the stranglehold of strongholds, I must expose my unique strongholds, repent of my sinful mindsets, load my conscience with guilt, and enlighten my mind to Christ’s grace and truth. As important as it is to load the conscience with guilt, unless we lighten the conscience with grace, we would be terrified to ever come before our holy God.

Yet we can and should come boldly into his presence having had our conscience cleansed by Christ (Hebrews 10:19-23). Even as I load my conscience with guilt, I do so surrounded by the awareness that God is gracious even when I am sinful. I face the horror of my sin in light of the wonders of Christ’s grace.

A Prayer of Rational Repentance

“Father, I’ve finally come to my senses. I confess as sin my foolish belief that I can make life work apart from You. I’ve arrogantly suppressed the truth of how perfectly well You care for me. I’ve denied Your fatherly love for me. I’ve sinned against You by believing Satan’s smaller story, fleshly mindset that You are not my Supreme Good. I’ve allowed my view of reality to become filled with contemptuous images of You. I’ve allowed my mind to be squeezed into the mold of this temporal world, living according to the dominant plot theme of the earthly story. I’ve been like a deaf man straining to hear the Gospel story. I’ve denied the Cross. I return to You now repenting of these idols of my heart. Though I am not worthy in myself to be called Your child, by faith I claim my adoption in Christ. Thank You for forgiving me and accepting me in Christ.”

Join the Celebration

This Independence Day, will you celebrate your spiritual independence in Christ over sin?


by Dr. Bob Kellemen, executive director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition (www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org), the executive director of the Association of Biblical Counselors’ Center for Church Equipping, and the founder and CEO of RPM Ministries (www.rpmministries.org). Bob has pastored three churches and has chaired the MA in Christian Counseling and Discipleship department at Capital Bible Seminary for 17 years.

A Prayer for Greater Freedom by Jesus

Lord, My Rescuer and Liberator, Set Me Free!

Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name! Psalm 142:7
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Galatians 5:1
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:86
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners. Luke 4:18

Jesus, great Lord and Liberator, when King David prayed for freedom from his prison, he wasn’t behind iron bars; he was hiding in a cave. It’s obvious he felt pursued, trapped, and alone. It’s also obvious he enjoyed great freedom to own his desperation and abandon himself to you. I begin today doing the same.

You’ve already set me free from many slavish imprisonments: the fear of dying, for you robbed the grave of its victory through your resurrection; the fear of judgment, for you were condemned in my place upon the cross; the tyranny of false gospels, for it’s your obedience and righteousness which make me acceptable to God; the myth of autonomy, for you alone are the sovereign Lord and the King of Kings. When I consider these liberties, why would I doubt your ability or willingness to set me free from other imprisonments?

Jesus, set me free from vain regrets—those haunting memories of what could have been and what should have been. I want to learn from the past, not be enslaved to the past. Your name is Redeemer. Set me free from the lingering fear of incompetency. I still feel insecure and underequipped in some important areas of life, mostly relational. I long to be more present, spontaneous and completely at ease in the presence of everyone. Be big in my life, Jesus, that people may assume the right size. Free me from the power of rejection and adulation.

Set me free from the power of old wounds. I’m a victim, but that’s not my identity. Some things will be fully healed only by your second coming. Let me be okay with that, even as I trust you to use my pain for the benefit of others.

Jesus, grant me greater freedom to repent quickly, apologize sincerely, listen deeply, laugh louder, linger longer and love those who don’t know you. Free me to accept myself and others, just as we are, not as we should be. Help me die to any other agenda than the one you have for me in the gospel. The more freedom you give me, the more fully I will seek to praise your name. So very Amen I pray, in your merciful and mighty name.

by Scotty Smith who served Christ Community Church in Franklin Tennessee as its founding pastor and  senior pastor for its first twenty years and has recently assumed the new title of Pastor for Preaching, Teaching and Worship,

Boys Need Mentors More than Ever

In 2002, the U.S. Secret Service completed the Safe School Initiative, a study of school shootings and other school-based attacks. The study examined school shootings in the United States as far back as 1974, analyzing a total of 37 incidents involving 41 student attackers …. The young men who carried out the attacks differed from one another in numerous ways. However, almost every attacker had engaged in behavior before the shooting that seriously concerned at least one adult—and for many had concerned three or more different adults …. Far from being "loners," the killers are more likely to be aspiring "joiners" whose attempts at belonging fail. Many of the shooters told Secret Service investigators that feelings of alienation or persecution drove them to violence.

It's easy to label the shooters "evil" but miss some of the less noticeable (or less violent) signs that many boys are struggling alone in our culture. Consider these statistics:

• Boys get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls
• In elementary school, boys are diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often.
• By eighth grade huge numbers of boys read below basic level.
• Males graduate high school at lower rates and attend college right out of high school at lower rates.
• Young men are three times more likely to kill themselves than young women.

Somewhere in your world, there is a young man looking to you to model real, emotional resiliency. To show him that male-to-male friendship can extend beyond work, golf, or some other idolatry and withstand life's most difficult blows. To provide entry into a … honorable … definition of what it means to be a man in the 21st century.

Adapted from R. Todd Erkel, "Boys Need Good Role Models Now More Than Ever," Utne Reader (March-April 2013)

Bruce Springsteen Talks About His Father Wounds

In a recent interview with The New Yorker, rock legend Bruce Springsteen said that his broken relationship with his father lives on in his songs. For example, in the song, "Adam Raised a Cain," the younger Springsteen sings about the father who "walks these empty rooms / looking for something to blame / You inherit the sins / You inherit the flames." The songs were a way of talking to his silent and distant father. Springsteen said,

"My dad was very nonverbal—you couldn't really have a conversation with him. I had to make my peace with that, but I had to have a conversation with him, because I needed to have one. It ain't the best way to go about it, but that was the only way I could, so I did, and eventually he did respond. He might not have liked the songs, but I think he liked that they existed. It meant that he mattered."

The past, though, is anything but past. Bruce Springsteen admitted his yearning for what he calls "Daaaddy!"

"My parents' struggles, it's the subject of my life. It's the thing that eats at me and always will …. Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose …. [The musician] T-Bone Burnett said that rock and roll is all about "Daaaddy!" It's one embarrassing scream of "Daaaddy!"

Then gesturing toward the band onstage, he said, "We're repairmen—repairmen with a toolbox. If I repair a little of myself, I'll repair a little of you. That's the job."

by David Remnick, "We Are Alive: Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two," The New Yorker (7-30-12)

An Isolated Man is a Vulnerable Man

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who resisted Hitler and was martyred for his faith, wrote about our battle with sin in the following quote from his excellent book Life Together:

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.

Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart.

The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16). 

Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. 

Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ. 

 C. S. Lewis also wrote about why it is critical for men to hang together in his classic work Mere Christianity(below):

God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.” 

Five Lies Sin Tells Me

by Stephen Altrogge on May 28, 2013

1      LIE: This is such a minor, insignificant sin! It’s not really a big deal in God’s eyes.

TRUTH: Every sin is a horribly offensive to God. Sin is the sum of all evils, the opposite of all that is good, holy, and beautiful. Even the smallest of my sins required the death of the Son of God. There is no such thing as a minor sin. Every sin is cosmic treason.

2      LIE: I’ll give into sin this one time, then I’ll be done with it. I just need to get it out of my system.

TRUTH: Every time I give into a sin it becomes more difficult to break the power of that sin. Sin has a way of sinking it’s barbed hooks deep into my heart. I can’t simply sin and then walk away from it unscathed. The more I give in to sin, the more entangled I become. Sin always leaves scars.

3      LIE: This sin is part of who I am. I’ve always struggled this way and I always will sin this way.

TRUTH: Sin does not define my identity! I am a new creation in Christ. Christ has set me free from the enslaving power of sin. I absolutely do not have to obey the sinful passions that surge through me. I may have always struggled this way, but my past does not define my future.

4     LIE: I need to give in to this sin in order to be happy.

TRUTH: Sin never provides true happiness. It promises sweetness, yet ultimately delivers a payload of destruction, dissatisfaction, ruined relationships, and hardness of heart.

5      LIE: God wants me to be happy, therefore it’s okay for me to give in to sin.

TRUTH: God does want me to be happy. However, my happiness will only rise as high as my holiness. Sin ultimately erodes and destroys true holiness and true happiness.

Below are other quotes to reflect upon:

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong."

1 Cor. 16:13 (NASB)

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity."

Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator

"When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage."C.S. Lewis

"Duty is ours; consequences are God's."
General Stonewall Jackson