Welcome to The Promises of God Podcast, Episode number 32 my name is Tracie Rollins, and I want to thank you so much for spending some time with me as we learn and take action on God’s promises in life. This one series is about Freedom in Christ, and we’re working out of the momentum devotional offered by Bible Journaling Ministries titled Freedom. You can learn more about Bible journaling with their free 10-day course at BibleJournalingMinistries.com. Today we’re answering the question, what is Freedom In our verse is John 8:36 and it says, if therefore the son makes you free, you will be free. Indeed, according to the dictionary, Freedom, his independence, it’s the liberation from slavery, restraint in the power of another. It’s the ability to choose what you want to be, do or achieve without constraint or corrosion, but Freedom is not anarchy.
While you may be capable of doing whatever you please, your actions lead to consequences. Even in the land of the free. We have laws that govern our Freedom. The Israelites weren’t free either. The Egyptians oppress them for 400 years. In Genesis 15:13 the Lord makes a covenant with Abraham, and he says to Abraham, no for sure that your offspring will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs and we’ll serve them. They will afflict them. 400 years. The Israelites suffered under bondage and were forced to serve in a land that wasn’t theirs. You can read more about their deliverance in the book of Exodus but pay close attention. Freedom didn’t mean that they were free from God’s authority. I’m not free from God’s power either and thank goodness for that. I praise God for his never-ending forgiveness for all of the sins I’ve committed in my life and the ones that I will battle in the future.
Being free doesn’t mean I get a free pass to disobey God and do whatever the heck I want to do and continue sinning and you know, be in sin all the time, right That’s not a free pass. You can’t just continue to, you know, once you find Jesus Christ and accept him into your life, then you’re changed. Christian, you’re a changed person. You no longer are slaver or by or in bondage to the sin that you have in your life that is changed a new person. You’re no longer slave or in bondage to that sin. Now that doesn’t mean that you won’t experience than you absolutely will, but the Holy Spirit helps you battle against that sin. The Holy Spirit comes and enlightened you and shows you areas of your life that you should be paying attention to, areas in your life that you might be sending, even areas that you may not realize that you’re in sin, but the Holy Spirit is calling you to take a look at that.
And that’s why it’s so important for us to listen to the Holy Spirit. When he calls the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 6:1-2 and he says, what shall we say then Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound may it never be we who died to sin. How could we live in any longer? So what Paul is saying is, you know, we’re saved by grace, but that doesn’t mean we get to keep on sinning. And just because we’re saved, meaning that we can continue to send, he’s just, he’s saying like you, you know, we who died to sin, you know, how can we live in it any longer How could we, you know, continue to wallow in our muddy mess of sin knowing that we are free in Christ. True fee freedom is the ability not only to think about but to see and take action to do what is right.
Pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians in his final exhortations, he says, finally, brothers, what, or whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report. If there is any virtue and if there is any praise, think about these things. Jesus didn’t free you from God’s authority. He liberated you to walk in relationship with God and be the kind of person he created you to be. Now that is Freedom worth singing for this week. Take some time to write or journal about what Freedom means to you. If you’re here today and you’ve never experienced the Freedom that comes from knowing Christ, I encourage you to start a conversation with him. It’s easy. You don’t need special prayer. Just ask him to show you what it means, but then listen and look and be prepared for him to answer you.
If you’ve experienced Freedom in Christ, but feel lately like things have taken you off course, maybe you’ve sinned, and you feel, um, you feel the bondage of that sin. Maybe you feel like you can never come out of that sin or you can’t overcome that. I encourage you to seek God and ask for forgiveness. Go to him. Tell him that you’re sorry. Tell him that you need his help to shoot from whatever bondage of sin that you are currently shackled to. I encourage you to seek God and ask for his forgiveness and then continue to work through the process of sanctification is not an easy process, and everybody sends everybody wallows in our muddy mess. It’s just part of life, and we live in a fallen world. It is only part of this journey.
But I encourage you to work through and continue to work through using the counsel of the Holy Spirit that is within you. The Holy Spirit will enlighten you, ask God to eliminate it for you. If you don’t know that you’re sending ascot to eliminate what sin that is in your life that you need to be released from right, and then take steps to release yourself from the sense I have a lot of sins in my life. I promise you one of the biggest sins that I have is my desire just constantly to overheat. It is something that I have used food as an emotional crutch for so much of my life, and so I am continually working on is battling that sin and we’ll talk more about that as we continue to go throughout this devotional. But I’m maintaining Lee working on that, and that’s not the only one I have.
If you, if you are in our momentum program at Bible Journaling Ministries, you get to see in some of the devotions that we do where I’m truthful and honest and I, and I don’t hold anything back, and even in this, even today I’m not holding anything back. I’m just not going to spend hours and hours and hours talking about all the sins that I have in my life. I’m not perfect. I’m here, and I’m working through the sanctification process. In one of these days, I will be glorified and free of sin, and that is a day worth looking forward to. So I would encourage you to, again, just if your insulin and having you know, only a hard time with it, seek God, ask him to forgive you, ask him to show you the next steps. Ask to show you any resources that he would have for you.
Ask them to provide people into your life that would support you as you go through the sanctification process. As you learn how to battle the sins in your life, you’re not promised tomorrow, and I would not put this off. Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death, but the free-gift of God is eternal life in Jesus, our Lord. So turn to him, confess your sins, and follow his will in your life, and you will feel the love of Christ that surpasses all understanding. I know this topic is hard, but it is so important to address. I hope that you’ll stick around as we talk about Freedom from fear, Freedom from the penalty of sin, Freedom from the power of sin, and Freedom to choose your path. I am so excited to go on this journey alongside you. This is a tough topic, but it is going to be so freeing, and I think that as you work through each of these topics, you will see how amazing is to be free in Christ. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and I’m looking forward to talking to you in the next episode of The Promises of God. Goodbye.

Welcome back to the Promises of God Podcast, Episode number 31 my name is Tracie Rollins. I want to thank you so much for spending some time with me as we learn and take action on God’s promises in life. This months series is about understanding and receiving God’s love, and we’re working out of the momentum devotional offered by Bible journaling ministries titled a Father’s Love. You can learn more about Bible journaling would their free 10-day Bible journaling course at BibleJournalingMinistries.com today we’re talking about clinging to God and choosing life. Our verse is Deuteronomy 30:19-20, and I’ll read out of the World English Bible. It says I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life that you may live you and your descendants to love your way.
You’re a god to obey his voice and to cling to him for he is your life. And the length of your days that you may dwell in the land. Would she always swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give them When I was a little girl, my grandmother bought me the biggest doll I had ever laid my eyes on? She had this rubbery plastic face. She had these freckles on her cheeks, and she had this brown yarn hair that I used to tie up and try to comb, which by the way, you should never try to comb yarn hair. She had these plastic hands and as a cloth-like body, and she only had one dress. So I would try to dress her up in my clothes, which Kinda didn’t work cause I was bigger than the doll. Anyways, she just had the prettiest dress, and I loved it.
I loved that doll so much that I took her to church with me. I took her out. When we would go out to eat, I would be all like, Hey, can we have another place setting for a fake doll And I take her out on walks. Anytime we would go anywhere; she was by my side. She was like my best friend, and I’d sit there, and I’d read books to her. I would teach her math and English and correct her spelling even though she was a doll and actually couldn’t do any of the work. I think my mom, my parents must have loved us because as I was teaching her, I pretended she do the schoolwork, but then I would do the schoolwork. So I just even learned even more at night when I went to sleep, I put my arm around her, and she was like sleeping right there next to me all the time.
I just absolutely loved this. Donna, I don’t know what happened to this doll because I think eventually, I grew out of her, but I just loved her so much. I just had her around me all day long. She was my best doll friend. And I’d like to kind of think about in general, at least for you, what is it that you have that you love Like what do you do to something that you’ve loved so much Some people say when you love someone, you should let them go, but that’s not necessarily good advice. If you look at our verse today, it says, the Bible says that you should cling to God for he is your life in a length of your days. Choose life; having a father’s love like the One God provides is truly like no other love. God is love. He knows things about you that you don’t even know he provides for you, and he carries you next to his heart.
Oh, what an amazing father you have. So as you’re thinking about, as we wrap up, and as you’re thinking about this last section in our devotional, we’re talking about clinging to him. Practically speaking, write in your journal. What does it mean for you to cling to God? For me, clinging to God means being with him all day long? Just like my Dolly and my Dolly and the car and Medallia at dinner and Medallia at Lynch I had my dolly everywhere. So I try to remember God throughout my day. I try to pray a lot. Even just quick, simple prayers like you know, I might be getting ready for work and I might just say, you know, quick little prayer that I think some people call them popcorn prayers and, and I know that you know, some people like very, very long prayers and those are definitely warranted and definitely you should do long prayers and have your time with God in your meditations with them and be in the word and, and all of that.
But you can do quick popcorn prayers too. He wants to see you; he wants to talk to you; he wants to be in conversation with you all the time. So it’s okay to do quick, easy popcorn prayers and allow yourself to do that. Because I think when you do stuff like that where it’s super easy, and you’re just with God and just saying, you know, Hey God, I’m about to head out the door and I pray for safety as I go to my journey, or I pray that the meeting I’m headed to, we’ll go, well, you just, you’re in that conversation with him in and it makes it easy to have a conversation with him throughout the day. You don’t have to sit down and get your Bible out, and you know, make sure you have the right dress on to pray to God.
He wants to hear from you. Now he wants to hear from you; even if it’s just a second, also if it’s just a minute, whatever you have, he wants to hear from you. And I think when you get into that habit, you bring him along throughout your day. And I, I love that. So that’s what it means to me to clean to God, to be with him throughout the day, praying to him also when I have time to get into the word, you know, I try to read the Bible in the morning when I wake up. It’s one of the first things do I like to; I also exercise as one of the first things I do too. So I try to get the stuff out of the way that I, that is most important to me. And um, that just kind of shows my priorities.
So health is important to me. Spiritual health is important to me. So I read my Bible, and I do my exercises first things in the morning. Um, and also then throughout the day if something happens and it’s not like I’m going to forget it because I’ve already done it. So, and that’s how I kind of keep in to ensure that I get in my Bible reading time in my devotional time to worship and pray to God, you know, worship him, sing songs to him. You could be in your car listening to a Christian radio station and singing to him. You can sing to God. Even not Christian songs. I mean you can sing love songs to him all day long if you want to. It doesn’t have to be a specific Christian song, barely just taking time with the Lord and not just waiting for Sundays is really what it means to clean to God, clinging to God just by going to church on Sunday.
Never talking to him again is not clinging is it is just, it’s almost like, and I know you’re visiting him once a week and God wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to be in your life. He wants to be in your life today. He wants to be in your life the second he wants to be in your life now. He doesn’t want to wait until Sunday. So begin to cling to him, and I think when you clean to him, you will find life that you haven’t experienced before because I will tell you, being with God all day long helps. Number one. I mean, it helps keep me in line. I do send, I’m not going to lie, I don’t, it’s not like I don’t send, but I do sin, but I don’t spend nearly as much as I used to, so it keeps me in line, helps me fix my eyes on my priorities, helps me align myself with what I say is important to me in my life, and I feel good about it and I know at the end of the day I feel really good about the things that I’ve accomplishment it accomplished and even some days where it’s just been really hard, or I feel like it made me, God’s not around, I just keep praying.
I feel like he’s not talking to me. And if I didn’t, if I just stopped praying and stopped trying to have a relationship with God, I would go off in, there’s a whole other tangent that would not be good for me in any part of my walk or any part of my journey. So I would encourage you that even if you’re going through one of those difficult times like I have, cause I’m, I only have been recently got out of one of those dark valleys and now I’m back into the flow. I’m back. You know I feel God’s presence now. I feel him with me each and every day. I promise you; there are times where you feel like God’s not going to be around and you need to clean to him. You need to grab him and say, I love you.
I’m here for you. I want you to hear God, and I want to be the person that you want me to be. Show me your will. Show me your way. Help me be the daughter that you want me to be and cling to him because I promise you he will come back. You know he’s always here. He’s never going to leave you. But that presence, that feeling that he’s coming back, they will be there because God never leaves. He never leaves. Just because he doesn’t answer you in the way that you want him to answer you, it doesn’t mean that he’s not there. He is always here, and you have to believe that. And I think that if you are going through a difficult time again, cling to him because I promise you, you will come out of it and you will be better for it.
I promise you, when you cleaned the god, you choose life, and if you’re here today and you’re ready to choose life, it’s easy to get started to start this podcast right now and pray to him. Just invite him into your heart. Ask him to show you him. Ask Him to talk to you and open up your Bible. Like I randomly will open up my Bible. I’ll say, Lord, speak to me today. I want to hear your voice. I want to know what you have to say to me, and I’ll randomly open up the Bible and start reading. And often it’s so applicable. It’s like he reads, he shows up in his word pretty much every time I do it. Sometimes I open it up, and it’s not exactly what I thought like it’s kind of weird, but I know that it’s a word.
I know it’s his word. And I know that I need to understand that so I feel like he speaks to me every time I opened up his Bible. So I hope that you’ll try that as well. But if you’re here today and you totally know what it means to clean to God, but you straight a bit, that’s okay. It’s okay. You’re allowed to strip it. You’re allowed history a bit. Just come back, come back to God. Just tell him that you’re sorry. Tell him that you miss him. Tell him what you want to hear him speak to you today and open your Bible and listen to what he has to say. Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Lord. So turn to him, confess your sins and follow his will in your life and he will feel the love of Christ that surpasses all understanding.
I want to thank you. I thank you so much for tuning in today. I am so excited about our next month, next month series. I think that this series was I think, appropriate for the month and I hope that you truly do feel a father’s love. I look forward to talking to you in the next series next month. I hope you have a beautiful day and if you haven’t left a review on iTunes, please do so. I would appreciate that. It does help us out and if you don’t subscribe via iTunes and you subscribe maybe through another channel, please go ahead and leave us a review. That helps others find us. So I hope that you have a beautiful day and I will talk to you soon. Goodbye.

Thanks for listening to the promises of God podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Bible Journaling Ministries where thousands of women grow in the word creatively. It’s your free 10-day course for other ministries and other episodes resources at ThePromisesofGodPodcast.Com.