God loves us so very much that He wants us freed—and this freedom comes only by constantly renewing our minds—moment by moment putting off all the things in our flesh that are “not of faith” and putting on Christ.
It blesses us to report that Nancy Missler is on the road to recovery. For a current update on Nan you can go to our website at www.kingshighway.org. July is the month that we celebrate freedom in America. Our passion and purpose at The King’s High Way Ministries is to see many Christians “freed” and “transformed” through our books and Bible study resources.
In order to give Nan more time to heal, The King’s High Way Ministries chose an article on “emotional freedom” that she originally wrote in the late ’90s. We pray that it encourages you.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
What does this really mean? Renewing our minds is defined as “truth” when our words and our deeds match and become one. Jesus, of course, is the Truth because He is the Word that became the Deed. So, what I believe this Scripture says is that the more intimately and fully we know Jesus, the more freedom we will experience.
God loves us so very much that He wants us freed—freed from our selves; freed from others’ reactions, freed from our circumstances, and freed from the enemy’s influence in our innermost man. This freedom comes only by constantly renewing our minds—moment by moment putting off all the things in our flesh (our soul and our body) that are “not of faith” and putting on Christ.
I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered (or freed) me from all my fears.
The American Heritage Dictionary says the word “freedom” means a state of independence or the condition of being freed from outside influences. Interestingly enough, that’s the same definition the dictionary gives for the word “deliverance”—to set free.
The freedom that I write about in my book Be Ye Transformed discusses the process of healing and renewal. This process is made up of our moment-by-moment faith choices and is called sanctification. Sanctification is choosing to give over to God anything that’s not of faith, so that His Life can come forth from our hearts.
Scripture tells us that if we are believers, Jesus has delivered us from the power of darkness. Read Colossians 1:13, John 10:27–29 and 1 John 5:18. What is necessary, however, and what we are focusing on here, is freedom from our fears, our angers, depression, bitterness, guilt, etc., that the power of sin (“law of sin” in our body, Romans 7:23) has used in all of our lives to control and cripple us. This freedom comes only from our moment-by-moment choices and frees us from the baggage of life that we carry.
An Example: What Went Wrong?
A young man that I have known for years, and one who loved The Way of Agape, attended a healing and deliverance service. Afterwards, he boasted of being totally delivered from drug abuse. Three months later, however, he was fully back into a life laced with drug abuse.
I saw him one day and asked him, “Tom, what happened? You said you were totally freed. What went wrong?” “Nan,” he said, “we’re all looking for the easy way out (to be delivered instantly).” He went on, “There’s no easy way out. It’s only our constant choices that will allow us to remain free.”
A pastor of a large church in California points out, “It’s the flesh that we need freedom from. We can’t cast it out—we need to die to it. So, it’s our own decision, our own choice, and our own responsibility to stay free.
I could easily stop choosing God’s Way today and in a very short time, I would refill all of “life’s baggage” (hidden chambers) that God has so magnificently emptied over the journey of my Christian life. And, I’d be right back where I started from.
For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
Example: “I Had That Message Once”
I had lunch with a dear friend, several years ago, who had done this very thing. She had forgotten to make moment-by-moment faith choices, and she had allowed the enemy to “rebuild” old strongholds that had once been destroyed and cleansed. My friend had become discouraged and had begun to doubt God’s faithfulness, because she was again experiencing things she had thought she dealt with years ago.
What she didn’t realize was that because she had stopped “taking every thought captive” and she had stopped “making faith choices,” she was the one allowing new ungodly thoughts to enter back into her once-cleansed hidden chambers. So, it wasn’t God who was unfaithful. Transformation is a process that we will be in for the rest of our lives and, unfortunately, there’s just no room for coasting—it’s a moment-by-moment faith walk.
Begin With Small Steps
So, begin with small steps. Take one thing at a time. Don’t think God will cleanse all your hidden chambers over a period of days. How many years has it taken you to fill them? Give God time to expose and empty them in His Way and in His timing. You must just be “willing” to deal with the things that He brings up and He will do the rest.
The exposing and the cleansing of our innermost man is God’s responsibility! Our responsibility is simply to give Him permission to do so. If we have done that, then believe me, He will do His part.
Example: Have No Fear
We also needn’t be afraid of how or when God will reveal these hidden things to us. We simply must trust Him completely, knowing that it’s His Will for us to be freed.
A precious sister at a weekend seminar a few years ago was afraid of opening herself up to God because of some extremely painful things that had happened to her in the past. Ruth was terrified, but dared to trust God enough to give Him her fear and also her full permission to search her hidden chambers and reveal whatever He wanted to.
That night, Ruth’s roommate awoke to find Ruth sobbing and crying out in her sleep. The roommate immediately got up out of bed and quietly came over to comfort her. However, when she got to Ruth’s bed, she heard Ruth sweetly saying over and over, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
The roommate was so moved and so touched, that she knelt down beside her and began to pray and intercede for her. In the morning, when the two of them compared what had happened, Ruth said she knew that God had done a marvelous work within her during the night. She knew in her spirit that even while she slept, God had emptied some of the hurtful things in her hidden chambers.
When she got home from the retreat, her husband even noticed that something was different. He said her countenance was radiant and that he could tell she had let go of some “baggage” she had been carrying around for years.
So, we don’t need to be afraid of how or when God will reveal some of the painful things of the past. We simply must trust Him enough to know that since He has made us, He knows the perfect timing and perfect way to do it. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.”
I’m convinced that we all desperately need this deep inner cleansing and healing in order to “know” God intimately. By this, I simply mean we need to allow the Spirit of God the freedom to search the deep, unchartered recesses of our soul and bring to light all that needs to be dealt with.
Now, we don’t have to be cleansed of “all” the things in our hidden chambers before we can “know” God. That’s not at all what I mean. It’s going to take us a lifetime in order to do that and we still won’t have gotten rid of all that’s there.
What I am referring to is being obedient to God’s Spirit, and as He reveals something to us, we must immediately deal with it and give it over to Him. And the sooner we deal with it, the freer we will be…it’s “The Key” to freedom.
With each thing that we hand over to Jesus, and with each hidden chamber that is emptied, we’ll experience a closer intimacy with Him and more freedom to be who we really are.
Truly, if we know the truth, the truth will set us free.
God knows the perfect way and the perfect timing to reveal “truth.” We just need to be willing to hear it and deal with it. God, then, will do the rest.
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and having in a readiness to revenge [deal with] all disobedience….
