 brothers, it's good to be with you. It's good to be loved, isn't it? You know, there's a lot of great things we could be or do or accomplish in this life, but really there's nothing that compares to the love of Jesus Christ. Amen? It's so powerful to see you last night just coming up for confession, and as Neil encouraged you to just go home and just connect with Jesus as Savior. There really is no nothing further. There's no further that we can go than to be loved by the Savior. Amen? And that's really the root of our identity as sons of God, as the beloved. And St. Paul talks about that when he says, you know, the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's the challenge, I know that's a challenge for me, is to have my identity rooted and grounded in the love of Jesus. That's really, that's all we need to know, just like the apostle John, he could say, you know, I'm the one that Jesus loved. That's who we are. I just want to read a scripture to you that I read this morning before we start. This is from Galatians 1.15. Paul says, God who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son and me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. How many of you know that God set you apart from your mother's womb? He knew your calling before you did. Isn't that amazing? He knew your destiny. He knew plans, he had plans for your life before you were even born. And he called you by his grace. You know, you didn't show up here, you didn't arrive to this point in your life by accident. He called you by his divine empowerment. He enabled you to say yes, he enabled you to walk out your calling. But this is the point I want to highlight. God was pleased to reveal his son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. You know, before you preach Jesus, you need Jesus. And it pleases the Father to reveal Jesus in you. Just take that in. It pleases the Father to reveal his son in you. It brings him pleasure. So we're here this week to identify with the Son, to embrace him and to be conformed to his image and his likeness. This morning I'm going to share with you about what it means to be free in Christ, because it's so fundamental to this ministry and to understanding, you know, why we do what we do is understanding the freedom that Jesus calls us to. So I'm going to talk a little bit about freedom. Just to introduce myself a little bit, I'm a father of five. I'm married. My beautiful wife, Jennifer, she texted me last night, is Bob Rice here? He take off? Okay. I texted my wife, I said I'm here at the conference. She said, tell Bob Rice I love him. So she's a Bob Rice fan. She always comes on these youth retreats. She's a chaperone and she loves Bob Rice. I have five children from ages 16, 14, sorry, 16, 15, 12, 8, and 10 months. And the littlest one is, her name is Liberty Marie. And it's just really a great pleasure to serve the Lord, but most importantly, to be a father. It's one of the greatest graces of my life. I didn't go to Steubenville. My two older brothers did. I came out to visit Steubenville and they were into the party scene and they showed me what was going down on the bottom of the hill. And so I probably didn't get a good representation of what life at Franciscan was really like. I went to my first conference in 1993 and I chaperoned a couple youth conferences over the years and it's always great to be here. So I want to talk about the big picture of what it means to be free in Christ and the mission that we have to proclaim that freedom to others. My friend Dan told me this. He said there's two things I'll never get tired of. The first is hearing a baby laugh. You know that sound? And the second is seeing people set free. I was praying with a woman in Calgary and I'll never forget, you know, she went through the five keys and she experienced this tremendous breakthrough and she looked up with me at me just almost astonished, you know, with these wide eyes and she was just like, I didn't know you could feel this way. I didn't know that this was possible. And for many people it's that awareness of the goodness of the mercy of God. Some people have carried bondages for 40 years, almost their whole life, and they didn't know that the Lord had more for them. Some people have different, there's very different experiences of what freedom might look like. Some people say, you know, I feel lighter. Some people experience like something just kind of lifted off the top of their head. Some people say, I feel like I can breathe more deeply or I can breathe from a deeper place. One person said it's like when you go to the dentist and you get that lead apron put on you and then they finally take that apron off. And for some people it's an immediate sense, like they experience it right away. And for other people it's the beginning of a process gradually walking out in our freedom. And sometimes we look back on a period of time in our life, maybe a year or two years, and we say, wow, the Lord really did a work in me and set me free. And so there are so many different experiences of freedom. I remember praying with a young woman who experiences so much trauma in her life and a lot of rejection. And so I just had her renounce a lot of that stuff and she forgave the people who had rejected her. And you know, what had happened through the various traumas is she actually lost her voice. She lost her ability to sing. She had a medical condition, but it was also related to a very traumatic event and it had affected her deeply, very spiritually. And I remember asking her for the first time after the session if she would sing. And she sang this just incredibly beautiful song. And the Lord just not only restored her heart, but also her voice. I was praying with a Polish man and he experienced this incredible breakthrough and he actually grabbed, I was standing behind him. He grabbed me by the head and started jumping up and down. I was a little scared, but I thought this is a new expression of freedom. For other people it's like just simple tears of release, just simply falling into the arms of God the Father. Here's a good one. I experienced the freedom to be around my mother-in-law. Many of you might know that one. The freedom to repent more quickly. You know, I do something wrong and instead of justifying I just repent right away. I'm not afraid to name my sin. One of the best compliments we ever get about our conferences is that after people go through these five keys, one Polish priest said, he said, the confessions were frighteningly honest because people in their freedom were not afraid to name their sin for what it was. It could be the freedom to pursue God out of love and not fear. It could be the freedom it could be the freedom to look at your husband, to look at your wife, to look at your children with God's eyes. And so there's been a lot that's been written about freedom and I remember actually being in college. I remember when Father Dave, he did a CD series on Freedom in Christ. Has anybody ever listened to that? It was a good while ago, but this was always on in my parents' car. And I think some of his teaching has really been such a blessing to us. So there's a lot of things that have been written about freedom, but I want to just look at a few scriptures that talk about freedom. And what does it mean to be free in Jesus Christ? The first one is Galatians 5.1. Galatians 5.1 says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We've all been set free from something when we prayed this morning. We've been set free from our enemies. We've been set free from the power of sin. We've been set free from darkness. We've been set free from slavery. We've been set free from the curse of the law. There's so many things that we could say we've been set free from, but there's actually more to freedom than just being set free from something. We've actually been invited into something. And as St. Paul says, it's for freedom Christ set us free. He set us free to live a life of freedom. And freedom is so fundamental to really what it means to be human and what it means to be in Jesus Christ. So if I could summarize, like three views over history, three views of freedom, the first one would be the ancient view of freedom, the second one would be the modern view of freedom, and the third one would be the freedom that Jesus Christ brings. And the one that Jesus brings is really the one that gives us the fullest definition, the fullest understanding of what it means to be free. So if you started with the modern view of freedom, the modern view of freedom typically is that sense of negative, what we call negative liberty. As long as no one tells me what to do, as long as there's no tyranny in my life, as long as there's no oppression in my life, no one coercing me, then I'm free to make choices and that is freedom. In fact, the foundation of the U.S. Constitution is based on that principle, negative liberty to restrict tyranny. But how many of you know you can be without tyranny in your life? You can be without anybody telling you to do and still be a slave to your sin. You could go off and live in a cabin in the woods and no one tells you what to do and still experience a lack of freedom. And so this modern freedom is very, very empty. It offers us choices and that's a good thing. It's good to have choices, but if we don't understand who we are and in whose image we're made, those choices are empty. I choose between Pepsi and Coke. I'm free. I choose between receiving life and embracing life or taking life. It's all the same. That's why Jean-Paul Sartre said man is condemned to freedom. Freedom without meaning is not really freedom. The ancients understood that in order for there to be free and there had to be purpose and so for the ancient world, freedom had to do with living according to your nature, that your nature has potential. Your nature shows you who you can be and as you walk out what it means to be a human being, you educate yourself, you become more fully human, you experience that liberty. But even the ancients were stuck because that will only take you so far. We'll never truly understand our nature and our potential until we know the God who made us, the Creator who loves us. And we never fully find out who man is until we look at Jesus Christ. Saint John Paul said Jesus Christ reveals man fully to himself. So the third view of freedom, we look to Jesus and in him we find the culmination of those two aspects of freedom, what brings meaning to our choices, but also reveals our nature and who we are called to be. In John 834, Jesus makes it clear to us, he says everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So the nature of sin is slavery. He goes on, he says now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So sin equals slavery. Freedom equals what? Sonship. True freedom is found in the life of the Son of God. When we unite ourselves to the Son and we enter into the love of the Trinity and experience the love of the Father for the Son in us, it transforms our identity and gives us new life. What is freedom? Freedom is life in the Son of God. Now for most of us when we encounter Jesus for the first time, we encountered him as the Savior. We experienced his redeeming love, his saving love. He cleanses us of our sin and he gives us a new life. Wouldn't that be enough? But then there's the experience of knowing Jesus as Lord and his Lordship, the longer I walk with him, the more grateful I am for his Lordship. Think about all the decisions we would have made without the Lord's being Lord in our life. And he teaches us a new way and he leads us as his disciples. But many of us still have yet to identify with Jesus as the Son. And it's in the Son that we find our freedom. John 8.36, Jesus continues, he says, But if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Freedom is tied to sonship. What gives meaning to our choices and value and weight to them? What gives us an understanding of who we are and who we're called to be is living life as a Son. It's in that relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that Jesus is redeeming our humanity. In John 8.31, Jesus said, If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. Now, to a certain degree, all truth helps us be free. All truth liberates in a sense. But the greatest truth that brings freedom is the eternal relationship of the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. That's the relationship that you have been invited into. It's identifying with Jesus as the Son. Now, we all have a story. We have stories of our life, of the things that we've gone through. Some of them are filled with pleasure and joy, and others filled with torment and sadness and sorrow. And we often perceive who we are. We perceive our identity through the story that we've lived and how we've interpreted that story. We say, this is who I am. These are the limitations on my life. These are the things I have to live with. This is the hand that I have been dealt. And so we choose to live within a story that's small. And what we don't realize is that story, that small story has actually been surrounded and enveloped by a much, much bigger story. And that's the story of the eternal love of the Father for the Son. And you have been invited to break out of the limitations of your small story and into the life of the Son. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. How many of you know that changes everything? That changes your story, no matter what the limitations. Paul could have gone on and on about his upbringing and his education and how he studied as a Pharisee and all the books that he read. He could have read you an incredible CV of all his accomplishments and the things that he'd done in his life. Instead, he said, it's the grace of God that called me. It's the love of God that defines me. I am His beloved Son. I want to tell you my story because it's my story. It's the only one I've got. I was raised, I was a third of four boys growing up in this house, and I experienced my story as I experienced my identity as being a little bit different than my brothers. There was a unique perspective that I brought to my family, and it was always different than everybody else's. I was very creative and very sensitive, and I often found myself because of that in conflict with one or more of my brothers and my parents kind of trying to sort out the mess. There was what happened, and then there was Matt's version of what happened. Do you have anybody in your family like that? Just see things differently, and because I saw things differently and it created conflict in my family, and even with my parents at times, the enemy began to speak a lie into my heart, and the lie was this. When I was very young, I began to believe this, that no one could ever understand me. That became my reality. That became my small story, and I began to live in that, and in my sinful nature and my flesh, I reacted to that sense of not being understood, not being fully received, not being fully understood and loved. I began to live out of that. One of the ways that it happened would be when I was corrected and anybody came to correct me, I felt like I was being rejected, and I was so afraid of being misunderstood, and so I would try to explain away everything that I did. So one part of my pattern was self-justification and self-righteousness. I had a reason for everything I did. My dad would come in, he tried to correct me, he'd leave thinking it was his fault. I was really that good at arguing. And if I couldn't wiggle my way out of that, if I couldn't explain myself, and part of the conflict was constantly trying to explain myself, so people couldn't understand, if I couldn't do that, I would be dishonest. So I'd lie my way out, or exaggerate my way out. If I didn't think that I could be accepted, if I didn't think I could be understood, you know, particularly around my peers, I would pretend to be somebody else. I would create a false image, you know, someone I thought that people could understand and like. Because of this pattern in my life, it led to other things, you know, isolation, loneliness. Obviously, if you're not allowing people, if you don't trust people, you're not allowing them in, you're not going to experience good relationships. So I experienced a lot of loneliness, a lot of rejection, and ultimately a lot of depression. Thanks be to God, he didn't leave me there. When I was a junior in high school, I heard the gospel in a new way from a group called Young Life. I went on a trip and I heard the gospel, and there was a challenge, there was an expression of, you know, give your life to the Lord, say yes to him, give him your whole life, and by the grace of God, because it was the grace of God, I said yes, and I invited the Lord to take my whole life, and everything began to change. I began to experience freedom. I remember even as I prayed the prayer, I was thinking, okay, this isn't going to last. You know, this, I'll be right back to my old life, and you know, and immediately I experienced the Lord's love, and it was like he was whispering, you're never going to be the same, and I wasn't. I began to experience, just at first, it was just a complete, just the freedom to be myself, like for the first time, just the ability to be myself and not be so focused on myself, but also to love other people, and I began to love the people in my high school and just to bring them to the Lord and to tell them about Jesus, and my teachers thought I was on drugs, because I was the kid that had his hat pulled down over his eyes, you know, all the time just wouldn't look people in the eye, you know, just kind of like looked miserable and depressed all the time, and here I was smiling and, you know, joking and reaching out to other kids. So that was my first experience of freedom, and like I said, sometimes it's gradual, it's a process, so I first experienced that freedom, but then I had to walk out what it meant to be a disciple, and so as a disciple I learned not to lie, I learned not to exaggerate, I learned, you know, how to be honest and open with my responses, and then when I got to college, I met this amazing, beautiful, wonderful woman, and she became my wife, and while I was dating her I had just experienced someone who did know me and still liked me, like the real me, you know, with all my weaknesses, and so when I was in college I experienced sadness and depression just kind of lifting off my life, and I was free from that, so like Deacon Ralph was saying, I was thinking, man this is as good as it gets, what more do I need, so I was walking with the Lord, I was in ministry, I was serving Him, I was, you know, just experiencing incredible freedom and growing in Him, but I still needed to get set free, because the root of my bondage remained, the lie that no one could understand me, and it was still crippling me in a lot of ways, so it was like 10 years later after I'd given my life to the Lord, and I was about to make a really big life decision, and I did what a lot of people do, I called my dad, and I said, hey dad, what do you think about this decision, and he had some concerns, you ever have one of those conversations with your dad, and you know he was explaining his concerns with me and about the decisions I was making, and that thing in me that felt misunderstood, that always wanted to fight to be understood, just came out, it was ugly, and I just let him have it, like I said some things, I hope there's no tape recording of that in heaven, you know, I just said some really horrible things, I shouted in the phone, then I hung up on him, not my greatest moment, but it was a grace-filled moment, because I experienced the Holy Spirit just making me aware of my heart's response, and in my desperation I was just like, Lord I don't understand, I don't know where this is coming from, I don't know why I'm responding in this way, and so I did what a disciple should do, I called my dad back, and I repented, and I asked his forgiveness, and I said would you pray with me, I don't understand this, you see the problem with our bondage is a lot of time it's tied to deception, and so we're stuck, but we don't know why we're stuck, you know, that's why what makes it deception, and so fortunately for me my dad knew these five keys, you know, he was just developing this ministry, and so he asked me some questions, we talked about what it was like growing up in the family, and I told him about the conflict that I experienced with my brothers, and the experience I had of just always feeling misunderstood, and he took me through the keys, and at first I repented, and then I forgave my brothers, and I forgave my parents, and it's a little awkward to forgive your dad when he's leading you to forgive your dad, but we worked through it, you know, ministry is awkward sometimes, and then we finally got to the renunciations, and when I finally touched on that key lie, and I renounced it as a lie, I said in the name of Jesus, I renounced the lie that no one will ever understand me, it was like the whole thing just broke, and I was free, and I immediately began to hear the father's voice, and the father spoke to my heart, and he said, son, I've always known you, and I've always understood you, and I was free, and I was healed in that moment, I didn't need to go back and do it again, I didn't need another childhood, I didn't need another family, I just needed to know that my father knew me through all that, and I was able to break out of the limitations of my small story and enter into the life of the son, knowing the father's love, knowing my place, knowing that I belong, knowing that I'm understood, here's the thing I want you to take away from this, my primary gifting as I've discovered it, as I've served in the body of Christ, is to be a teacher, to be a communicator, I was a high school teacher for 12 years, I love to teach, I love to communicate, I love to connect with people, I love to share the things that I'm learning, do you see how the enemy would want to rob me of knowing and giving away my gift by speaking that lie to a little boy and saying, no one will ever understand you. I want to suggest that Satan has a plan for your life, and the plan has always been to hide your true identity, to hide your calling, to hide your purpose, I think it was Father Dave, he was saying last night, if you discover your gift, he always wants to take it away, he always wants to keep you from knowing the gift that you are, and from giving it away, and so the Holy Spirit is leading us into all truth, he's leading us, he wants to bring the power of the gospel to the depths of our hearts, not just the surface things, not just our outward obedience, but he wants to reach those dark areas that maybe even you don't want to touch, maybe you might be afraid of your response to some things, maybe you experience that confusion like I did, like I just don't know why I keep doing this, I don't know why, you know, let the Holy Spirit lead you this week, he's so good, he's so faithful, and he's so, he never gives up, he perseveres in us, because the Holy Spirit is not done, he's not satisfied until Jesus is fully revealed in you, he wants Jesus to be fully glorified in your life, and so he's so, he's so good to us, he's so faithful, so that's what it means to be redeemed, so to speak, is to break out of those limitations of your small story and enter into the fuller truth that's been revealed in the Son of God, it means you get one story replaced with another, I remember the years ago there was the story of the Baltimore Orioles, any Orioles fans here, probably not, my brother, stay strong, the Orioles as typical were at the bottom of their division and everything they did failed, they tried hiring a new coach, new players, the season had been a total disaster, they were at the bottom of their division once again, and yet this particular season there was something interesting going on which was the Boston Red Sox who were the best team in baseball, they had the best record and they were expected to win at all, and strangely enough in the last like 12 games the Red Sox just kept losing and losing and losing and losing, and the last game of the season they had to win one game to get into the playoffs, does anybody remember that night, my brother here does, guess who they played, they played the lowly Baltimore Orioles and the game went into extra innings, it was really exciting, people were calling it the most exciting night in baseball and the Baltimore Orioles knocked the Red Sox out of the playoffs, completely changed their story, people could think about that season, think about all the losses, they could think about all the failures, all the things that went wrong, but on that one night everything changed and they became the team that knocked the Red Sox out of the playoffs, beloved that precious thing that changes the meaning of your story has already happened, when Jesus Christ shed His blood for you, when He gave His life for you, it changed the meaning of your story, people say I was told I was worthless, I had no meaning, I had no value, the blood of Jesus tells a better story, says you have inestimable value, 1 John 3 1 says how great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are, there's an exclamation point in there, John is astounded at the love of God and how it changes everything, this is our true identity and it's found in the heart of the Father, and so the key to understanding how the enemy works in our life, if you could sum it all up really into one thing, you know you could go and study all about demons, you could learn all about Satan and fallen angels, but really you could sum it up in one line, Jesus said He is the Father of what? It's the Father of lies, so understanding Satan work you need to know that He's the Father of lies, He hates God for having given us this profound identity and He wants to destroy it, the battle began with Adam and Eve, He sought to rob God of His children by deceiving them about His nature, His goodness, and His intentions, the battle began in the garden over the hearts of God's children, and in John 844 Jesus said He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for there is no truth in Him, when He lies He speaks His native language for He is a liar and the Father of lies, so what does this counterfeit Father give birth to? What does He bring into existence? He brings deception, He brings lies, how do evil spirits have power in our lives? How do they bring so much destruction? It's primarily through deception, the lies that we have believed empower Him in our lives, if you believe the liar, if you believe the lie you empower the liar, and that was true in the garden, in the garden Adam and Eve were deceived about God's goodness. Did God really say that? The reason God said that is because He doesn't really care for you, He doesn't really love you, and He doesn't want what's best for you. He's not really a good Father, and you can't trust Him. Think about the last time you acted out in sin, wasn't it the same voice? Is there ever a time you didn't sin where there wasn't some version of that deception attached? God's holding out on you, He doesn't really know what's best for you, He doesn't really care. Here's something good, take a hold of it for yourself. And so when Adam and Eve, when they swallowed the fruit, when they ate the fruit, they didn't just swallow fruit, they swallowed the deception, and the deception became living and active in them, it became a power. Much like I experienced, the deception became a power in them that led to slavery, because their perception of God had been distorted. When God came after them, what did they do? They ran from Him who is love. Who does that? Who hides from love? Only someone who's been deceived. It's deception that causes us to run and to hide from love, and it brings fear and insecurity. And in that insecurity, we turn to pride. We grab ahold of whatever we're good at, we grab ahold of whatever tries to sustain us, and ultimately that fails. So after the fall, there was another voice, a counterfeit voice, a counterfeit voice, the father of lies. He had robbed them of their identity, and they could no longer hear the voice of God, no longer be in His company, and they were ashamed. They could no longer see who God was, for God is love. They saw Him only through the lens of their shame. I want to suggest that maybe some of you might be looking at God through the lens of your shame. You're expecting Him to be angry with you. You're expecting Him to reject you. You're expecting Him to misunderstand you. You're seeing Him through the power of sin. The good news, brothers, is that Jesus on the cross is the answer to the lie. If the accusation of the enemy, the lie of the enemy is that he's, that's not a good father and he can't be trusted, here's the response. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, whoever believes in him will have eternal life and not perish. We see the answer to the lie in the revelation of the love of God in the broken body of Jesus on the cross. I remember I was here probably 17 years ago and I was at a youth conference and I was chaperoning and I was really struggling with an area of sin in my life and I went to one of the priests for confession and just in a moment of being vulnerable, I shared what I did, but then I said, and Father, I just don't think he can forgive me this time. I was immature in my faith. There's a lot I didn't understand, but I just said, I don't think he can forgive me this time. And the priest was really smart. He didn't argue with me because that would have been a mistake. He didn't try to engage with me intellectually. It was kind of like those old Verizon commercials, you know, can you hear me now? You remember those? Can you hear me now? And I said, I just don't believe that he can forgive me this time. And so the priest just kind of turned his chair to the side and behind him was the crucifix and he said, can you believe now? And I looked at the cross and I said, I can't deny it. I cannot deny that he can forgive me, that there is power for me to be forgiven and I receive God's mercy. So the cross is enough to break the bondage. The cross has enough power to break the power of your lie, of your deceptions. We said that prayer this morning. God has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David. That is Jesus. Jesus is the stronghold of our salvation and he saves us from all our enemies. Everybody say all. Did he save you from some of your enemies? All. He saved you from all of your enemies. So deliverance is about breaking the power of the lie so that the voice of the Father who has always been speaking can be clearly heard. The Father is whispering to us about our identity, our purpose, and our destiny. And God's word is alive. When we come to Jesus and His word is released in us, it will come up against strongholds. A stronghold is a house of thoughts. It's a pattern of thinking under the power of sin. And these are strongholds of thoughts that keep us from hearing the Father's whisper. Sometimes we just tolerate what I would call stinking thinking. We have these patterns of thought that we actually think they're helping us. How many of you have ever tried to shame yourself into holiness? How'd that go for you? If I just beat myself up enough, I just tell myself how horrible I am and ultimately what we're doing is agreeing with our accuser. God wants to break those strongholds of thinking. Some of us hold on to simple things, simple accusations like you're so stupid, you know. And God doesn't want us to tolerate these small strongholds. The thoughts that God has about us are the treasure that we seek. He really is that good. His voice, His heart for us, the things that He wants to say to us are good beyond measure. He really does want good for us. He does have plans for us. Jeremiah 29, 11. For I know the thoughts, the translation says, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for your welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. Many of us feel unwanted. We feel rejected. Parents may have said you were a mistake. Maybe when you were ordained, your bishop kind of ignored you. Wasn't the Father that you wanted him to be? We experience these whispers, these limitations in our small story. But the bigger story is that God has always loved you. He's always treasured you. He's always wanted you. And He sent His Son to rescue you. Even when we rejected Him, even when we turned our backs on Him, He never stopped loving us, and He's never stopped speaking to us. Just because the other voices were louder, just because we had those deceptions, kind of like ear plugs in our ears, doesn't mean He wasn't speaking. The work of the enemy is to keep us in that small story. Jesus said, I have come to destroy the devil's work. Jesus came to destroy the devil's work. What was the devil's greatest work? The deception that God is not a good father. You are called to be a minister of the gospel. To proclaim what Jesus has done, you're also called to destroy the devil's work. To tear down the strongholds and pretensions that set themselves up against the knowledge of God. There really are two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of darkness, and in darkness we cannot see. We cannot see clearly. We cannot choose fully, and we choose in the context of deception and bondage. And then there's the kingdom of the beloved Son, where as we gaze at Jesus, we see the love of God the Father. Jesus taught us to pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are asking for the reign of God here on earth. And when God's kingdom reigns on earth, there's really only two areas where Satan can have authority in our life. One, areas where we have not yielded to Jesus is Jesus' Lord. Have you given him everything? Or is there an area that you're holding where you don't trust him, where you really don't want to give that up? So areas where we have not yielded to Jesus, and second areas where we do not fully trust. Again, Colossians 1.13, we looked at that last night. We have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son. Baptism. Baptism is a transfer. It's a deliverance. It's an exodus. I know when you see the baby, you think about new life, you think about creation, but it's also a death and a resurrection. Out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of the beloved Son. I like to think about it like this. You ever go to like arcades and you see the skill crane? You know what I'm talking about? You put your quarter in and try to win a prize. Never works, does it, right? The skill crane comes down and it plucks a toy out if you're good at it, and it brings it over here, and then it drops it into the bucket, and then you get your toy, right? Baptism plucks us out of the kingdom of darkness and deposits us into the kingdom of the beloved Son. But you were probably raised in the other kingdom. You grew up in the kingdom of darkness. You were surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. You learned the ways of the kingdom of darkness, and now it's time, as Paul said, to put off those ways and to put on Jesus Christ, to put on the life of the Son of God. And so Jesus describes the kingdom of God like yeast working its way through dough. You don't just put the yeast on and walk away, right? You got to knead it. You got to stretch and fold that dough until the yeast, the kingdom of God, works its way through the entire batch of dough. And so renewing our minds in the Holy Spirit, in the Word of God is part of deliverance. It's saying, yeah, I may have been raised in that kingdom and I may have been taught a certain way, but now I'm going to measure what I do and what I say by Jesus Christ, because He is the way and the truth and the life. Amen? Jesus is my culture now. Some people say, oh, well, everybody yells in my family. We're Italian, you know? Everybody's angry in my family. We're Irish. That's who we are. Well, that's not... If it doesn't belong to Jesus, then it doesn't belong to you anymore. And if it does belong to Jesus, it does belong to you. That's what being a disciple means. It's monkey see, monkey do. Whatever I see Jesus do, I want to do. And if it's in me and it's not in him, I want to put it aside. And so deliverance in many ways is about unlearning the old ways of the kingdom of darkness and the ways in which we've been shaped and formed and learning new ways. Finally, I just want to close by saying that the mission that Jesus started continues through us. Jesus' mission in Luke 4, verse 17, He says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Jesus' mission is now our mission. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see that crowds gathered from the towns, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and it says all of them were healed. The purpose of our time together is not just that you will experience freedom, but also that you will be prepared and equipped to give away what you've received. Deliverance from the influence of evil spirits is normal part, a normal part of evangelization. Amen? Too often we've separated everything. We put the proclamation of the gospel up here, and we do a little bit of healing prayer over there, and then we do the deliverance ministry in the base pen. But in Jesus, it was all one. It was proclaiming the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is right here, and demonstrating that through the healing of the sick and the deliverance of those who were oppressed. It was one message. It was one ministry. We need to understand the authority that we've been given in Mark 16. After Jesus said, as the Father sent me, the Father is sending, I am sending you. That's profound, isn't it? The Father is, Jesus is sending you just as the Father sent him. Mark 16, he says, these signs will accompany those who believe in my name they will drive out demons. It's really important that we understand that Satan gets his power from us. If we don't give him authority, he has none. St. Augustine describes Satan like a chain dog barking madly. All he can do is bark. Can he bite? Only if you begin to walk into his territory. Fear is one of the devil's entryways. We all need to understand our position in Christ, and Satan has no authority unless the door has been opened and we've walked into his territory. How do we walk into the enemy's territory? Two ways. Fear and pride. Fear and pride. And so freedom is the ability to choose the good freely. It's the awareness of who we are and our calling in Christ. We all need to make practical choices to live as a part of the body of Christ, to be vulnerable with others, to be a part of Christian relationships, and to choose to be a blessing to others. But deliverance is an ordinary part of the Christian life. It's seeing your story as the part of the larger story of the life of the Son of God. Freedom is your inheritance as a Son of God. Amen. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, thank you for sending your Son who is the light of the world. In him we see all things. Thank you Father for the gift of your Holy Spirit who's at work in us even now. He is separating every thought at the level of our hearts, helping us to see the difference between your truth and a lie. Jesus, we want to say yes to being your disciples, to allowing our thoughts and our words and our actions to be defined, not by our small story, but by the reality of the Father's love. Holy Spirit, we say yes to your work right now. And Lord, as we learn to use these five keys, we ask that you do a great work in us, that we would be able to say with joy that you have saved us from the hand of all of our enemies, from the hand of those who hate us. Jesus, we give you glory and honor for the victory is yours. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.