Good Word Friday theme: Freedom and liberty

It’s the first Friday in July, and we’re kicking off a new theme for Good Word Friday: freedom and liberty. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, we celebrate Independence Day. Two-hundred and forty-four years ago, the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain. The members of the Continental Congress had no idea that those 13 colonies had the potential to one day become the largest, most powerful, and most prosperous nation on the face of the earth.

We encourage you to think back on your own personal independence day — the day that you declared your independence from satan and the power he held over your eternal soul. You swapped that tyrannical ruler for a loving, merciful Father, and — oh, what joy!

Just like those 13 colonies long ago, we also have great potential in Christ, not for worldly gain but spiritual. Just as the United States has experienced ups and downs over the past two-odd centuries, prospering and failing, honoring and disgracing, progressing and backsliding, so have we all since the waters of baptism.

No matter how far we’ve come since our spiritual independence day, we have access to the same freedom today as we did on the day our sins were washed away. No matter what life has brought us, no matter what we’ve done with what we’ve been given, we have at our fingertips the key to freedom in Christ — daily repentance and the daily walk of obedience. In this easy yoke, we find true freedom.

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

This article has undergone ministry review and approval.