By Robert Morris, Author of “THE BLESSED LIFE” & “THE GOD I NEVER KNEW”
Although difficult to locate used copies of this 2015 book, I found Truly Free a helpful worthy read written by a transparent pastor geared to pointing men with prior baggage such as myself, to breaking the snares that may continue to so easily entangle us. Our beacon passage is from from Matthew 11:28-30 “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Now, listen to the same passage in today’s conversational paraphrased English from The Message:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
| Introduction (verbatim) “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 NIV Their forgetfulness began in earnest on the fifteenth day of their second month of their new calendar. Out in the desert, however, most folks didn’t bother to keep of what day it was. Mostly, everybody just noticed their sweat—how everybody stank the same bad way. They noticed the sand as it wedged its way into their sandals and between their toes and drifted into their eyes and nostrils with each step they took. They noticed the heat—how breath after breath, the desert air burned in their lungs. The Israelites were hitting the wall of desert reality. Already the cool water and palm trees of the oasis of Elim lay far behind them. The relief of shade from Mount Sinai lay in the shadowy distance. The promised land seemed so far ahead of them, they wondered if they’d ever arrive. All that stench and heat and dust and desert grime mixed together proved the perfect climate to birth forgetfulness. As recorded in Exodus 16, the grumblings on that fifteenth day of the second month since coming out of Egypt started out something like this: “Hey.” An Israelite wiped the sweat off his forehead. “What I wouldn’t give right now to be back sitting in the shade of my old house.” “Yeah,” said another, a faraway look in her eyes. “We really had it good back there, didn’t we?” A third chimed in. “Back in Egypt we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. Remember all those fresh onions and garlic and leeks? So tasty!” They felt their mouths water, even in the arid heat. And from there the grumbling erupted. How Bad It Really Was Did you catch what important truth the Israelites had forgotten? They’d been slaves! The Israelites had escaped bondage in Egypt through the power of God, but in the wilderness they were still imprisoned by their selective memory of life in Egypt Back in Egypt they might have eaten fresh onions and garlic and leeks on rare occasions. But they had also labored from dawn to dusk every day under the unbending orders that they make bricks without straw. Egypt came complete with cruel taskmasters and whips and chains and shackles and wrenching poverty. All their baby boys had once been thrown into the Nile River. Repeatedly—desperately—the Israelites had cried out to God for a deliverer. Now they’d forgotten they had been in bondage. They’d also forgotten that God had answered their cry. God had sent a deliverer to lead them out of slavery. But hold on a moment. Before we come down too hard on the Israelites, have you ever considered how susceptible we are today to do or at least lean toward the same thing? This Present Egypt If we’re Christians, then the Lord has delivered us out of slavery. Through Christ’s work on the cross, Jesus has removed our despair and darkness and put in its place victory, strength, and freedom. The old is gone. The new has come. We are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5: 17). We never need to return to Egypt. And yet . . . A life of slavery still beckons to us. We find that our old, harmful thoughts are hard to shake. Our former, unhealthy habits are hard to break. Long-embedded patterns of shameful living continue to entangle us—day after day, month after month, even year after year. Some days we feel weighed down by those shackles. We long for the freedom to respond to God fully as the people He has created and redeemed us to be. But fear and heaviness and darkness surround us. We wonder where to turn. We need to recognize the reality and presence of the spiritual realm. We need to step fully into God’s plan to heal our broken world. We need to move into life and healing, purity, liberty, holiness, and truth. But how? Finally Free In the pages ahead, I want to explore with you a glorious truth—that the promise of being delivered from our slavery is a promise to be set free completely. Forget Egypt. You don’t ever want to return to your personal Egypt. The reality of being truly free is one you may not have explored fully before. A big problem for us is that evil still exists in the world today. Christ has conquered sin and death, yes, but in His infinite wisdom—for reasons that are often difficult for us to understand—the effects of evil are still permitted to exist. We can still be influenced by evil. We can still be oppressed by evil. We can even be controlled by evil. Even if we’re saved. In the chapters to come we are going to surface a need you may not have known you had. At this very moment there is scriptural evidence that you and I can be negatively influenced by evil. That same evil can entrap us and harm us, oppress us and hurt us, and generally make our lives difficult, even enslave us to harmful patterns of living we thought we had left behind. But we don’t want to dwell on evil in this book. You won’t hear prolonged stories of the bizarre, the cruel and unusual, or the weird. I won’t tell any stories that keep you awake at night or stories that sound as though they’re pulled from the tabloids. Instead, I want to dwell on the goodness and power and truth of Jesus Christ. That’s what this book is all about: how God sets us free. All authority has been given to Jesus (Matthew 28: 18). He has conquered death, hell, and evil (1 Corinthians 15: 54–56). He now reigns at God’s right hand and will reign forevermore (Acts 2: 33). The good news is that regardless of what difficulty you’re struggling with today, there is always hope. Sure, the temptation never quite goes away in this life. There is always a pull toward thoughts and actions that could cause us to become burdened again by a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5: 1 NASB). But you need to know—and live out fully—that you never need to return to Egypt. With Jesus Christ, you can be free at last, free forever, truly and finally free. If that sounds like something you long for, I invite you to keep reading. Robert Morris Dallas, Texas” |
Contents
Introduction: Free At Last
Chapter One: Greater Is He
Two: Three Big Warning Signs:
Three: Beware the Chaldeans
Four: Breaking the Snare of Pride
Five: Breaking the Snare of Bitterness
Six: Breaking the Snare of Greed
Seven: Breaking the Snare of Lust
Eight: Breaking the Snares in Your Mind
The Mind Is a Battlefield:
Strategy #1: Renewing Minds by Memorizing Scripture
Strategy # 2: Using God’s Word as a Spiritual Weapon
Strategy # 3: Meditating on the Word of God
Nine: Breaking the Snares of Past Wounds
Ten: A Prayer For Freedom
Appendix:
Resources for You to Use
- Making Sure You’re Born Again: Forgiven, Transformed, Empowered & Living in Daily Obedience as His Ambassadors Until Death Permits Retirement.
- FAQ’s About Deliverance
- Ministry of Deliverance and Corresponding Infilling of Holy Spirit
- Further Reading for Maintaining Your Victory