Not Just Freedom From, But Freedom To

Well, good morning. [ Cheering ] Everybody get some sleep? [ Cheering ] I hope so, because we have a day in store for you today. For a lot of you, this is your first summit. How many of you is your first summit? [ Cheering ] All right, well, settle in. We've got a lot of good stuff for you today. How many of you know that God does good things on the third day? [ Cheering ] What I want to talk to you about this morning is we're going to continue talking about freedom. You know, in Celebrate Recovery, we talk about finding freedom from our hurts, hang-ups, and habits. We talk about being restored. We talk about being set free, and that freedom from is important. It's something that we need to celebrate. I'm sure some of you, you're a part of this ministry now, and when you look back on the manner of the woman you were, when you started this ministry, you can barely recognize that person. Isn't that a good feeling? [ Cheering ] And still, some of you are probably new, and you walked in here from things that you need to be set free from, and after hearing some testimonies

and being around some people who have found freedom, you're more fired up than ever to have God change that part of you that you're looking for freedom, and others of you are probably like me. There are some areas in your life you say, "I've been set free, I find complete freedom in that area," and there's some other parts of your life where you're like, "Oh, but God, this part's a little sticky." Maybe I've reserved this part for me for a while, or maybe you've come and you've asked for healing or you've asked for freedom, and you're still having a hard time in that area. In my time together today, I'm going to either say we're being set free or we've been set free, because as we know, this is a process. That sometimes we come to God and He takes it away. Other times we have to go to God every day, sometimes every hour, and sometimes every minute. And we've got to say, "God, help me from this thing." And so, yes, we have been set free from, and it is worth celebrating the freedom that we are finding from our hurts, hang-ups, and habits. But Jesus doesn't just set us free from. He sets us free too. There are things in our lives that He has set us free from, and those are amazing things. But He doesn't just set us free so that we're free. He sets us free to do some things.

And we see this over and over in the healing ministry that Jesus performed when He walked the earth. Someone would come to Him, or someone would be brought to Him. He would heal them, and then He'd say something like "Go and sin no more." He would heal them, and then He would set them on a mission. But His healing for their need came first, and then they were empowered to live different lives. It's important that we don't get this order mixed up. The healing comes first. Now, when Jesus says something like "Go and sin no more," does anybody believe the people in the Bible, He said that too, went and lived perfect lives from that moment on? Not a chance. But He's giving them an ideal to search for. What I love about this is what that means is that you can be in healing process and still be set free to work for God. And so we're going to look at some stories. The first story we're going to look at, there's this amazing story in Luke where Jesus arrives on the scene. And He shows up to this area, and He finds a man who is naked and running around in chains. And Jesus immediately knows he is possessed. And Jesus shows up and He becomes like John Wick Jesus in this moment. I love this story because this man is so possessed that when the townspeople tie him in chains, He breaks the chains. He's living in a graveyard. But when Jesus shows up, the demons get scared.

The demons get scared. And Jesus says, what's your name? And they go, we're so many, our name is Legion. So not one demon, a legion of demons is trembling in their boots because this guy shows up. This is amazing. And so he shows up and the demons say, don't torture us, don't send us back where we come from. There's some pigs over there, can we go in the heart of pigs? And Jesus sends them into the pigs, and the pigs run off a cliff. And instead of praising him, the townspeople, they get afraid of him. We pick it up in 334. It says, when those tending the pigs saw what happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside. And the people went out to see what happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people how the demon possessed man had been cured. Then all the people of the region of Garrison has came and asked Jesus to leave them because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left. But the man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with them, but Jesus sent him wasting return home and tell how much God has done for you. So the man went away and told all over town

how much Jesus had done for him. Now, when we hear this story, I've heard this story a lot, I'm always focusing on how Jesus sets him free from the demons. But he doesn't just set him free from legions, he sets him free to do something. This man, of course, he wants to go with Jesus. So would I, he completely changed my life. I want to hang out with that guy for the rest of my life. And Jesus says it's not about that. You get to go be my messenger. You get to go be my missionary. You get to go tell other people what I did for you. And he does. And I just think sometimes we focus on the wrong part of the story. Because we're focused on what Jesus sets us free from. And that's important. It's worth celebrating. But he doesn't just set us free from to sit around. He sets us free to do things. We see this pattern all over the Bible, over and over. When the woman who was caught in adultery, which I always think is funny that the woman was caught in adultery, like where'd the guy go, right? But the woman gets caught in adultery. And first, Jesus sets her free from the crowd looking to stone her. Then he tells her he doesn't condemn her. So that's freeing her from her sin.

And he says, go and sin no more. He's giving her the freedom to live a new life. In Luke 18, Jesus heals a blind man. And the blind man begins following him and praising him. And the Bible says that others begin to praise him along with the blind man. He says, you're free to bring glory to God. In Mark 5, Jesus heals the woman who'd been suffering with bleeding when she touched his robe. He says that her faith has healed her. And then he tells her to go in peace. She was free to enjoy the life of freedom she'd been denied due to her suffering. Jesus heals. He sets us free from. And then he sets us free, too. So my question is, what about you? What have you been set free from? Like the man who is possessed with Legion has Jesus freed you from the demons, whether literal or, you know, in our culture. We talk about fighting my demons. Has he set you free and snapped your chains? And now all of a sudden, he's saying, I'm going to change your whole identity, too. Because remember, this man lived in a graveyard, naked. And he says, I'm going to change that identity. You're no longer identified by those things. Have you been set free from a life of sin, like the woman caught in adultery?

Or maybe the blind man? Has he opened your eyes and let you see yourself and other people clearly, healing you from your hang-ups? Or like the woman who touched his robe, have you had a pain in your past? Have you been carrying around for decades? And he sets you free from that pain of your past? Guys, these aren't just Bible stories. We can look at this and see, this is what Jesus can do for me. But he sets us free from so that he can set us free, too. Guys, sometimes I think we just need I can get caught up in my task list, my to-dos, my day-to-day life, and I almost take it for granted that Jesus heals us, that he frees us. And sometimes that's reflected in my prayers because my prayers are pretty wimpy. Hey, Jesus, could you take care of this today? Instead of Jesus, I don't need you, and you're the only one who can do this. And so, I just think for a moment, sometimes we just need to pause because Jesus has the power to free us from our hurts, hang-ups, and habits, and he sets us free to live life in a way we never thought possible. So, we're going to look back at those stories I just mentioned, and we're going to see what Jesus has set us free to do. Just like the woman caught in adultery, you and I have been set free to live a new life. For many of us, we come to recovery when things are out of control, right? It's the whole reason why the first step is we realize things are out of control, right? We don't come to recovery when we think like Tommy said last night, I've got it. But when we realize things are out of control, we come, but the problem is for many of us just like this woman, we only come when we're caught. Now, we can be caught in a number of different ways. There's kind of the classic someone sees us doing the thing, or they find our stash, or we're literally caught in the act, or sometimes somebody just brings something up and they say, "I don't believe you." We're caught in that way. Sometimes we can see our behavior in another person, and that behavior acts like a mirror, and all of a sudden our denial is broken because we see it in someone else, and it bothers us. And we go, "Oh, I guess I do that same thing." Or if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit can convict us. And we're caught in that way. But like this woman, someone or something catches us. Recovery begins when we're caught.

That is when we see it, and it's exposed. Yes, it can be by someone else, it could be external, but often it's internal. There's a feeling that something is wrong, and I can't continue to live this way, I can't hide it, I can't look away, I can't justify it anymore, something needs to change. And like this woman, we find ourselves with our sin exposed, and we park at Celebrate Recovery for the first time, and we think we're going to walk in, and everyone's going to see it and know it, and they're going to start picking up stones. And instead, we find a bunch of people, and it's almost like finally. Finally, you're here. [Applause] You know, and by the way, I'm not just talking about addictions when I talk about this. There's this myth and recovery that is just addicts and alcoholics that have habits. The truth is, we all have destructive habits in our lives. Some of them are just more socially acceptable, right? But these behaviors are out of control, and we need help getting free. So just like this woman, we come to Celebrate Recovery, we have an encounter with Jesus, and he doesn't condemn us. He desires that we live our life of sin. Notice, he didn't say this woman, "Where are your condemners?" And she says, "Nowhere, neither do I to condemn you." Head back to your tent, right? Go back to your life of sin. He gives her a new way to live, and he does the same thing with us. He doesn't want us come to recovery, get a little bit of freedom, and then go, "Cool, now I can go back and live the way I want to live." He sets us free so that we can live in a new way, in a new life. This is a very gross verse, but in Proverbs 26, 11, it says, "As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats, their folly." Isn't that gross? But isn't it true? I feel like that. When I know there's something I'm not supposed to do, and I go do it again, it feels that way. And when we're set free from, we need to walk away from that. But the only way we can is that when we have a relationship with Jesus, because it's his power that changes us, we've been freed to live a new life. We can change. By the way, that means the So you can't change them. Some of you are mad at me right now. That's okay. Put me on your fourth step, but we get to grow. We get to change. We get to live a new life. We're set free from the things that define us. In December of 1999, I was arrested for a DUI. Now, the good news of that was I was not an alcoholic. Denial is a wonderful thing, but I had to go to a number of meetings. Some of you came in on a court card. Me too. I had to go to a number of meetings,

and then I got to go to these things called alcohol education classes, which I thought was funny because I thought I knew a lot about alcohol, but I was going to go. And I had to go to these classes and think these classes are basically like driver's ed for alcoholics, right? And so we would go. We would like watch like videos of people getting in drunk driving accidents, and then we would go and we'd sit in a circle and share, open-share style, right? And in these meetings, I'll never forget. It was in 1999, and I remember like it was yesterday, the woman who led the group said the day I admitted I was an alcoholic was the most freeing day of my life, because it meant I never had to drink again. In my denial, I sat there thinking there's no freedom there, because to me, freedom was being able to drink however much I wanted, whenever I wanted. The freedom was I could live my life on my standard. It wasn't until years later when I finally came out of denial and began attending Celebrate Recovery that I went, "Oh, that's what she means. That's where the freedom is." Now, I thought I had freedom to live how I wanted to live. Now, 22 years later, I understand better what freedom looks like. I've free to live in a new way. And guys, that's just the freedom from the thing that brought me here. I've been set free from all kinds of Hertz hang-ups and habits over those 22 years. My last step study, I didn't answer a single question about alcohol. I didn't think about it. But my codependency, that runs deep. And there's issues in my life that are still being exposed, and every time one points out, I'm actually a little excited, because it means I'm going to have more freedom, because he sets us free to live in a new life. And he says, "Go and sin no more." And like I said, that doesn't mean we'll be perfect. I wish it did. I wish it meant that I got to be perfect. But the point is, it means that we have a new standard, a new way of living. And I'm not saying I don't sin, of course I do. In fact, I've probably blown it a number of times just being here over the last three days. When those lights went off, trust me. But this, this can be hard for some of us to accept that we have a new way of living. Because we think, "No, no, Johnny, you don't understand. I've blown it. I've done too much." That new way of life, that's for everybody else, but not for me. I'm going to have to keep paying for my sins. I don't get to love to walk in this freedom. I don't get the freedom to live a new life. And I'm saying, "Yeah, you too. You get this freedom, too." Just know that when an old hang-up hurt or habit comes back into your mind, you can remember that you've got this freedom. And if a new one pops up, you can say, "We'll deal with you next." Now, one thing I'd like to point out here is that I think the wrong goal can be to

live a perfect life. In fact, I will tell you, you are set free to not be perfect. Now, I'm not saying abuse the grace. I'm not saying to get freedom and then decide to sin. That's not what I'm talking about. We've got to be careful with that. But the point is, you and I are not going to be perfect this side of heaven. If you don't believe me, just look at Philippians 1, 6. Being confident of this, that he who began a good work and you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. This verse tells us that Jesus is the one who began the work. You didn't begin the work. I didn't begin the work. Jesus began the work. And there is a completion date. It's just not today. and we will be made perfect until then we're going to struggle with sin. But we need to be careful that that doesn't mean, okay, cool, then I can live however I want and still call myself a Christ follower. Romans 6 1, Paul tells us, what shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning that the grace may increase by no means? We are those who have died to sin, so how can we live in it any longer? The point is, you and I have been set free, we have Jesus grace, but we need not to abuse that grace. But when we sin, we need to remember, oh yeah, that's who I, that's part of my life. Now we all have days where we just nail it, right? We wake up and the first thing we do is good morning God, and we go and we do our quiet time, and we open the Bible and it's like it just jumps off the page. It's fresh, we pray, and it feels like we're talking right to our Father. We drive to work, we don't flip anyone off, and then when, when we get there, we have a hard conversation with a code worker, but we say all the right things in the right tone, and that conflict actually makes the person feel closer to us as a result. That night we go to our Celebrate Recovery Ministry, we sit in our open share group, we share, and we have a share that impacts the other people in our circle, and we don't break a single guideline. All day people have seen patience and joy in our lives, our loved ones feel closer to us. We go home after Celebrate Recovery, we thank God as our head hits the pillow, and we dream sweet dreams. And then there are other days. We wake up, and we go, "Good God, it's morning." And we go downstairs, or we go into the next room, we open our Bibles, and we go, "What does any of this mean? How is this going to help me?" We pray, and it feels like our prayers bounce off the ceiling, and we find ourselves as heven, listening. We have four road rage incidents on our way to work. We're so amped up when we get there that that confrontation that we need to have with a co-worker, we blast them, and we don't even care that we said things in a hurtful way. Patience never hurt ever, right? Like we're just walking around

ready. We go to CR that night, and we complain that we have to be there when everybody else gets to be outside, live in their lives, however they want to live. We grumble through the whole night, and we go to bed, our thoughts are far from God. If you're like me, most days are a mix of the two. Sure, I've nailed it. I've had highlight days, and I've also had those days I would just want to forget. But the point is, is that you and I are human beings. Some days we're going to do great, some days we're going to struggle because we have a struggle with sin, but that shouldn't define us. When we find ourselves in those moments, when we find ourselves struggling with sin, I want to remind you, you're in good company. Not just each other, but Paul, one of the authors who wrote a huge chunk of the New Testament, he struggled with this. Romans 7, 15 through 19, he says, I don't understand myself at all. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it's no longer I myself would do it, but it's sin living in me. For I know the good itself does not dwell in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like Paul was perfect to me. And that gives me such peace. Because if this guy who could write so much of the New Testament struggled with sin, I can go, oh, phew, I'm not going to be perfect either. Perfectionism is a trap. You are not going to be perfect. Some of you are like, guess I will. But you're not going to be perfect. And trying to be perfect is a trap because then when you blow it, you will feel like you have failed. And feeling like you failed can set you up for all kinds of new hurts, hang ups and habits to come, or for old ones to come right back up. You and I have been set free to not be perfect, but we have been set free to live a new life. I just want remember that we have a Savior who already knows, who already paid for it, and we go to Him and we say, "Help me not do that again," and He goes, "I got you." So just like the woman who was caught in adultery, you and I have been set free to live in a new life, and when Jesus healed the blind man and Luke, He immediately begins following Him and praising God. When other people see both His change and His response, they begin praising God as well. So when we are set free from, we are set free to bring glory to Jesus. We all need to remember that everything that happens to us and in us in recovery is because

of Jesus. He did the work to make the change possible. Without Him, we might get some change, we might get some sobriety, but the recovery and freedom we are looking for, that is not going to happen. And so that turns into giving Him praise. Now we often think about this as worship, and worship can be a deeply personal experience, but when we get together and we worship corporately, isn't that beautiful? Haven't we experienced some amazing worship together? And when we get together in a crowd, I love it, but you know, worship doesn't have to be in a crowd. Worship can be the way that we live our lives. Worship can be how we go about our day. It's one thing in a setting like this though, right? Where we're praising God, we're around people who are praising God, but what about in our day-to-day lives? How do we bring glory to Jesus and our day-to-day lives? Well, one simple way is by telling people what He's done for us. Now I'm not saying that when you go to Starbucks, you share your 20-minute testimony with a barista. Right? That probably won't do you any favors. I wouldn't drink that coffee is all I'm saying. But we can always be ready to share what Jesus has done for us when somebody asks. We can have something prepared. If you were a Celebrate Recovery shirt out in public, you better be ready for somebody to ask you what Celebrate Recovery is. Because if you start going, "Oh, well, it's this thing that I do, but you don't want to come. It's weird." They're not... But have something ready quick that you can say, but we can bring glory to Jesus. And the best way I think we can bring glory to Jesus is by serving other people. You and I are set free to serve other people. Now look, here's what I know. Fellow codependents clock in. For a lot of us, there is a thin line between serving people and codependency. And as codependents, we often believe we are serving other people when we're actually in our habit of codependency. Some of you are not going to like what I'm going to say in the next few minutes. But I want you to hear me as someone who has gone through this himself. See, we codependents tell ourselves that other people are our problem. And if they would just get it together, I would be just fine. And so we tell ourselves, "I have to extend myself. I have to control other people. I have to please other people. I have to live my life in a way where I'm serving them, but we are not serving them." In fact, when we do that, we're serving ourselves. When we are serving people in codependency, it's about taking care of us, not them, and that's not service. I got real mad at somebody when she told me this. She's my therapist. And she pointed out that when I go and I try

to please other people, I'm a people pleaser. That's my brand of codependency. And I saw something rude online one time and said, "Oh, you're a people pleaser? Name somebody who's pleased with you." Yeah, right? Right? Rude. Rude. But I was telling her how when Jenny or one of my kids or somebody at work or somebody at work. "and it's my job to take care of their emotions." And she said, "Wow, Johnny, that's really selfish." I literally said to her, "How dare you?" (audience laughing) You ever say, "How dare you to your therapist?" (audience laughing) It didn't work, you know what she followed up with? Hmm, I wonder why that made you so angry. (audience laughing) (audience laughing) That just got me more upset, right? But she went on to explain that if I felt comfortable with other people's negative emotions, I wouldn't need to try to fix them. And I have to be honest, I didn't get it right away. It took me a while, like a month, to sit with it and to go to Jesus with it, and to talk to other people about it. But I realized that when I go to soothe other people when they feel bad or they're hurting, I'm not actually doing it to meet their need. I'm doing it to meet my need. Something is going on inside of me that says, "You're responsible for how other people feel. "You need to carry their emotions. "You need to make it better."

So instead of soothing someone for them, I wanted to be at peace, but I can't be in peace unless you're okay. And the reason that's selfish is I'm taking the agency away from them, and I'm actually saying you can't take care of yourself. You need me to step in and make this better. And as I've been learning, catch that, learning, to be able to sit in when other people are upset or hurting. Now I'm getting better at being able to go soothe them or to help when they need it in an appropriate way. And it's gone from serving myself to more often serving other people. Remember, I said we're free not to be perfect, so sometimes I get it wrong. And that's okay because I learned from it. But now if Jenny or one of my kids or a friend or someone is hurting, I don't go into it to make myself feel better. I can say, "How can I actually serve this person "in their need?" And when we serve other people, especially people who don't know Jesus, that goes against culture. And so they will look at it and say, "Why are you doing that?" Because we've found freedom. So I don't need to make myself first place anymore. I don't need for you to see me or to acknowledge me in order to feel right.

I don't need you to do everything exactly the way I say you need me to do it because that's not who I am anymore. Because God's taking that or He's taking it. So we can serve other people. Now some of you are like, you've been kind of chill for the last few minutes 'cause you don't think of yourself as a co-dependent. And so you're like, "I don't have that problem." The truth about it is, is that we can all serve people better and more. And we can bring honor to Jesus. But the thing is, there's probably a subset of people in this room, and you don't feel like you're qualified to serve Jesus because of your past. And every once in a while, we'll come to someone and we'll say, "Hey, we'd love you to share "your testimony at large group." And they say, "Oh, my testimony's really vanilla "and nobody's gonna love it. "No one's gonna relate to it." They're not saying, "I don't wanna serve anyone." They're saying something that's true though. They feel like they're not valuable. And we can say to them, "We need to hear your story "because you have a story that Jesus set you free." We have other people that might say, "Johnny, I can't be a leader in this ministry "because you don't know what I've done."

And they're not saying they don't wanna serve, but they're telling you something about themselves. But we have been set free from, so we are set free to bring glory to Jesus. I wish you could understand how much this doesn't mean we have to get it right all the time. I make mistakes all the time as a leader in Celebrate Recovery. If I stood up here and told you all the mistakes I made not just in my first five years, but in the last few months, I would run out of time. Now, some of you are like, "That's what we wanna hear." (congregation laughing) Too bad. (congregation laughing) Then we get to Mark chapter five where Jesus heals the woman who is suffering from bleeding when she touches his robe. He says, "Your faith has healed you," and then he tells her, "Go in peace." Like her, you and I are set free to enjoy the life of freedom that has been denied to us due to suffering. God wants to heal. where the wounds of our past no longer run our presence. We spend a lot of time talking about the hurt we encounter in Celebrate Recovery because we understand how forming it can be. But we have to be careful that we don't let understanding our pain turn into excuses for our behaviors. But what we need to do is take the focus off of blaming and instead get to explaining. I've sat in too many circles. I've been with too many men that will say things like, "I'm fine. Nothing bad has ever happened to me. I'm just a piece of garbage

who makes bad decisions." And I want to say, "Man, you've been hurt. You've been hurt in ways that you won't even look at." And until you look at that hurt, you'll never understand why you make the decisions you make. You've still got to own the decision. You've still got to own what you've done. But you've got to look at the fact that you've been hurt. And those hurts made you think certain things about yourself, other people in God. Those are called hang-ups. And those hang-ups are leaky, and those become habits. And so when we see all of those things, it's not about blaming someone else. It's about us deciding that it's time to change. The pain of our past can be a powerful, motivated motivator for change. It can be the thing that drives us forward to look for freedom. But it can also keep us stuck. It can keep us stuck in our issues, because when we don't deal with the pain of our past, we act it out in our habits today. And we can allow it to shape our lives, and we can live as though the pain is what defines us. But Jesus wants us to enjoy our new lives. He didn't set us free so that we would continue to live as though we were still trapped. One of the strange things about the Bible is that characters like this are named, but not by their name. So like this woman for thousands of years, 2,000 years has been called the bleeding woman. Probably not her given name, right? But her issues, her pain, defines her in Scripture in some ways. And that can be hard because for you and I, our pain has the same power. It can define us. It's why I love Hosanna's poem, "I Have a New Name." Because seeing that clearly helps us see who we really are. Because although we can define ourselves by the things that we've either done or that have been done to us in the past, Jesus says, "I want to give you a new identity." Second Corinthians 5, 17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation is come. The old has gone. The new is here." But too many of us are living like we're still not free. We're still allowing the pain of our past to define us. We're still allowing the hang-ups that we carried in with us to be the way that we think. And we're still trapped in habits that are hurting us and other people. But when we're set free, we need to live in that freedom. Imagine if this bleeding woman had gone to Jesus, touched his robe, been freed from her suffering, and then went right back to acting like she was still bleeding. Or imagine if the blind man that Jesus healed, he shut his eyes real tight and still acted as though he was blind. Or if the woman caught in adultery, when he said, "Go and sit and know more,"

she said, "No, I like that old life. I'm going back." We would think they missed it. You had Jesus right there. You had him right with you. He changed your life, and nothing happened. But we can do the same thing today when we come to recovery. He sets us free from our hurts, hang-ups, and habits, and then we still call ourselves by the names we used to call ourselves. We still see ourselves the way we used to see ourselves. We still act as though we're still that person, and Jesus says, "But you're free now. Enjoy it. Live a new life. Don't allow that suffering to define you anymore. I've healed you, or I'm healing you. I am not my struggles. You are not your struggles. I am not my sin. You are not your sin. It doesn't define me. Yes, I am a sinner, and so are you. But that's not who I ultimately am. You and I can live in the freedom of who God made us, a child of God, a deeply loved and chased after sheep who causes the shepherd to rejoice when he finds him. I am the kind that he leads through this valley of the shadow of death, and then he sets up a table in front of those people who want to see me brought to harm. I'm the the one that Jesus stepped out of heaven. to pave a way for me to be with him forever. And so are you. And we can live this way. This new life is worth living. It's worth celebrating. It's worth looking at the old way of life and saying it is so much better today than it was back then. On my 30th birthday, I'll never forget where I was because I was in prison, visiting a group of prisoners. (audience laughs) Gotcha. How many of you thought I was in prison on my 30th birthday? Gotcha. I was visiting a group of prisoners on my 30th birthday. And they were doing celebrate recovery,

and we were together. And while we were in an open share group, I'll never forget one of the men said that he had been in prison since 1975. Now, I stopped for a minute because I was born in 1975. I'll save you the math, 50, 50 years old. Some of you are like, how old does that make him 50? (audience laughs) And while he shared, I thought of all the things I had experienced in my life up to that point that this man had been in prison for. All of the joys, and yeah, all the pain, all the big life moments, and this man had been in prison. And then I kind of stopped listening for a second while I thought about that, but the next thing he said brought me right back. And he said, today I am freer than I've ever been. (audience applauds) But I mean, what? Like, you're in prison. It's the exact opposite of freedom, right? And something must have shown on my face 'cause he looked at me and he smiled and he goes, yeah, I know. (audience laughs) I'm in prison, and I'm never getting out. But I am freer today because of Jesus than I ever have been. (audience applauds) His situation wouldn't and never will change.

But the fact of the matter is that the life Jesus had given him even inside those walls had set him free. This was the freest man I've ever met in my life. And it impacted me deeply, so deeply, that the next week I went to my home cellberry recovery and I was struck by how many times I asked somebody how you're doing and they responded reasonably well. Now, I get it, comes from the Serenity Prayer, right? That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever and the next. I love the Serenity Prayer. I understand what they're saying, and yet, I think we need to redefine what reasonably well means. I think when we look at what our past life used to look like, today looks so much better. Well, we look about how we used to be trapped in our old Hertangemps and habits and we're finding freedom today. That reasonably well is a lot better than reasonably well. I get it, it's not supremely happy. And if you're one of the people who say that when people ask you how you're doing, cool, I'm not telling you to stop. But maybe smile when you say it. (audience laughing) 'Cause Jesus changes things, He's changing you. And no, you're not perfect, but He's given you the freedom to live in a new life. Don't apologize for your new life. Don't apologize for the change He's given you.

Don't hide it. Don't feel like you gotta pretend like nothing is different. Let's live as Kids of the King. (audience cheering) We're deeply loved. Guys, the creator of the universe loves you. What? (audience cheering) There's a reason we call this Ministry Celebrate Recovery because recovery is worth celebrating. (audience cheering) And you don't have to be done to start celebrating what God's doing for you. You can still be a knucklehead. Surrounded by other knuckleheads. And celebrate what God is doing for you. (audience laughs) you. And I want you to begin to thank Him for the freedom He's given you. Has He healed some hurts in your life? Thank Him for those for that healing. Thank Him for the hang ups in your life that He's replaced with truth. Thank Him for the habits He's set you free from. Thank Him for the victory over sin and death He gave you on the cross and when He was raised back to life. Just take a second and thank Him for everything He's done. For some of you this could take all morning. That's okay, we're not in a hurry. Now I want you to ask Jesus what He's set you free to. Has He set you free to tell more people about Him?

Maybe even right now He's bringing up some faces or names to you. Maybe those faces or names they scare you because you're not sure how you're going to tell them about Jesus. It's okay. Just tell Jesus you will and He'll show you how to do it. Has He set you free to live life in a new way? No longer trapped by the pain of your past or some habits that you used to do? Has He set you free to praise Him and encourage others to praise Him with you? Has He set you free to serve others without expectation or resentment? Free of the worry that you're not good enough or that you'll get it wrong? Has He set you free to enjoy the life that you've been given? Free of the pain of your past suffering? Seek some time to thank Him, not just for setting you free from, but setting you free to. There's a tendency in moments like these. To feel it very deeply and then just let it stay and experience. We've had two days of amazing worship messages, workshops and conversations and we've got more to come today. We've heard testimonies and spent time in prayer and focusing God all away from the stress and the worry of our day to day lives and it's amazing. But if we're not careful, we can leave it here and it's just something that we did or we can let it change us. We can let it encourage us. See, I believe in this moment we have a choice. We can let these three days be something we talk about as a highlight or we can be allowed to be a moment that changes the trajectory of our lives. My prayer for you is that you will celebrate the freedom that Jesus has given you, both the freedom from and the freedom to. My hope is that you will leave this summit fired up not just about celebrate recovery, but about your personal recovery, your freedom and your relationship with the one who sets

you free. [BLANK_AUDIO] that Jesus has made in your lives, about the pain of your past that He has set you free from, about those hang-ups that keep you up at night, that He's replaced with truth, and from those habits that you thought you'd never be able to stop doing, and now you can't even remember a time you did at last, and I actually hope that someday in heaven we'll be able to have those conversations, but what I know is this, no matter where you are today, whether you're brand new or whether you've been here for years, this new life that Jesus sets us free to live is worth celebrating, so I hope that you'll celebrate along with me. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to go on to our next thing. Jesus, we thank you so much. Jesus, that's so easy to say that. It's just a way to start praying, but we thank you so much. None of this is possible without you. You're the one who drives out demons. You're the one who restores sight. You're the one that stops the bleeding. You're the one who says, "I don't condemn you." You didn't have to, but you love us so much that you stepped out of heaven onto our world, endured across so that we could be freed from the power of sin, and then three days later came back to life so that we could be free of the fear of death because we know where we'll be. Jesus, you've decided that we get to be your kids, your friends, your partners in ministry. Jesus, thank you. Heavenly Father, we give it all to you, the creator of heaven and earth who said, "Let there be light, and then I love these people." What an amazing thing. Holy Spirit, we pray for acknowledgement in our lives of you. We pray for an understanding of your work in our lives. We pray that we would be sensitive to your touch today. Jesus, we want to bring you glory and honor for the new life you have made for each of us. I know that in this room there are some people who brought in something they're struggling with, and even as I've been talking, they thought, "I don't think I'll be free from this particular hurt, hang up, or habit, but Jesus, I know that you have the power to change us completely." And so for any of my friends who came in that way, Jesus, I pray that you would speak over them, that you have them, that you have the power to set them free, if only they would give it to you. Jesus, we thank you so much for everything you've done for us, and we thank you in advance for that you've yet to do. It's in your name we pray, Jesus. Amen.

[Applause] (applause) [BLANK_AUDIO]