Hi, this is Joel and Victoria. Thanks for downloading our podcast. We enjoy spending this time with you

and I hope you'll leave inspired. Make sure you subscribe to get new messages every week. We appreciate your support.

It helps keep the ministry going. Enjoy our son Jonathan today.

Tonight I want to talk about living abundantly free. In 2019, there are a lot of things I would describe as barely free.

They usually sound something like seven day free trial or subscribe and get the first month free.

The truth is these things are not free. That workout plan, those extra filters, they're barely free. Trust me, I've learned.

The first week is great, but when a few months go by and they're still charging you, you'll realize this is not what I signed up for.

A friend of mine said he accidentally spent the last six months subscribed to freelegaldocuments.com

because he needed one form. That friend may or may not have been pastor Nick.

But the point is it ended up costing him over a hundred dollars. If we don't cancel those subscriptions, those hidden charges start to add up.

There's a difference between barely free and abundantly free. In life, many of us know God's promised us freedom,

but we find ourselves living barely free. We've accepted those hidden charges, allowed those things and just thought that

this is the way it will always be. We're paying for things we never intended to.

Maybe it's a constant battle with guilt, anxiety or addiction. It could be because of how we were raised,

what was passed down, what we experienced growing up. Or maybe it's because of mistakes we've made.

It's easy for disappointments and failures to cause us to develop a barely free lifestyle.

One where we don't pray bold prayers and believe for our dreams.

One where we shrink back in fear rather than step up to our calling.

We think we've messed up too many times to receive God's goodness. We settle for barely free.

But that's not God's plan for our lives. Jesus didn't take on the cross so that we could live under the weight of what we've been through.

He didn't rise from the grave so that we could struggle with addiction the rest of our lives.

And he didn't ask us to be perfect in order to experience the kind of life he wants to give us.

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