Hello I'm John Eldridge and welcome to the Ransomed Heart Podcast.

This week we wanted to give you a taste of a new resource we're offering entitled

Finding Freedom. Why does every story have a villain? Have you noticed that? All of the great stories. I mean it's almost

impossible to think of one. Cinderella, right? There's the wicked stepmother and sleeping beauty. There's the wicked stepmother and sleeping beauty

there's the wicked witch and in the chronicles of narnia right there's the white

witch in brave heart

there's long shanks the king, and in Chocolat, there's the Pharisee Mayor. In Le Misarab, there's the inspector who presents himself as the defender of morality and righteousness,

but he is evil, unmerciful, unkind, full of vengeance and judgment and contempt for the woman.

Why does every great story have a villain.

Because yours does.

Because yours does, but most of you don't live like it,

really.

Most Christians in the United States Really? a villain and it makes life really confusing because all of this crap that we live under,

all of the accusation and just the the and the contempt and just the

the contempt and all the shame and the guilt and those things that you rehearse over to yourself after you have a conversation with someone, you know, all of that, right? And the difficulty in relationship, I mean, why is just having a friendship so hard, let alone love, romance, marriage? Why is that? If you just take all that on yourself, we end up either feeling like I am just royally screwing up.

It's just me. I'm just, I such a blow it or it's God. He just doesn't hear my prayers. He just doesn't I know he loves me and when one day I guess I'll experience that but he sure doesn't really seem to be coming through a whole lot, you know what I mean?

We end up in one of those two places if we don't live like the story has a villain.

I mean somebody's got to take the blame for all that stuff, right?

Either us or God.

And he is delighted to leave it there. Absolutely delighted to leave it there. It's nothing that he enjoys

more than living in a world where people don't believe in him, right? Because then he just

gets to wreak havoc and no one does anything about it.

...