Hello, my friends. Welcome to another Follow Him favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I'm here with the amazing John, by the way. Hi, John.

Hi, Hank.

John, we're doing another Follow Him favorites where we take one question from this week's Come Follow Me Lesson.

The question this week comes from Galatians. It comes right out of the manual. It says,

how have Christ and His gospel made you free? So how can that happen? I might think the gospel is just rules and commandments that bind me up. Freedom is no command.

How does the gospel with all of its rules and commandments make us free?

That's such a great question because I love the way you said it because it sounds like we have all these rules and restrictions and boundaries.

One way, at least I can think of is we are free from so many bad consequences. I like to say, and sometimes I get pushed back, but I like to say,

the gospel is the easiest way to live and be, wait a minute. It's not easy and I didn't say it was easy. I said, it's easiest. It's the easiest way available because life is just hard.

But it's easier because you avoid so many bad consequences. So maybe that's one way you are free from a lot of some really bad consequences.

You are free from those because these rules are guidelines to happiness.

Living being persistent in the gospel can free you from addiction or help you avoid addiction entirely.

And someone addicted to a substance or to a practice that's not freedom. Addiction is the opposite of freedom.

And the gospel does provide that a great evangelical preacher once said, real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them.

It is not wait. It is wings. It sets them free from fear, discouragement and sin. The great enslavers of souls.

And then I'm reminded of John, you probably remember this way back in the book of Moses, the story of Cain and Abel way back in Moses chapter five.

Remember, we did this last year during the Old Testament. Cain kills his brother Abel and oddest statement he makes the verse later, this Moses five verse 33, Cain gloried in that which he had done saying, I am free.

I remember you and I talking about this saying, no, you're not. You are the you are more bondage than you've ever been.

Yeah, Satan is so good at what he does that he can send the core horse out to say, you guys are bound. You're yoked. You have no freedom.

You can't do anything. And it's exactly the opposite. And you know, in the war chapters, when Moroni and Pohoran are sending letters back and forth and Pohoran says, conduct a war in that part of the land.

I think he says, according to the spirit of God, which is the spirit of freedom. I was like, wow, look at that. The spirit of God is the spirit of freedom.

And knowledge helps us. The gospel helps us be free.

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