Breaking Free In The Spirit

When we fail to recognize the bondage we are living in, we will never be able to break free in the Spirit and accomplish what we could through and for Jesus Christ. We are living in the times of bound generations. This is something I could talk about in late January after the rush of fulfilling New Years resolutions wear off and those who made such pledges fall back into the patterns to which they have been living life. It is something to which I could address following the season of Lent, where people give up something for a month, struggling, marking the day when Lent ends so they can resume with that one thing which has control over them. I can talk about it today because in this room there are people who have been struggling in bondage, not enjoying the freedom the Holy Spirit of God brings when they relinquish control and allow God to be God and Lord of their life.

I’m talking to Christians, people who believe Jesus is the Son of God, who have at one point in their life repented and asked Christ to be Lord, yet like New Years resolutions, like Lent pledges, they find themselves once again bound in sin and desire. It is time to break free!

I want you to focus on that one thing you know you do which is unpleasing to God, that one thing that has control of your life because we are going to seek a breaking of the bondage which has held you captive far too long, and a release of the Holy Spirit in your life so you can know the freedom, true freedom Christ brings. What I want you to do is to begin right now to face the enemy of your soul so you can be delivered from the darkness and set free in the marvelous Light of Jesus Christ. Are you ready to do something about your bondage; are you ready to be set free?

Lets look at Matthew 12:43. When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Why does the evil spirit leave. Certainly not because it has nothing else to do, an evil spirit will work hard to possess a person, to keep a person tied in the bondage of sin, unable to find relief. The evil spirit has left because the person has found relief from the torment, through prayer, through repentance, through genuine deliverance. The person has found faith to believe and has been delivered from sin and bondage. Can you remember the freedom you experienced when you let go of sin in your life, when you no longer were held captive to whatever vice it was which seemed to squeeze you daily into conformance with its plans, you than experienced the freedom of deliverance and the world took on a new, brighter look. Remember?

Now let me read verse 44, Then it says, `I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and clean.

The evil spirit, the vice, the sin, the destruction comes knocking and you open the door and inside, a home empty, swept and clean. The operative word is empty. There has been nothing to fill the house, no change made, just empty space. You might have temporarily gotten rid of that hurt, habit or hang-up, but you have not replaced it with anything else, and the evil spirit comes back and say I am looking to rent that unoccupied space and instead of closing the door, you have a welcome back party. You cannot break free if you do not choose to live free.

That one main thing I asked you to think about, you have tried before to jettison it but it came back, right? Can you see how when it left you left the door open for its return? God wants to bring a permanent deliverance into your life, and He wants to do it today, do you have faith to believe in His Word?

Before we get to genuine deliverance from God, we need to note the next verse, it is not getting better. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation."

You life becomes an open house and you are no longer picking the tenants, someone else is orchestrating that selection. And unless you take control, that control starting with your mind because in the mind you have sown a seed which has been watered and allowed to germinate and then moved into seeing temptation, responding to temptation and falling into sin, unless you take control you will have a life overgrown with weeds and the life you could have had will be choked out by the bondage of sin which leads to death, a separation from God. You need to exercise the spiritual authority God has given you to take a stand, even if it is not the politically correct thing to do.