Free Indeed: The Truth Behind 250 Years of Freedom

This year, our country turns 250. Two hundred fifty years of freedom — hard-won, defended at great cost, and handed down to us by generations who believed liberty was worth everything they had. Because of them, you and I get to live, worship, speak, build, and raise our families in freedom. I do not take that lightly, and I hope you don't either.

So for the next seven weeks, I want to talk about freedom. Both kinds.

Because as I have been reflecting on what this anniversary means, one question keeps rising in me.

What good is being free on paper if you are still bound on the inside?

I know that question personally.

Free on Paper, Bound Inside

The first time I realized I was technically free but bound inside, I was a teenager. I was dealing with manic depression and anxiety, likely brought on by abuse I had endured. And here is what made it so confusing: from the outside, I was living the dream. I lived in a beautiful beach town. I went to the beach, I went shopping, and everything around me said free.

And yet I was torn up inside. Full of pain and despair.

That was not the only season like that. There have been different times in my life when the circumstances around me seemed perfect, but inside I was still bound by trauma or fear. If you have ever carried deep-seated pain, you know this feeling. If you have ever lived with a narcissist and endured gaslighting, you know it too — sometimes you feel like you are going crazy.

The outside and the inside do not match.

And the gap between them is its own kind of torment.

The Truth That Set Me Free

What finally set me free was not a simple truth. It was capital-T Truth.

It came through a deep-dive Bible study — a true washing of the Word. For the first time in my life, I fully understood that my sin grieved God. Not just the sin that had been committed against me, but the sin I had committed in response to it. I repented. And I fully understood, for the first time, the implications of the finished work of the cross.

It was as if I had been wearing a dark cloak all those years. Dark because it was dirty with my past and my painful memories — some of them locked up so tight I hardly allowed myself to remember them. And that cloak was exchanged for a beautiful white robe.

Clean. Light. Free.

I finally understood the Scripture that says He lifted me up out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock (Psalm 40:2). I was no longer only free on paper, as a citizen of a free country.

I was spiritually free.

Jesus said, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36). Free indeed. Not free in theory. Not free in circumstances only. Free in the deepest rooms of the soul — the ones no one else sees.

Two Freedoms, One Author

Here is what I love about this 250th anniversary. Our founders understood something we sometimes forget. They wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights — that liberty was never man's idea first.

Freedom has an Author.

So when we honor 250 years of American freedom, we are honoring a gift. And gifts point back to the Giver.

I am deeply grateful for the freedom I hold as a citizen. It is the reason I can write these words, build this company, and speak openly about my faith. Millions of people around the world cannot. But even a freedom that precious can only go so far.

A free country cannot free your mind from a memory that replays at 2 a.m. A flag cannot lift shame off your shoulders. Fireworks cannot exchange a dark cloak for a white robe.

Only Truth can do that.

That is why this series matters to me. Not to diminish our national freedom, but to complete the picture — to honor the liberty we have been given, and to ask the Author of freedom for the liberty only He can give.

Freedom Must Be Walked In

Here is what I have learned since that Bible study: freedom that has been won must still be walked in.

Our country knows this better than anyone. Independence was declared once, in ink, in 1776. But it was kept by 250 years of people who got up and walked it out — soldiers who crossed frozen rivers and stormed distant beaches, mothers who sent sons and daughters and prayed them home, ordinary citizens who served, sacrificed, and stood firm so the next generation could live free. We enjoy today what others were faithful to defend, one generation at a time. Gratitude for them should mark everything we do with the freedom they handed us.

And the freedom of the soul works the same way.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). Our minds need to be renewed (Romans 12:2). Even after we have experienced this freedom — even when we know it consciously — we have to continue to speak it and declare it.

Declared once at the cross.

Walked out daily, one spoken truth at a time.

The best way I know to honor a freedom someone else paid for — whether at Valley Forge or at Calvary — is to actually live free.

A Simple Freedom Practice

Maybe as you read this, you already know where you are still bound. A memory that replays. A fear that follows you. A place where the outside and the inside do not match. You do not have to untangle all of it today.

Start small. Here is the practice I use.

1. Choose your freedom scripture.

Select the verse that speaks most directly to where you feel bound. John 8:36. Galatians 5:1. Psalm 40:2. Write it where you will see it.

2. Interrupt the replay.

When the memory of a past pain or trauma replays in your mind, stop it.

Do not let it run to the end.

Speak your freedom scripture out loud, right then.

3. Make it a ritual.

Do not wait for the hard moments. Attach your freedom truth to something you already do every morning — while the coffee brews, before you check your phone. I pair mine with applying my SayLa balm, so the small act of caring for myself becomes the cue to speak what is true and breathe it in.

Here are the declarations I would begin with:

• The Son has set me free, and I am free indeed.
  
• He lifted me out of the miry clay and set my feet on a rock.
• I have exchanged the dark cloak for a white robe.
• I stand firm, and I will not take up the old yoke again.

Reflection

Where in my life do the outside and the inside not match?

Is there a memory I have locked up so tight I hardly let myself remember it, and have I brought it to the cross?

What truth do I need to speak out loud this week, every time the past tries to replay?

Closing Invitation

This July, celebrate fully.

Watch the fireworks. Thank God for 250 years of liberty and for everyone who paid for it.

And then go one step further.

Ask the Author of freedom to make you free indeed.

Take one breath.

Speak the truth.

And walk out of the cloak, into the robe.