Inner Freedom as a Cultural Value

Freedom From Inner Struggles 

Inner wellness is becoming increasingly hard for our generation to experience. The rapid rise in mental illness is a clear indicator. This article is intended to help you discover the tools you need to face lifes every day challenges. Freedom Prayer helped my wife and I discover inner peace and wellness in the face of extreme adversity. This article illustrates how Freedom Prayer leaders lead us to undo bad deals we have made and agree with God about better things: to forgive those who have sinned against us, to ask for forgiveness as we confess and repent of our own sins, to renounce lies we are believing that perpetuate inner darkness. My personal story demonstrates how we can approach each other as we help one another discover inner freedom. 

I’m just an everyday knucklehead who was born in San Angelo, Texas, in 1986, but I grew up in a small town in the Texas Hill Country called Bulverde. My parents are the backbone of who I am. They raised me in a friendly neighborhood. My brother and I spent a lot of our childhood playing with our friends out in the creek behind our house. We would build forts and paintball courses, and we played every sport imaginable. I also have many great memories about my aunt and uncle’s ranch just outside of Blanco, Texas, where we would hunt, fish, camp, and celebrate holidays. I grew up in a very loving family and community. 

Freedom From Ungodly Beliefs  

As a child and young adult, I was very focused on achievement, and I kept trying to prove myself. I believed I needed to earn love through the approval of other people. This attitude interrupted my connection with God the Father. I was much like the older brother in Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son as told in the Gospel of Luke 15:25-32. The older brother was convinced that he was the perfect son. He did everything “right” and believed his commitment to follow his father’s rules made him perfect. In reality, the older brother’s pride disconnected him from his father because he did not understand the nature of his father’s love. The older brother believed lies about how fathers are supposed to love their children. The older brother became jealous and angry, believing he deserved his father’s love more than his rebellious younger brother who returned home after squandering his inheritance. The father in the parable tells the older brother, “Son, you have always been with me, all that is mine is yours, but we must celebrate your brother’s return, he was lost, and now he is home.” He invites the older brother to commune with him and celebrate the return of his rebellious brother. This story is a great example for how we can approach one another as we struggle to recognize how no one can earn God’s love:  I couldn’t, the older brother couldn’t, and you can’t, either. We are all unique children of God and He loves us all the same, infinitely. 

Freedom From Entanglement

When I turned 18, I made the decision to be baptized. I was fascinated that Jesus did everything He did so that I could be free from the curse of sin and death. In high school, I was a three-sport letterman, a captain on football and basketball teams, and homecoming prince. My biceps were nice and big from patting myself on the back all the time. After graduating high school, I went to college to study business. While in college, I played rhythm guitar in a rock band with my cousins called Seventh Addition. We enjoyed some success writing songs, recording music, and playing shows around Texas. Some of our music still lives on iTunes and Spotify. We thought we were some cool dudes back in those days, but as so many of us do in college, I wasn’t participating in a Bible Study, and I wasn’t waking up for too many Sunday services. I lived a rockstar lifestyle and drifted away from God in that season of my life. 

Like the lost sheep in Luke 15:4-7, I had wandered away from the flock, perhaps through a combination of ignorance, naïve rebellion, and curiosity. I was lost and struggled to find my way back. I believed a lot of lies about myself and God. But Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, knows when a sheep is missing, and all His sheep are of great value. When one wanders off, Jesus leaves the rest and searches for the lost one, places it on His shoulders, and rejoices over it. This story is a great example of how we can approach one another as we wonder out and get entangled in shame. 

Freedom From Shame

After completing my bachelor’s in business, I dove into my career. By age 24, I had worked myself into a corporate management position. I believed that my worth was determined by my performance. I achieved my professional goals, and I was ready to start scratching off my personal goals like getting married, building my dream house, and starting a family. I was certain these achievements would increase my sense of worth. I surged forward and made sure I achieved all of it, and I was happy to brag about all I had achieved. I needed a piece of humble pie, and I was given a huge slice over the years that followed. 

God gave me my oldest son in this season of my life. I have to say becoming a father was one of the most profound experiences of my life. However, when Hudson was born, I immediately realized that I had neglected my responsibility to get right with God and myself before I got married. I had rushed it, and I wasn’t moving at God’s speed and letting the Holy Spirit guide me. I was forcing life to go the way I thought it was supposed to go. I wasn’t praying and obeying God. The marriage and divorce opened me up to some deep wounds that I would carry for years. I experienced intense pain, anger, shame, and guilt. I was trapped in a cycle of self-destruction. I would get so hurt and angry that I would intentionally try and offend my ex-wife just to get even. It is only by the power of God that Ashley and I have a healthy parenting relationship today. But during this season of life, I was recklessly pursuing pleasure. I was falling short of God’s best for me. Just like the prodigal son Character found in the Book of Luke, who had wondered off and slandered his father’s inheritance, when I turned back towards God, He came running towards me to celebrate my return and He invited me to remain in his love again. There is nothing we can do that will make God love us any less, He just asks for our heart’s resolve to be getting back to remaining in His love. This story is a great way approach one another as we help each other to get back into abiding in God’s love.

Freedom From Inner Wounding

Immediately after the divorce, I tragically and unexpectedly lost my father to suicide. I was blindsided and deeply wounded. I closely related to the parable of the lost coin in Luke 15:8-10. 

In the parable, a coin was lost through no fault of its own. The feeling of being lost was traumatic for me, and it left a wound. Lost coins end up being found in dark places. People meandered past, unwilling to pick me up. The coin in the parable must have had value, even though it was lost. It was worth something to its owner who missed it while it was gone. The owner of the coin did not toss it away because she did not love it. She lit a lamp, swept the house clean, and did not stop searching until she found the coin. She even rejoiced over it with friends and neighbors. This story is a great example for how we can approach one another with inner wounding. 

The enemy had used my inner wounds to try and make me believe that God didn’t miss me, and that the divorce happened because something was wrong with me, and that I was not worthy of God’s love. I ended up believing that I deserved to be miserable. I learned the hard way how destructive dysfunctional beliefs can be. Later in life, Freedom Prayer helped connect me to God so that He could give me exactly what my heart needed to heal what was wounded within me. In my case, I needed to work through forgiveness with my dad and my ex-wife. I needed to turn towards God and let Him bring the good out of the awful wounds that I was carrying. 

When I lost my dad, I was met with a mountain of emotions. I felt abandoned, angry, and sad. As I worked through forgiving my dad, I was overcome with empathy for the American families being impacted by the recent rise in mental illness. Freedom Prayer Ministry taught me that there is a reason for everything. Pain, sin, or demonic torment in a person’s life always has a source. It may not have been the person’s doing at all, but rather something that was done to them by someone else. Freedom Prayer is designed to get to the bad roots that continue to churn out inner darkness in our lives. Genuine forgiveness is how we experience freedom from inner trauma that was the my someone elses sin.  

There are only two causes of inner trauma. The first is damage that is inflicted onto someone by another person. These are captives who have been captured by evil forces through no fault of their own. They remain in darkness due to wounding and the resulting dysfunctional beliefs. The second cause of inner trauma is our own sin. We can be trapped in a self-made prison, believing we are doomed to repeat sinful actions, condemned by our own unforgiving hearts. I became determined to understand why my dad fell prisoner to shame. He had a great heart; he was Christ-like in so many ways. The experience of losing him left me with some big questions. Looking back, I can say the forgiveness process with my dad and my ex-wife is when I started to allow God to take his passing and my divorce and leverage these adversities toward my recovery. I began to listen for God’s calling for my life. 

Redemption

After the tragic loss of my father, God brought my wife into my life. Berphy Grisell Olvera was born and raised in Mexico. She had been a synchronized swimmer for the Mexican national team. After finishing her career as a world-class athlete, she practiced physical therapy in Guadalajara, specializing in children with special needs. She was naturalized in 2016, just months before we had our first date. She has a huge heart for people. God brought us together, and His timing was impeccable. This when I really started to understand God can use others to redeem us from darkness. I was in a dark place when Berphy found me, just like lost coin in Jesus’s parable. She cleaned me up and helped me find myself. She helped me work through forgiveness that healed my inner wounds. Forgiveness is the key to healing inner wounds. It didn’t take long for me to understand she was the person God wanted my son and I to spend our lives with. A wonderful illustration of how we can approach one another in helping each other find freedom from inner wounding. 

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