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How do we live into the freedom that Jesus promises? Welcome to this week's episode of Living Influence. I'm your host, Scott Boyd, along with my friend and mentor, Bill Frahl. Hey, Scott. We're here in Phoenix in June, and I got to tell you, it's hot. I mean, like, it's not only hot, it's almost humid, too. Yeah, a little bit for us. And so we went on a walk today. My clothes were drenched when I got back. That's not supposed to happen in Phoenix. I always heard it was a dry heat.

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Well, the humanity is way up to 33. When I come into town to do podcasting with you, Bill, one of the privileges and blessings for me is I get to pick your brain. You've been laboring in this realm for literally 60 years. Yes. And so I just love discovering how you think about things differently.

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Because you think about it in such practical terms. Thank you. You have a statement, does your theology meet your reality? Right. You've lived in that spot for a long time. So I hope you enjoy our conversation today. I'm going to start with a scripture in Galatians. Galatians 5, 13 through 15. It's absolutely clear that God's called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.

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Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love. That's how freedom grows. Powerful. Very powerful. It's one of my favorite scriptures. Very powerful. Yeah. So Paul is saying in there that you really do have freedom.

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And so now that you have this freedom, here's how you use your freedom to have it grow. And the key is, is the gifts of God are given to us for the benefit of others. Right. Always. Always when God gifts us and blesses us, that blessing is for you, for others. So that's what we're going to start noodling on for the next...

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Next month or so, probably. I think so. Yeah, looking forward to it, very much so. Yeah. So we're going to start with statements, and statements that if true, then you'll have this fruit of a freedom. So the first one is, as I resolve my personal issues, I will begin to have the freedom to build trust with you. Now let me take a stab at it, okay? Take a stab at why is that true?

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As I begin to resolve my personal issues, I begin to trust myself more. And as I begin to trust myself more, I'm allowed, I'm able to allow you to trust me. Great start. How's that for a start? That's a very good start. Thank you. Elaborate for us. My issues, unfortunately, always trigger my shame. And shame always robs us of trust.

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Always. Yeah. So that what happens is, because your statement's true, my shame, because of an unresolved issue, always distorts my view of me. And I have all kinds of language from my own and hundreds of other people. It also distorts my view of God, and it distorts my view of you.

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Now, in a distorted relationship, trust is never experienced. It can't be experienced. Right. So we're talking about this phenomenon called freedom.

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Is it possible for me as a Christian to live free from my life issues? The answer is absolutely yes. We've done a lot of work in this area. We've done some podcasts in this area. But just to recap quickly, it's like all of my life issues have their root in something you did to me or something I did. That's the root of my life issues. Yeah.

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And God, in his grace, gives us two unbelievably important gifts called forgiveness and repentance. Yeah. And forgiveness is a gift of God to cleanse me of what you did to me. Mm-hmm.

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repentance is a gift of God, a gift of grace, to cleanse me of what I did to me and you. And so what happens is we have this potential in us, because we're saints, to experience God's grace. And I want to repeat what you said a while ago. Every experience of God's grace is always for the benefit of others.

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So if I have this, and I have had, and I've literally been on my knees with many others, who have chosen to trust God to forgive others. Yeah. Really forgive others for what they've done and how they were affected. Yeah.

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And I'm discovering that when that person experiences that depth of that release, they have freedom. Almost scares some of them. What's this? Whoa, how do I get? And the beauty is this. The freedom that is experienced because of the resolving of the life issues that have defined us, that freedom,

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as you just read in Galatians, is not to get what I want. That freedom is to, in fact, build trust because I've learned something, Scott, very deeply. There is no trust experienced in the atmosphere of unresolved sin. Yeah.

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None. So, my gosh, what if we could teach, and I'm doing it right now, what if we could teach people to say, look, have you learned to trust God with what happened to you?

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Have you learned to trust God with what you've done? That's freedom. That's freedom. And you know what that does? That draws your heart toward all the rest of us who live with unresolved because we want to do something. We want to teach them trust to trust. We want to teach them the truth that will free them.

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And right now, as I'm even speaking, I think of individuals that I have worked with, husbands or wives. I think of a woman who wrote me this long email of the tragedy of her life pretty well. A Christian woman, actually on the staff of a church, pretty committed to it never being resolved.

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Pretty committed to it never being resolved. And we went through the whole process, and it's so interesting. So when you say pretty committed to it never being resolved, didn't ever want to get it resolved, or... Didn't believe there was ever an answer to it. Lost hope that it would ever be resolved. Right. Lost hope that there was even an answer of it being resolved. And the beauty of the process of her having the ability to forgive...

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It did something. And if she were here right now, she would say this. She put her armor on her husband, and she said to her husband something like this. Would you forgive me for the bondage I've held you in? All these years I chose to not trust you. Oh, wow. And think about that. Would you forgive me for the bondage I held you in? For all the years I chose to not trust you. Yeah.

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And then with a lot of tears, a lot of tears from both of them, she was able to say, I want to trust you. Here's another lesson. We'll get to it in a little bit. But she said, I want to trust you because I really do want to experience your love.

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They've been married 30 years, Scott. Yeah. 30 years. So the story of this woman is unfortunately a common story. But let's go back to the premise. Is it possible for me as a Christian to experience the resolution of what you've done to me?

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Is it possible for me to experience the resolution of what I've done to you and to me? Yeah. The answer is yes. That's freedom. Yeah. That's freedom. Now, Paul says to us in Galatians, don't use that freedom to pursue something as trivial as what you want. Don't make this mistake. Don't bring freedom down to your level.

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Don't do that. Don't do it. Do something else. Let freedom be the voice of your love. Let freedom be the voice of you turning outwardly for the benefit of everyone else who you know stands in the bondage of unresolved sin. What if our message was to free people by helping them build trust and

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wow, that to me is like amazing grace. That's amazing grace. And so I can, I can with a lot of confidence say, it is possible for me as a Christian to experience the freedom from yesterday because of the work of Christ in my life today regarding my issues.

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I just want to say that again. It is possible for me as a Christian to experience the resolution of yesterday and have the freedom, the freedom to experience trust. You've heard me say this before, Scott. A lot of people, because they've been hurt, use the fact that they've been hurt as a reason to trust no one.

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I mean, that's just a mantra. And I have a different mantra. This is my mantra. Because I have experienced love, I'm willing to go into a relationship where I might get hurt. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. You get in a room of people and you talk about trust, and you can hear it in the room. People are like, I don't like that word. Exactly. Exactly.

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They feel like not trusting protects them. Well said. Isn't that interesting? Non-trusting protects them. We were in a room together in one of our cohorts where that dynamic was being played out. And it's so interesting. Non-trusting, here's what non-trusting does. Non-trusting protects me from being known.

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Yeah. Here's a tragic reality. When I live in the isolation not being known, I will be defined by whatever I'm hiding. Yeah. Isn't that tragic? It's like, okay, I'm protecting myself from trust. No, you're protecting yourself from being known because somebody or ten somebodies hurt you.

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Yeah. And so I'll say again, what if we could learn a different mantra? Yeah. What if we could learn the mantra of, wait a minute, what if I could learn to experience trust?

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so that I could experience being known. One of the tragedies of our humanness is when things have been done to us, or when we've done things, we accept that as the status quo. That's just the way life is. But no, no, that's very damning. And so here I am. I'm aware, Scott, that I've been hurt. By the way, personally, I've been hurt. Very badly. My childhood was hard.

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But what am I learning today? I'm learning that the guy who's talking, in spite of the pain of yesterday, lives in a freedom today. And I want to sound egotistical, but I want to say this as truth. I live in a freedom today where I look forward to the opportunities of tomorrow. Yeah. Including my relationships with you. Mm-hmm.

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and others. Yeah. Is that possible? Is it even possible to live in that reality? Yet it is. There is nothing that I've ever done or that's been done to me that is not redeemable through the blood of Jesus. Nothing. Knowing that's true is where the freedom is.

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Once I experience that freedom, building trust is the fruit of my freedom. Yeah. Wow. Resolving our personal issues, which, by the way, happens through forgiveness, through repentance. Absolutely. Through walking into the light. Amen. Has a fruit where we can begin to build trust with one another. Exactly. Because of freedom. Because of freedom. Yeah.

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We're going to continue this conversation next week on the freedoms that Christ promises us. Amen. How we experience them. We hope to see you then. Thanks for listening to Living Influence. We appreciate you. Just a call to action. We would love it if you would share our podcast with one or two people this week. Thanks again.