Hillside Community Church
Hillside Community Church
True Freedom in Christ - Woody Morwood
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Most people think freedom means doing whatever you want. But what if that's exactly what keeps you stuck?
In Galatians 5, the Apostle Paul writes to a group of churches that had already encountered the gospel — and were drifting away from it. Sound familiar? The freedoms they were chasing — self-sufficiency, religious performance, personal desire — were quietly becoming the very things that enslaved them.
Pastor Woody unpacks three movements of true freedom found in Christ: freedom from ourselves, freedom in the sacrifice of Jesus, and freedom to serve others. Drawing from Galatians 2, 3, and 5, this message reframes what liberation actually looks like — not a life with no limits, but a life no longer ruled by the wrong things.
If you've ever wondered why the freedom you're chasing never quite delivers — this one's worth your time.
Scripture: Galatians 2:20, 3:1, 5:1, 5:7–8, 5:13–14, 5:19–25, John 8:31–32
Resources: John Mark Comer
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The worship we just did kind of feels like we're just hanging out in a living room together, right? Just like the early churches where the Apostle Paul wrote letters to all the time. They weren't a big 500 auditorium. It was 15, 20, 30 people trying to figure out how to follow Jesus together. And they had to do it in the context that they found themselves. Everyday realities they were trying to figure out. And if you're okay, what I'd love to do is name some of the ones that we find ourselves in right now. I mentioned a little bit earlier. Did you realize yesterday was the 4th of July, right? So there was fireworks from like 10 at night till like two in the morning at my house. Every time I thought I would fall asleep, another surprise moment would come. And yesterday there was all kinds of different things happening with songs and celebrations and everything else. And I got to tell you, it was a day for me as a Christ follower where because of the sermon I was getting ready to preach, but also the things that I've been thinking about, I think I thought about everything possible. Did you notice in our worship today how many times freedom was already being sung about and mentioned? You're going to find more of that today, and we're going to talk about it from a biblical perspective, especially from the church in Galatia. If you have your Bibles, open up to Galatians chapter five. And part of what I want to do today, in uh uh literally 24 hours after the 4th of July, I want to spend all morning talking about the radical nature of freedom in Christ. And in order to do so, I think I need to acknowledge something else. Did you also notice there? I think the statistic I heard, there's something like 10 million estimated international visitors in the United States right now. Does anybody know why? Did they show up for the 4th of July? What do they show up for? World Cup, and I almost said soccer, football, okay? World Cup football. And what's so interesting about this context in this moment is I'm kind of processing and listening to all the things that I see uh uh that that that these visitors are highlighting. They're like watching us our daily lives, and there's certain things that have caught their attention. Do you know one of the things that's caught the attention of a lot of the international fans for World Cup Soccer are air conditioning? I don't know why. I guess uh I I've read one that says Americans don't know how to suffer. Look at this air conditioning, but man, we love your air conditioning, right? Europe's really hot right now. Uh, there's a second thing that they highlighted that they've noticed about us, that uh it seems like a place like Bucky's or Costco is actually like an attraction. And they show up and they're roaming up and down the aisles, and they can't believe there's 30 different flavors of corn nuts and how huge our grocery stores are. Uh, then there's a third thing that I really tried to make sure it was true because it feels almost like uh over the top, it can't be true. The third thing that I noticed is that TSA actually had to put out a new warning that ranch dressing is a liquid and it's not a souvenir, and you can't put it in your suitcase and take it home. Uh, if you want to, you actually have to stick it in your uh uh what you check in baggage. Now, pardon me, on the 4th of July weekend in a Sunday service, my deeper spiritual side it slows down and goes, there's a lot to think through here. Freedom and God and country and all the what do I do with all this? And I gotta be honest, while those things are funny, air conditioning, Costco, Buckeys, uh, ranch dressing are funny. Do you know there's a big part of me? And I know you probably think I'm naive to uh ask this question or wrestle with it. How come those that came to watch World Cup soccer haven't seen any of us as radical Christ followers living in ways that is so attractive, they want to talk about it? Uh I've been wrestling with this weekend in the most beautiful, healthy ways possible. Do you know what I did on the 4th of July yesterday? And somebody was like, Yeah, you barbecued. Uh uh, you went and saw fireworks, and I mean you can name all those things, right? I did the most interesting thing in the world that I'm not sure how many people did, but it was really good for me. And sorry, today you need to listen to me preach now, and hopefully it'll be good for you. I said in my backyard, and before I did anything else yesterday, I read through Galatians. Because in Galatians, the Apostle Paul has the most radical truths in the world. In fact, I gotta give you this heads up here. Nobody talks about freedom more than the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Twenty times he uses the word free or freedom. And when he uses it, he's using it primarily in an understanding of what only God can give us, a really radical concept for that day and age and what everybody was living into. When he mentioned it 28 times, the place that he mentioned it the most often was in Galatians. He mentions it 10 times because the churches that he wrote to thought they were free, and until he reminded them of where true freedom comes, they might have been juggling a wide range of different philosophies, ideologies, and thoughts about what it means to be free. And so today, if you're okay, I would love to invite you into the letter that I broke out yesterday and read through. It's called Galatians chapter five. And in Galatians chapter five, you're gonna hear this verse three times today. Harmony already read it once. I'm about to read it again, and then I'll read it one more time. So hopefully it will stick in your brain. Galatians chapter five, verse one says this 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. You're all really smart. If you were to look at that verse and not know the context before it or after it, I guarantee you could come to some really quick observations. One is, it looks like the apostle Paul is trying to remind a group of people of something that they already knew, but they weren't actually living into it. And second, you would probably say it actually has a little tone to it. Even though they're written words, there's a tone to it. And it sounds like what the tone is, is the Apostle Paul is basically highlighting a threat, a danger, and a warning that if they're not careful, they're gonna lose the greatest, most radical, impossible freedom that they had already been introduced to because they've gotten distracted in different ways. Let me give you some context of the uh Galatia churches. And in some ways, sometimes when I read the Bible, I'm like, oh, they just can't relate. If they lived in 2026, they would have no idea how complicated life is here. And it was probably a lot easier to follow Jesus back then. But when I study the churches in Galatia, we might be more like them than we realize, or they might be more like us than we realize. Let me give you a little bit of what was happening there in the region of Galatia. Uh, it is now what is called southern Turkey. It was actually very much a Greek Hellenistic kind of tradition, culture, area. But if you remember when Jesus was born, when Jesus died, Rome was ruling the day. And so this Greek province, Galatia, was no longer Greek, it was Roman because they had been conquered by the Romans. So if you imagine all these churches in the Galatia region, there were five different main churches and cities. You have Poseidon, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derby. And in all five of those, you could imagine these little house churches with like 30 people living in them and trying to figure out together what it means to follow Jesus. And one of the complexities that they were navigating is since Rome took over, things had moved to where now Claudius was supposed to be worshipped, the Roman Empire. All the Roman gods were supposed to take over all the Greek gods, yet in those cities, the Greek gods were still being worshipped on the side. Rome was trying so hard to get their allegiance and their attention that if you look up historically, in 48 to 52 AD, there was an introduction of festivals and carnivals and games. Yes, gladiator games, chariot races, all the things that would get your attention and get you so excited like you couldn't imagine anything else, but I gotta be involved in this moment right here, right now. But there was also synagogues in these cities because there were faithful Jews that were still trying to live out the Old Testament. All this to say, I wrote this sentence because when I wrestled with what was happening in Galatia, this is all I could think or feel. It is good to be aware of what captures our attention, distracts our focus, and then what ultimately shapes us. If right now you're like, we're nothing like the Galatia region, I would say, have you not paid attention to all the things that grab your attention and my attention? Because it happens to me all the time. World Cup only comes every four years, but I actually dug up from 2012 a jersey a student made for me, and all of a sudden I'm a huge football soccer fan again. You show me a little bit of red, he put my name on the back of the jersey because yes, I was on the USA team for a little while. No, just kidding. All of a sudden, I can't think straight, and I have to find out every single score. Like it captures me in a way that now I'm a super fan where every time a goal is scored, I'm going crazy. And what's so weird about World Cup, do you know what will come ago and I won't think about it again for another four years? When the Apostle Paul is looking at these churches and he realizes they have a thousand things that want to distract their attention, the Apostle Paul's warning or threat like letter is make sure you keep your allegiance and your attention here, because this is where you get freedom. What I love about this Galatians business is that it will help us to slow down a little bit and really ask the question how do we understand our freedom? How do we live into a freedom? And if it's defined by Christ, how radical is this freedom in the most freeing way possible? I'm gonna give you three different things that I see in chapter five that really freedom is defined by. And the first one is this the apostle Paul reminds us that with Christ we can have freedom from ourselves. Let me read chapter five, verse one again to you. 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. At all five of those churches, I have no idea how off some of them were. Were they 10% off and needed to get back to Christ? Were they 50% off and they needed to get back to Christ? Or were they so far off that when they were sitting in these homes listening to this letter, they're like, oh wow, that was a good gut check. I need to be reminded what it means to find all my identity, all my definitions, all my life in Christ. And so as he sat there and probably wrote this letter to the churches in Galatia, he felt like this had to be called out in the most radical ways, that they were distracted, that they were misinformed, that the fantasies, the ideologies, the philosophies they had let creep in was keeping this from being their primary allegiance that would change everything for them. Listen to Galatians chapter 5, verse 7 through 8, because the Apostle Paul is so direct. You were running a good race who cut in on you from obeying the truth. That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. Who's the one that calls them? Jesus. And so when the Apostle Paul says, You are running this race, imagine the marathon race, they had all the festivals. The apostle Paul is so smart because he can use the terminology and the context of that moment. They would know what a race was. The Greeks understood the marathon and a really long one, and he complimented them. You're running a really good race, but who cut in on you? Remember where your full identity is. It is in Jesus Christ. If you look at chapter three, verse one, there's some really interesting language. And part of me wonders as they were sitting around in those home churches, if you got to this section in chapter three, verse one, if some of them had to take a break because he's so direct. He says, This, you foolish Galatians. By the way, if anybody ever calls you foolish, are you usually like, that's it? No more. I'm not listening, I'm walking away, right? Hopefully, those churches in Galatians slowed down and actually even listened more because listen to what Paul says. He says, You foolish Galatians, who bewitched you? By the way, I haven't used that word anytime recently, but if any of you see me out of line and not living fully for Christ, I give you permission to come up to me and go, Who bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus was clearly portrayed as crucified. What the Apostle Paul is saying here is on his first missionary journey, when he was in that southern Turkey region, it wasn't Turkey back then, it was Galatia, it was a Roman providence, he was going around spreading the good news that Jesus Christ had died for everyone and that he would save everyone if they confessed their sins and turned their lives over to Jesus. And in that little moment right there, when he's calling them foolish Galatians, they forgot the good news of Jesus Christ, and they were building their identity and their understanding on a thousand other things that were distracting them from living the free life. And I mentioned a little while ago that sometimes we feel like maybe the scriptures don't relate to us and we can't connect with them. I would say for me, they really connect with me in this season because I feel like there's so many things trying to grab my attention. Does anybody else have the same? Where all of a sudden you hear stuff, you watch something, you start to believe something, and you're like, wait a second, do I really believe that? Or how did that creep in so fast? What the Apostle Paul was trying to do for all these churches in Galatia that he had already visited once, he was hoping to visit for a second time, but instead he wrote a letter this time, is that they would remember the gospel. And in John chapter 8, I'm sure the Apostle Paul could remember the moments that he had heard the stories of Jesus being told. And in John chapter 8, verse 31, if you look at the gospel, there's a moment where Jesus is with Jewish disciples and believers. And it says this in verse 31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Have you ever heard that idiom before? Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Like sometimes that is being used right now in our culture in moments where basically the Jesus was teaching them, and if you follow my teachings, you're my disciples, and then Jesus said, I'm the truth. And it's gotten a little bit twisted now, where like I could be really bold and go up to a friend or a group of people and go, Hey, I got the truth and I'm about to share it with you. I'm gonna be authentic, I'm gonna be direct, and when I share it with you, you're gonna be set free because now you're aware of what I'm aware of. And it's kind of shifted away from being reminded, those were the words that Jesus spoke. And Jesus is the one that's saying, Hey, if you follow my teachings, if you see that I'm the truth, I am the one that sets you free. Set your mind free, set your heart free, set you free in a way that you could act and live so radically different in the world. And so, because today we don't have time to read all the way through chapter five, I want to summarize there's two extremes that happen in chapter five where the Galatians were being distracted. There's freedom from two extremes. And the first extreme you'll see in there is the freedom from self-help and impossible standards. And the second freedom I'll be pointing out is the freedom from sin and the desire of the flesh. In Galatians chapter 5, verse 1, Paul was so worried about him, he said, anything but Jesus is going to be a burden of slavery. It's going to be a yoke of slavery. It's going to be something that makes your life miserable. And one of the ways that he was hinting at and talking about was a burden was that many of them were trying so hard to follow the rules that other people were telling them, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to follow this law, you need to be circumcised, all this laundry list of rules where all of a sudden now they were probably more in a self-help follow the rules. I can do this myself. Let me ask you a question to see if you can relate. How many of you ever wake up in the morning with really high ideals of how you think you should live? And by 10 o'clock in the morning, you've broken most of them. I mean, it even starts as simple as a donut, right? You wake up in the morning like, I'm gonna eat so healthy today. Oh, pixie donuts. I won't eat one unless they have a maple. Old fashioned. Oh man, they had one. Okay, I'm gonna eat it, right? Like, let me move that spiritually for a second. Do you know how often we try to spiritualize ourselves or live up to a bunch of rules and do it out of our own strength? That's what the apostle Paul was saying. They were bewitched with. They had a good idea, a good concept. They thought they were being religious, but all of it turned back to themselves: self-help, strong living, out of my own grittiness, I can do this. And the worst part was is there were other people that were supposed to be Christ's followers that were telling them they had to go back to the old way and follow all the old rules. And the apostle Paul is no, there's only freedom in one. It's Jesus Christ. But there was another extreme, and the other extreme was the freedom from sin and the desires of the flesh. Uh, one of the ways that I think I could help us maybe think through a good definition of freedom is I grabbed some language and paraphrase some stuff from uh Mark Colmer, and he says this about freedom. Instead of the burden of self-effort or the crushed demands of false spirituality, Christian freedom looks like a life directed by Jesus and through Jesus. We are not the captain of our ships. True liberation is found in yielding to God's authority and aligning with his will. When you think about the word freedom, do you think about submitting? Do you think about aligning with Jesus? When you think about what you get to do or don't get to do, does it begin here? Because man, this week and this weekend, Christ has continued to do such a good work in me that I want to make sure first and foremost I am free in Christ. Yesterday, I mentioned it already, and I know many of you are from other countries around the world and have come here. We have people from Egypt and uh India and Mexico, and I hear your stories. I am so thankful to live here, but I will not find the freedom that only Christ can give, only in my country and my civil rights and my religious rights. What can happen here and here has to be from here. And so I'm actually really excited to have the Fourth of July and Sunday side by side because it helps me wrestle with is my true allegiance to the one who can actually make me somebody different than I could be on my own. Let me give you a prime example sometimes of how I navigate and wrestle with uh uh some of the freedom concepts a little bit. Um, have any of you seen a sign kind of like this? Why does it feel like nobody obeyed it yesterday? At least in the neighborhoods around me. It was so loud and so crazy. Isn't it so funny? On the 4th of July, when we're supposed to be uh uh celebrating freedom, but then they have signs to help us be careful of things, we demand that we get our freedoms again, right? Do you know somebody uh like me whose parents' house burned down two years ago? Uh I I actually obeyed the sign this year because I realized what the worst case scenarios are with it. Does that make sense? If I don't wrestle with what I hear, defined or described as freedom, or even worse, if I take my sinful nature and I go, I should be able to do whatever I want to, I'm free in Christ, we end up in really messy, difficult places. I don't have good language for this one, so let me just try to give you an example. And uh a few of the college students that I worked with 15, 20 years ago told me that I was free uh to use this anytime that it would be helpful. But some of the students that I worked with when I was at a university grew up in um, I don't know how else to describe it, probably more legalistic, rule-oriented families, uh, maybe extreme conservative when it comes to like what we do do and what we don't do. And then they would get to college and they'd be 21 and they'd be following Jesus, and they're like, I am so free, I'm free in Christ, I could have a beer, right? And they begin this exploration of their freedom, and before they know it, their freedom has enslaved them. And before they know it, the thing that they thought could create some type of other experience, they're coming to a campus pastor and sitting down and saying, This is so hard for me to say, but in two years of college, I have become an alcoholic and this is ruining my life. God, please help me get out of this. When you think about sometimes if we abuse our freedoms, the slavery that comes with it, if we don't stay connected this way, it absolutely changes who we are. Listen to this if you look at verse 19. Look at your Bibles real quick. And I'd love for you to underline something. There's about four words there. It says, the acts of the flesh. If you'll underline that, or at least take a mental moment of that, the acts of the flesh. So that's coming out of me. Listen to this daunting list. The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, fractions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do you remember the first point that I mentioned that there's freedom? There is freedom from ourselves, so that long laundry list of yucky isn't our reality. And by the way, you know why I love the Apostle Paul? He went for talking about the extremes to the little basic things that maybe all of us in here are guilty of envy, selfish ambition, uh, uh discord, writ uh fits of rage. By the way, sometimes it's really easy if we take out the lower level sins, and by the way, I don't think there's levels of sin, and just read the big ones and go, I'm all good. I haven't done most of those big ones. But the apostle Paul is saying, this freedom from yourself that can be found in Christ that shapes your mind and your heart, those acts of the flesh can be rooted out of you. Thanks be to Jesus. There is hope in this freedom. There's a second freedom that I think Galatians chapter five talks about, and it's freedom in sacrifice. If you listen to Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, early on in the letter, when all those Christians were sitting around in that living room and listening to this letter, I think the Apostle Paul highlighted this to make sure that when he got to chapter 5 and he was going to really get after them, that they remembered the hope that he talked about. In Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, it says, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This freedom from Christ, this freedom from God has been given to us as a gift. We don't deserve it. It's not our right, we can't earn it. Christ has given us the gift of forgiveness and transformation so we can be completely different people. And it's not this casual little, and Christ has come to change you a little bit, two to three percent, and then go on living the way you want to. No, the language in that verse 20 is we've been crucified to the point where we're saying, God, I'm all in. You can change and transform anything and everything you want in me. What I love about this is the extremes of this push us to a whole different way of living. Because we're free from ourselves, and now we're free from Christ's sacrifice. Listen to chapter 5, verses 13 through 14. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. By the way, Paul knows how to get a point across, doesn't he? He just keeps telling us this is how you're free, this is freedom, this is how you're free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know what our freedom is intended for? Freedom to serve. That's what it is. The third point freedom to serve. We have been freed by Christ from ourselves. We've been freed because of the sacrifice of his love on the cross, and now we have been invited to join in on the same freedom, fruitfulness that can only happen when Christ transforms us. I gotta confess something to you guys. I'm easily won over. And there was a commercial during the World Cup, and I'm no, I'm not the only one, where all of a sudden there was this truck company, and I'm not gonna tell you which one, who had engines revving, and you know, that all American kind of oh yeah, all right. And and then there was like a flyover and go, wow, airplanes, right? And you feel yourself kind of building up for all that, and maybe fireworks or something else. And then my heart stopped, and I think I skipped a breath. It got to the end of the commercial, and you know what it said? In loud we trust. And my whole demeanor just shrunk. And I went, No, it's in God we trust. Are we moving to a place where my boldness for my freedom, my rights is completely missing what the gospel says about what Christ wants to do in me? I love that the apostle Paul said to the Galatia churches be careful what fantasies, what ideologies, what philosophies are capturing your mind and heart and making sure that Jesus Christ and the freedom only He can bring is primary and gets our allegiance. Here's what's so beautiful. We can be really thankful to live here, and I am. But man, I want to make sure that Christ is the one who's orienting me, shaping me, and transforming me. Can I give you an example of what this freedom looks like to serve? Remember, I told you to underline a couple words there in verse 19. Can I get you to underline a couple of words in the beginning of verse 22? It changes. Instead of the acts of the flesh, verse 22 moves into the fruits of the spirit. And if any of you like weren't sure which of the two are more important, fruits of the spirit are more important, okay? Listen to the list of what can happen when God is at work in us, when the power of Jesus Christ makes us free. Galatians chapter 5, verse 22 through 25 says this, but the fruits of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such sayings, there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Man, hundreds of thousands. Some estimates said 10 million international visitors here for the World Cup. If any of them rented a room for you and stayed at your house for the weekend, would they basically describe that long yucky laundry list of the acts of the flesh? Or after watching and observing you, would they name some of those beautiful, by the power of another one named Jesus, fruits of the spirit? Would they see the love, the kindness, the service? I know I'm probably overly optimistic, but I would love to see some Instagram post where people that came and spent time amongst us would say there is a vibrancy and dependency upon Christ to bring freedom. And I see people radically different as they walk in the Spirit and what only God could do. Listen to some more paraphrase language from John Mark Comer. He says this Christian freedom is the ability to easily desire what is good from God and then follow through on that desire. It is not the modern definition of doing whatever you want, which, if lived out, will ultimately be the trap that leaves us enslaved to our base desires, our anxieties, and our personal ego. Galatians 5 has been so good for me, church, because this last week I had to figure out how to navigate something that I thankfully can say I saw the hints of the acts of the flesh, but the fruits of the Spirit won the day. I made a major mistake this last week. Uh I didn't lock my car. I know better. And when I woke up in the morning, my two doors were partially open. And when I looked inside, everything had been taken out of it. I'm going to use some of the language I've been talking about. Somebody decided to use their freedom that they would just casually go through my car. Guess what? Freedom started coming up in me. My vigilante freedom, right? I'm going to get a fire hose. I'm going to stay up all night long. Even if it takes five years, I'm going to wait for them to come back, right? Or I'm ready to like go into the kitchen and get a little bit of flour and try to find some fingerprints or something. And all of a sudden, because of all the Galatian stuff I've been reading, my heart again went back to Christ, how would you want me to look at this? What a broken world we live in and what a bummer. But God, you have been so good. I have more than enough. I can easily not have any of those things that were in my car and still be so thankful and so blessed. And then you want to talk about the works of the spirit to reshape the mind and the heart? This is not for me, people. I'm just telling you, this is not for me. The next thing I started hearing, feeling, thinking, because God is transforming is, and hey, I wonder what this person must have been going through that they're so desperate that they're going from car to car to find something to make it. And I found myself praying for an unknown name, an unknown person, and an unknown set of circumstances. And Christ helped me use my freedom to actually care about somebody more rather than make them pay dearly for infringing on my own rights and my own freedom. The gospel of Jesus Christ is so radical, it even changes how I look at my car being gone through and items stolen. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Thank you, Jesus, for the country we live in, but even more so, thank you, Jesus, for only the freedom that He can give that is so radical. Church, will you stand with me? I'm gonna pray this passage over us, and then we get the beautiful opportunity to receive communion today, to remember the radical act of Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, thank you for how you use the Apostle Paul to challenge and to bring into line those churches in Galatia. We give you permission to point out in us, maybe when we don't have your definition of freedom, when we're not surrendering, when we're living by acts of the flesh, Lord, we pray now, would you do something in us that only you can do? May we be free and free indeed in Jesus Christ our Lord. Save us from ourselves, save us through sacrifice, and save us to serve and love the world in ways that people will be shocked by. I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.