The Hidden Bondage Cycle

Debbie Currie · Tidal Church Moncton · November 5, 2023 · Check Your Baggage series

Debbie Currie explains how hidden baggage keeps us in a cycle of hurt and lies, drawing on Galatians, Numbers and Matthew 11. She invites us to surrender to the Holy Spirit and trade our burdens for Jesus' rest, freedom and peace.

More from Debbie Currie · The Check Your Baggage series

Topics: Holy Spirit, Identity, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] Well, good morning to you, and it is an honor to be a part of this church family. And I have to say, you are looking fine this morning, to look at you. You'd never even think any of you had any extra baggage. But the truth is, we all have baggage. Alright? What is baggage? Baggage is bondage, and bondage is sin. And it keeps you living like the rest of the world, those all around you, when you are meant to live as a citizen of heaven. So today we're going to look at why, why we have baggage, and how, how to leave it behind us as we journey with Jesus to live in His will for His purpose.

[0:50] But sometimes it's easier to carry your baggage than to hope for your freedom. So let's invite Holy Spirit to do what only He could do this morning. Holy Spirit, we give You praise. We love You and we thank You for being with us this morning. Thank You for the wonderful time of worship we had this morning to usher us into Your presence. And Father, we ask that You would touch every heart, every heart that's here this morning, every heart that's listening online, every heart listening today or any other day. Father, would You touch each heart and break every chain of bondage, reveal the lies that we believe, and transform our baggage into the righteousness, peace, and joy of heaven. In Jesus' name, amen.

[1:47] Now when it comes to checking our baggage, the first thing I want to identify is there is a promise. In Galatians, we read through Jesus, we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as His own children, because God sent the Spirit of His Son into our lives. And if you are a child, you are also an heir with complete access to the full inheritance. So because Jesus died on the cross, we are children of God and heirs to all the Father has.

[2:35] Ephesians tells us that we have been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies and that we are today, right now, seated with Christ in heaven. Inherited inheritance is a promise of God, but receiving the full inheritance is conditional to believing in Jesus as the Son of God and what He died to give us. God also made a promise of inheritance to the Israelites thousands of years ago, long before Jesus was born. Their promise also had a condition: to drive out all foreign nations. In Numbers we read, the Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to the people of Israel.

[3:26] When you cross the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, you must drive out all the people living there. You must destroy. Okay, lost my place, all their carved molten images and demolish all their pagan shrines. Take possession of the land and settle in it, because I have given it to you to occupy. But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your side. They will harass you in the land where you live.

[4:15] God set apart the promised land for His children. It was theirs for the taking. All they had to do was rid the land of everything that was not of God. Okay, nice story, but what does that have to do with me? Well actually, Nathan preached on it beautifully a few weeks ago. God demands we live in holiness, set apart, different than our neighbors. For the Israelites to do that, they had to purge the land of anything that was not of God. And for us today, holiness demands that we need to purge our minds of the things that are not of God. But the Israelites, they failed to meet God's condition. And from that day forward, they struggled to be holy in their promised land.

[5:13] They didn't get to experience their full inheritance as the Lord desired for them. They were constantly at war with the nations around them, and eventually they were at war with themselves. Now on this side of the cross, the Holy Spirit in us, He guarantees that we will receive our full inheritance. The Holy Spirit is our source for experiencing the inheritance that Jesus died to give us. But we also have to rid the land of everything that is not of God. And we start that process by understanding there is a battle. God made you tripartite. That means three parts.

[6:02] You are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. In 1 Thessalonians we read, may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless. That's the holiness part. Until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. So before salvation, your spirit is dead. There's no life in it. And the soul is your operating system. It's in the driver's position. Your soul is made up of your mind, your will, and your emotions. Uh, The atmosphere of the soul is similar to our fallen world: self-centered, with lots of hurts and pains and disappointments and loss.

[6:50] The motto of the soul is, I want what I want when I want it. But at salvation, the Holy Spirit breathes life into your spirit. It's a new birth. What was dead is now alive. Your spirit unites with the Holy Spirit, and you become one. You don't have a baby spirit that has to grow. You are complete and perfect. This is the greatest and most perfect gift, and we thank Jesus for this gift. Amen to that. Thank You, Jesus. Yeah, but this is also where the battle begins, the battle of who will rule your life, the Holy Spirit or your soul. You see, at salvation, your soul and body are not part of the born again experience.

[7:53] How many of you know that if you have a cut on your finger before you're saved, you're gonna have a cut on your finger after you're saved? Your soul and body have been purchased, they have been paid, the price has been paid in full, and they are subject to change, but they are not instantly changed at salvation. So at salvation, the Holy Spirit is leading you towards surrender and Christlikeness. But the bondage from your soul, those worldly desires and worries, are fighting to hold on to control. And your soul is very strong-willed.

[8:40] It has built a strong muscle of control from the day you were born until the day you're saved. But God demands 100% loyalty. We shall have no other gods before Him. So even with the promise of full inheritance like the Israelites, we must battle for full occupation. We must eliminate the influence of the enemy and break the chains of bondage that weaken our faith and keep us at arm's length from all that Jesus died to give us. As the Israelites conquered one nation at a time, we must remove one layer of bondage at a time.

[9:27] Or for the purpose of this message, we must check one baggage, one piece of baggage at a time. Now I wanna be clear, I believe in total and immediate freedom from all bondage, especially at salvation. Everything from fear to addiction gone in an instant. Nothing is too hard for our God. But I also know that our God loves process. He loves to journey with us through life. Many of us, even most of us, couldn't handle the full weight of His glory falling on us all at once. It would crush us.

[10:14] But breaking one chain at a time in partnership with the Holy Spirit is a fight well fought to finish this race of life on this earth. And it's never too late. It's never too late to check your baggage, to break free of your bondage. But as Nathan said a few weeks ago, if you wait until you have time, if you wait until you're in midlife, then you'll have raised a whole generation in brokenness. Your children, our children, our grandchildren need to see the power of God in your life. Freedom. Freedom from bondage gives us an increase of intimacy and presence with Jesus, which leads to an increase of Holy Spirit power in your life. So it's, even though it's never too late, it's also never too early to start your journey to freedom. Alright? How do we break free surrendering to the Holy Spirit as Lord?

[11:28] Making Him King of your life is God's only plan for removing the bondage from your soul and living in full faith. It's only in surrender that God can transform you into the likeness of Jesus, spirit, soul, and body. Surrender is aligning yourself in God's design for order, allowing the natural flow of the Holy Spirit to heal, cleanse, and refine you as He rules, filling your soul and body with God's own nature. Philippians 2 tells us that you are to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

[12:18] For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose. So you work out as He works in you. You have a part and He has a part. It's a partnership. Well, it's not an equal partnership, but if you want the power of the Holy Spirit to flow through you, you must surrender to the Holy Spirit. That's your part so He can transform you. That's His part. In 2 Corinthians, we read, we are being transfigured into His very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another. And this glorious transfiguration comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Now, two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, especially light and darkness.

[13:17] So you move from one brighter level of glory to another by shining the light of Jesus on your dark places, your bondage. But Jesus doesn't just do that. It's not automatic. He's not a party crasher. He requires an invitation. God will not overthrow your free will. Free will is one of the things that Jesus died to secure for us. This partnership with Holy Spirit is one of the greatest opportunities free will gives you because you get to choose to cooperate with Him. Sounds like a win-win to me. So what's the problem? Baggage.

[14:06] Baggage is the problem. Baggage is the bondage of your soul. Baggage is heavy and baggage breaks your heart. Father God says, you will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. But how can you seek God with your whole heart if your heart is not whole? When your heart is broken, it leaks. It leaks faith. It leaks love. It leaks hope. It leaks trust. You need to check your baggage, not to pick it up later, but to have it set to the foot of the cross for redemption.

[14:52] For years, Brian and I had a hunger and thirst for more of God. I mean, there had to be more, right? These constant financial struggles, constant marriage struggles, constant weight struggles, they all, it didn't add up to what we thought was the abundant life. Our journey to wholeness started with the revelation that we were broken. One example of my brokenness was that I had a huge struggle with abandonment, which didn't make any sense to me because I come from a wonderful Christian home. Yet I couldn't get to that place where I could trust God. I was filled with fear that He just wouldn't show up when I needed Him the most. In my experience, it seemed that every time I tried to trust Him, He would dangle my hopes in front of me, something like a carrot before a horse, only to disappoint time and time again.

[15:55] I just couldn't reconcile what the Word said to the reality of my life. And Brian had his own baggage. So together we started searching for help and answers. We talked to pastors, we read books, we traveled to conferences, we signed up for programs. Anything and everything we could do, we did. While working with one facilitator, the Holy Spirit revealed a forgotten memory in me. I remember my mom telling this cute story to relatives at family gatherings about the day I was born. As a young child, even as a teen, I heard that on the day of my birth, Dad dropped Mom off at the hospital.

[16:42] Now you have to understand, I'm a four-year-old hearing these stories, right? This is a four-year-old's perception, but whatever happens to us as a child sears into us and we hold onto it. It doesn't mature with us as we mature. So in my perspective, Dad pulled up to the curb of the hospital, reached across, Mom opened the door, she got out, he drove off, she went into the hospital, had me, called Dad and said, we have a little girl, come and see her. And he said, what now? It's Stanley Cup playoffs. I'm in the middle of the last game. And everyone in the room would laugh just like you did.

[17:29] But little three-, four- and five-year-old Debbie didn't understand why her daddy didn't wanna come to meet her. Now adult Debbie knows that her father took her mother to the hospital. Adult Debbie knows that her father came to the hospital. Adult Debbie knows that he, Dad brought her to the hospital, that he took her in, he got her settled. He kissed her goodbye before he went home because of course, in those days, men weren't allowed to stay at the hospital. And yes, I am that old. Adult Debbie knows her dad knows that this would be very uncharacteristic behavior.

[18:14] My parents have been married for 67 years, and I have never known my dad to leave the house without kissing my mom goodbye or come back into the house without kissing her. Hello. What I'm trying to explain to you is that Satan is a liar. He's a deceiver. He can take an innocent, cute little story and twist it into abandonment or shame or fear. That is why we all have baggage. He takes what is good and he twists it for his own benefit. He doesn't need a reason or an excuse. He is evil, not just a little evil. He is pure evil, but he is not invincible.

[19:08] He has been disarmed and defeated by the work of the cross. He doesn't have a leg to stand on, right? So after five years of searching, thousands of miles traveled, multitudes of teaching and many dollars spent, Brian and I finally found freedom. Okay? Of course, freedom is a relative term in this life. There will always be layers of freedom to uncover. But we were finally free enough to experience God in deep levels of intimacy, uninterrupted by abandonment or fear or shame.

[19:56] Then about four years ago, God prodded us. And that's another long story. To take all the good and helpful parts of the many resources that we had used from many places and people and put them together in kind of a one stop freedom shop, so to speak, a place where believers can find freedom, presence, power, and purpose. So we started a ministry called The Ultimate Believer's Life. Now, our first course is called Free to Live in His Presence. And it consists of eight modules or lessons and has 44 videos. It took three years to put together.

[20:42] And I've been asked to give you a snapshot of what our ministry looks like. Well, baggage creates a hidden bondage cycle. It's hidden from you if you think you don't have any baggage, but we also hide it from others because we wear masks so that people can't see our brokenness, those things that hurt us. This cycle usually starts with a bad choice. You can see choice number one at the kind of the top left. So that's a bad choice, right? The cycle starts with a bad choice made. Now, either you made the choice or someone made it for you. For example, you are the one who makes the choice to drive 140 clicks on the 126.

[21:31] But if you have been abused or betrayed, then you are on the bad end of someone else's choice. But either way, bad choices are followed by hurtful experience, which leads to an emotional hurt. And that's when your heart is broken. Something in your heart breaks. Now maybe a bad choice was made by your parents when you were young and they got divorced. That hurtful experience could have broken your heart to where you have trouble trusting people today, maybe even God. Or maybe you did something as a teenager that you know was wrong and now you're filled with shame and it paralyzes you.

[22:19] Your heart, which is part of your soul, is very fragile. As a matter of fact, Father God tells us in Proverbs that we are to guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Your baggage determines the course of your life. Now, once you have an emotional hurt, you tend to rehearse it over and over again in your mind, creating a hurtful story filled with negative thoughts. You can get pretty good at exaggeration of, telling yourself that it's bigger than it is, or even just, going through it over and over again. You tend to, justify and rationalize and blame and shame until now you have established lies that you believe. Now, the problem with lies you believe is that you believe them.

[23:23] They become your truth. Well, if they're truth, how can they be lies? Because they are contrary, the opposite to what the Word of God says about you. Maybe you tell yourself, oh, I could never do that, or I will never do that again. Or I could never forgive that person, or I will never be good enough, or no one will ever love me. Whatever the lie. Once you choose to believe what the enemy of your soul is telling you over what the Word of God says about you, you give the enemy legal access to torment you, just like Adam and Eve did. In Ephesians 4, we read, don't let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil. Now, the key point here is not so much about the anger as it is about the foothold, because anger is not the only thing that gives the devil a foothold. So does shame, fear, rejection, anxiety, bitterness, unforgiveness, and so many other things that are not of God.

[24:42] So now you have cycled into demonic oppression. And once the devil has legal access, he can torment and twist and lie and cheat to his heart's content. Although I'd argue he doesn't have a heart. At this stage of the cycle, you are easily triggered by certain words, places, people, even smells, anything Satan wants to use to send you spiraling through the hidden bondage cycle. Again, David said it perfectly in Psalm 143, for the enemy has persecuted my soul. He has crushed my life to the ground. He has made me dwell in dark places. Therefore, my spirit feels weak within me.

[25:35] This is what it feels like to be attacked by the enemy. But if you are still wondering if you have hidden bondage, then ask yourself these questions. Because if you say yes to any one of these, they are a symptom of bondage. Do you struggle with self-control? Do you have emotional hurts like fear or shame? Do you have emotional pain triggers, things that set you off for no reason, no logical reason anyway? Do you have negative and ungodly thoughts? Do you feel unloved and unprotected? Do you feel powerless and stuck? Do you have trouble receiving from God? Do you have trouble surrendering 100% to God? Well, if you did answer yes to any of those, don't lose heart, because there is a solution.

[26:28] The Holy Spirit is the only One who can break down this bondage cycle. Your part is to surrender your bad choices, hurtful experiences, and pain to Him, and He'll take your stuff and replace it with His stuff. Jesus said, come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Your baggage is heavy, and I know you're tired of carrying it. Jesus wants to exchange your weariness for rest. You give Him your stuff and He'll give you His stuff. But God is a perfect gentleman. He doesn't push His will on you. He stands at the door and knocks.

[27:18] He's saying, I'm out here waiting for an invitation into deeper relationship. The problem for most of you is that even though you want to open the door to the presence and power of Jesus, you have subconsciously stacked a pile of baggage at the door and it won't open. But lots of butts this morning. Holy Spirit is always ready to help you when you call out to Him. You never have to do the heavy lifting on your own, because the Holy Spirit gives you the power and the desire to do what pleases Him. Woo. Amen to that. Yeah. Okay.

[28:07] The Holy Spirit will lift away every piece of baggage you want to give Him. At Ultimate Believer's Life, we have developed what we call the Trigger Revelation Ministry Model, or the TRM 7 for short, to engage this process of exchange of giving God your stuff in exchange for His stuff. Now, this is gonna sound like a commercial, and in some way it is, but Pastor Jim is going to give you an offer at the close of this service. So you kind of need to know what's going on. The first step of the TRM 7 is taking our 96 question assessment to identify specific bondage areas.

[28:52] Then step two involves a 20 minute teaching video to help you become aware of how this bondage has affected your life and wreaked havoc on your day-to-day life. Then we start the ministry process in step three by confessing, repenting, and renouncing. This opens a new door, one of healing, as you engage your will to ask God to forgive you and to help you forgive those around you. In step four, you bring the memory to the surface, hand it over to Jesus, and receive the healing He died to give you. Freedom is found in step five as you break down the walls of bondage.

[29:40] And Jesus does His beautiful, wonderful, merciful thing. He exchanges the lie you believed for the truth. By working through steps three, four, and five, you have successfully removed the enemy's foothold and closed the door on him, but you still have to evict any residue of his existing presence. So in step six, you take the authority that you have in Jesus, you kick him to the cross, and now he no longer has legal access to you. Once you complete the ministry steps, you are free to fully surrender to the Holy Spirit.

[30:26] This is how you shift, which is step seven, your operating system from your soul to the Spirit. That is what it looks like to work out your salvation, and it is work, but there is a reward. It's actually, there are many rewards: identity, purpose, legacy, healthy relationships. But the first one that comes to my mind is a renewed mind. Joyce Meyer tells us that the mind is a battlefield. And she's right. It takes a renewed mind to win the battle. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind. You remove, once you have taken the enemy's foot out of the door of your mind, you remove his influence and power. Oh, he will continue to attack.

[31:24] But when your operating system is the Spirit and not your soul, you absolutely live in the truth. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. A renewed mind strengthens the soul to take captive every thought into obedience with Jesus. And you know what? We aren't just commanded to do this. We were created to do this. Dr. Caroline Leaf is a Christian communication pathologist and clinical neuroscientist specializing in psychoneurobiology. Anybody wanna repeat that? Okay. In other words, she's really smart and she knows a lot about the brain.

[32:10] She has scientific evidence that your mind controls your brain, that the thoughts you think actually create matter, substance, that your thoughts are real, real physical things that take up spatial real estate. If you are, that you were actually created to bring every thought captive in Jesus. We've all heard that toxic and negative thinking throws your body into stress, which stress, which manifests in sickness. Well, Dr. Leaf says that 98% of illness is from the mind, and only 2% is from genetics and the environment.

[33:00] So when you check your baggage and break free from partnering with the enemy, your reward of a new mind also makes your body healthier, because it's written into your genetic code by your Creator. I mean, how amazing is that? Let's praise Him for that. Yeah, thank You, Father. Another reward for checking your baggage is walking in the Spirit. Okay? I know this is a tricky one. I mean, I've heard this all my life. You know, the New Testament says, we live by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, be led by the Spirit. Keep in step with the Spirit, be filled with the Spirit. What does that even mean? Well, to walk in the Spirit means you actually have to die, not in body, but in soul, which is what we've been talking about all morning.

[33:55] Getting rid of your baggage sets you up for success. When your heart is whole and your faith isn't leaking out, you are in a place of surrender. That place where the Holy Spirit rules over your soul. Yes, you have to die to self so you can live in the abundant full life that Jesus died to give you. Galatians 5 says, "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh." This is not your body. Your flesh is your unsurrendered soul. It's the thing that has passions and desires. So we have crucified the unsurrendered soul with its passions and desires. And so if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. And to keep in step with the Holy Spirit, you have to walk the path that He's on.

[34:52] You must choose His path rather than expecting Him to join yours. So yes, it means putting your thoughts and passions and plans and desires to death, anything that ranks higher than God in your life. But know this: as the high, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than your ways and God's plans and thoughts higher than your thoughts. God thinks bigger than you. God's passions are greater than your passions. His plans are better than your plans. His desires are purer than your desires.

[35:40] You can trust Him. Let me ask you, can you block out the cares and worries of this world and spend a full morning in His presence? If you can't, then you're carrying heavy baggage. How do I know? Because the Word says we are to strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and run. Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. You are to run your race with endurance, not huffing and puffing, but with this weight of heavy baggage. It's time to stop carrying those heavy things that are tripping you up and slowing you down. But you can't just stop.

[36:32] I can't just say stop doing that. To do that would be like saying, stop thinking about a pink elephant. But thank our Father in heaven who sent us Jesus as the great exchanger. Jesus doesn't just say, stop that. That's not what Jesus says. No. He says, here, you give Me your stuff, I'll give you Mine. Let's look at Matthew 11 again. It's worth it. Jesus said, "Come to Me, all who are weary and have heavy baggage, and I will give you rest." Jesus wants to exchange your baggage for rest. You give Him your stuff, He'll give you His.

[37:20] You give Him your unworthiness, He will give you His righteousness. You give Him your fear, He will give you His peace. You give Him your anger, He will give you His contentment. You give Him your sadness, He will give you His joy. You give Him all your inadequacies, all your pains, all your hurts, and He will be your everything. Jesus wants all your stuff. He can carry it. He's the only one who can. Now, I know this topic is hard for a lot of you, and some of you, maybe a memory came up this morning, or maybe you're dealing with something right now that's more than you can handle.

[38:12] And this has been a lot for you this morning. And if that's you, I am so sorry. I know some of you have heart-wrenching life stories that one sermon isn't going to fix, but I truly believe that Jesus is the answer to every one of your hurts, every one of your questions, every one of your fears. When the worship team comes up in a few minutes and some of the pastors are actually gonna join them this morning, I invite you to come forward and receive prayer. And I believe that you'll get at least some relief, and that's good. But most of you need to peel off layers and layers of hurts, and that will take time.

[39:04] So when Pastor Jim comes out after the closing song, he's going to give you some opportunities to pursue your healing process, because not only is Jesus here for you, we are here for you. We are the family of God. We are your church family. We care for each other. So the world will know us by our love as the worship team begins to play. Would you stand with me and let me pray this benediction over you this morning. May the Lord establish you in freedom, presence, and power.

[39:53] May He strengthen you in mind and body and spirit where you are broken. May He restore where you are weary. May He refresh where you are fearful. May He revive faith. May your coming days be more blessed than your former days. And may you remember that new mercies are waiting for you every morning. Also, remember that you cannot, the two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. So check your baggage with Jesus.

[40:41] Lay it at the foot of the cross to make room for Him.