Unshackled Echo ~ April 7, 2018 ~ Love Is All You Need

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

February 26, 2015.

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

- Matthew 22:37-40

Are you looking for a life of purpose worth living but feel sick of fighting to know what's right, to remember all the religious do's and don't's, and to do them? Why not trade them all in for two rules, that are really just one rule, and follow Jesus? It's so simple that a child can understand and do it. Love. That's what it all boils done to. The Beatles actually had it right. All you need is love. Place relationship with your Creator above everything else. Do things that will bring you deeper into that relationship, that improve your conscious contact with He who called you to come. Don't do the things that increase the distance between the two of you.

Come to understand that God loves you, YOU, just as you are and not as you should be, to steal a great truth from Brennan Manning.  The messed up, broken, confused, scared, angry and rebellious, self-hating ego maniac that you are at the depths of you is so precious to Him and valued by Him that He took the weight of your past, present and future, you know, the weight that's crushing you, upon Himself and died in your place, and mine. Understand that? Got that value in your mind? Good. Now don't treat yourself as less than precious, as if you have no value. Treat and look at yourself as though you are worth the King of Kings being beaten and executed to pay your ransom because the Creator of the whole universe declared you worth that much. Awesome. That's how we are to love ourselves. Now that you got that, treat everyone you run into like they are that precious and valuable too.

That's it. Just love. But wait! That doesn't sound easy at all! Nobody said anything about easy. I said it's simple. It's not easy. It's impossible. It's so unbelievably hard to even think about doing well that most of us would rather have a list of 600 plus do's and don't's that we can fail at than to just fail so epically at only one.  But we don't have to have the ability to do it. Jesus said that if we will choose to follow Him and seek relationship with Him that He will live in us and we can live in Him. Awesome. The Lord of the universe will live in me and love through me and make it possible for me to live and love as He does. And all I have to do to have that relationship with Him is accept that He accepts me, believe He made the way, choose what the Father wants over my wants (deny self). 

Abba, I belong to You. You bought and paid for me on the cross. Help me to surrender every part of myself to You today so that You can love through me unhindered, even when it comes to seeing and loving me. Help me not to do the things that would take me away from You are would cause someone else to run from You or feel farther away from You. Draw me closer to You today. Amen.

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Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ April 6, 2018 ~ Let Grace Take Guilt

This morning I spent some time reading in Leviticus. Now, I know that a lot of Christians don't care much for the Old Testament, especially areas such as Leviticus. It's not fun to look at the law of God, especially since we are no longer under the old law but the new law of love, which is much more difficult. And of course it raises questions about why did God allow this or that and not allow other things. I am not addressing any of that today.

But I noticed something about the nature of Daddy and grace this morning in reading through the oracles for sin offerings. If someone sinned, they were to bring an offering to receive forgiveness of that sin. They were told to bring a lamb of certain standard. But, if they couldn't afford the lamb, then there was an alternative. If they couldn't afford that, then there was something else they could bring. And still less and less was demanded, until finally the poor could bring a bushel of flour. Even under  the harsh restrictions of the old law, the purpose of which was to show us that we needed a Savior because we could not fulfill the requirements of the law, there was grace. Daddy showed His love for all by making a way of pardon for those who had fallen short. And He never said do this or die and if you can't then make an offering, and if you can't afford the offering you're screwed.

Even those without resources were given grace. This standard served as a foreshadowing of what was to come in Jesus when He would pour out His life to bridge the gap between our ability and resources and the standard of holiness justice demanded. It is so easy to slip into condemnation and feel that we are lost because there is no way for us to make right our wrongs. We can not make amends for all that we have done. We simply don't have the ability or resources. We don't deserve forgiveness and relationship with Daddy. So we don't run to Him. Instead we struggle through life in defeat and guilt. But we don't have to do that! Grace made a way. Jesus paid the price. Today we don't even have to come up with a bushel of flour to find forgiveness. All we need bring to the altar is ourselves. Just as we are, blemished, broken and stained. We bring our feelings of worthlessness, our guilt, our shame, our rebellion and our failure and say, this is who  I am and what I have.  It is  Yours God, to do with as You please. And He takes it and, in exchange, gives us the riches of rightness with Him, paid for by the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

Today, let us not seek to pay our way. Let us not seek to deserve and then feel unable to come to Daddy because we don't deserve. Instead, let us lay aside the weight of guilt and shame and the burden of the past on the altar of love and freely receive the relationship and love He so desperately wants us to have from Him. Forgiveness isn't free, but we don't ever have to pay the price. Daddy doesn't want or need or effort and our sacrifices. All He ever wanted was our heart, and He has done all that is needed to make it possible for us to bring that to Him.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Judas In Us

Dalyn Woodard shares on the who and the why of Judas  as a disciple and betrayer and how his faults are found in all of us. But Jesus loved Judas and loves us, even when we betray Him. The message, "Judas In Us," is about 51 minutes long, and was recorded at Nacogdoches Christian Fellowship on Wednesday, April 4, 2018. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

If you would like to have notifications of new Unshackled Moments and messages sent to you via email, send an email to dalynwoodard@mail.com requesting to be added to the list. You can also follow Dalyn Woodard (@Dalynsmsings) on Twitter or Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Moments ~ April 4, 2018 ~ Homework Sucks

I don't know about you, Dear Reader, but I always hated homework, with a few exceptions. The first exception to the homework sucks truism that I discovered was reading. I'm not talking about, class read pages 38-495 of the most boringly written of all textbooks kind of reading. No, I'm talking about books. The Summer Of The Monkeys, Little Pilgrim's Progress, and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, about a girl who runs away to live in a museum, were a few of the books that made my elementary years less, well, less like school and more like wonder.

One of the things that caused me to clash with my teachers in junior high was my despising of homework to the extent that I did just enough work to earn a C. If an assignment had 20 questions I would answer 14, leave the rest blank and turn it in. The only person this bothered more than my teachers was my mom. But one of the worst things about eighth grade was when my reading teacher managed to make reading feel like homework and sucked the joy out of even that.

I bring this all up, because even now, at 47 years of age, I dislike the idea of homework. And I don't think that I am the only person who has gone through periods where recovery is approached like homework.  We do what we are told, read what we are supposed to read, and begin to learn a lot of good information. We can tell people what they want or need to hear. We can parrot back the nifty sayings and quote recovery books and scriptures. We know what we need to do, what everyone else in our situation needs to do. We can fill in the blanks and sound wise. And, if you are anything like  me, and you slip into this mode of going through the spiritual motions like it's an assignment and you're trying to earn a good grade with the bonus reward of recovery, it becomes drudgery. The shine fades quickly. The reason why there are cliches about how horrible it is to have a head full of recovery and a body full of chemicals, is because that is the usual result of studying recovery and amassing knowledge about the problem and the solution.

Whether it's staying clean and sober, or simply walking with God, amassing understanding and filling the head with knowledge is never enough. It is lifeless, and before long, the spirit falters and the recovery dies. We may stay dry, for a time, but unless the waters flow with new life again, the spirit will slip once more into the bondage of self. Because while knowledge is a good thing, it is not enough. The secret to true and lasting freedom and a life worth living is not found in knowing more information. It is  founded in knowing the One who frees us. It is not what we know but who.

If reading spiritual things and scriptures becomes homework and our prayers become our daily assignments to check off and grade ourselves on how we did, then going through the motions will be little more than  that. An exercise in futility. But when the spiritual steps we take and the reading and prayers we do to supplement them are about relationship, it makes all the difference. I can get lost in the process, filled with wonder about what I am learning and the God I am getting to  know. It's not drudgery, it's not mechanical, and it's not even a process. It's a pleasure. It's getting to know Daddy and having fellowship with the Spirit, and becoming more and more grateful as the extent of what Jesus did for me becomes more and more clear.

I hate homework, but I study more today than I ever did in school. Just this morning I spent some time talking with Leah about something new I had learned about Jesus from a passage of scripture I have probably read a hundred times or more. Recovery and discipleship does not  have to be drudgery or difficult work. We're not trying to earn a degree here. It can be alive and filled with wonder and discovery. The difference is in the approach. If the goal is knowledge, so that we can escape certain negative results of life, it will never fill us with the joy and passion that comes from falling in love with Daddy and simply wanting to know more about Him, more about how He loves us and more about how to get close to Him and love Him more and more.

If the spiritual life has begun to feel like a burden, cut class and ditch the homework. Play hooky from the legalism of religion and the assignments of programs. Instead spend some time with Daddy, just for the sake of getting to know Him.  Ask the Spirit to make you aware of God's love for you and to fill you once more with the wonder of relationship.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ April 3, 2018 ~ Help To Heal

I remember the wave of emotions that hit not long after I got clean and sober. Things that I had pushed down, distracted myself from and numbed away for years suddenly came flooding back all at once, as though a levy had broken. I thought I would drown. For a while this served as the main causes for my frequent relapses. As I got a little clean time under my belt, I suddenly had to deal with things that I had never dealt with and didn't know how to face.

Part of growing in relationship with Daddy and learning to trust Him with my life so that I could give the Spirit control and in that process stay free had as much to do with learning to trust Him with and give Him my wounds and fears as it did with simply staying clean. Those emotional waves could be ridden to Him or could push me under or further away. The choice was mine. Would I fight the storm or cry out to the One who has more power than the storm?

But sometimes we can learn to turn to God enough to survive and get enough healing to flourish for a while without really dealing with the root of our pain and fear. And when we do this, we run the risk of getting on down Recovery Road only to stall or turn away to Relapse Ave when life throws us a curve ball. When things come up that bring back the pain of the past or when we find that while we thought we were trusting and turning to God, we were really trusting and counting on people. When they fail or are not available, we find ourselves adrift. and the current sweeps us away.

We should have support from others, just as we should give support to others. We are called to edify and encourage one another, and there are many proverbs that make it clear that seeking counsel is a habit of the wise. But at the same time, we must not look to people to meet our needs or be our sufficiency and answer. The Spirit is our sufficiency, comfort and strength. That said, we can't always hole up with the Spirit and find direction and healing on our own. We need help.We need wise counsel and an objective Godly person to help us see past our pain and instinctive survival techniques to the process of healing.

Did you know that there is a stronger link between trauma and abuse and addiction than there is between obesity and diabetes? Most addicts are broken, messed up people who are still broken and in need of healing, even after finding freedom. If we refuse to deal with the things that we ran from before, we will often find ourselves back in chains. It may not mean relapse, but it could mean a misery and bitterness that eats away at our joy, robs us of our life worth living and prevents us from being of service to others. Most damaging, it creates more distance between us and Daddy. We may feel as though we are avoiding pain by not dealing with the issues of our lives, but in truth we are growing misery like fungus in the dark.

Let us let the light in to kill the things that grow in the dark. Let us seek counsel and help to get from our fear to our Savior so that we can find healing. Our scars can become the signs of what God can do in the lives of others when they see our healing, joy and victory instead of evidence of defeat and victimhood. We can be more than conquerors through Christ Jesus, but we are not called to walk alone. Let us get the help and counsel we need to no longer live in the Valley of the Shadow and so that we can learn to direct others to the place where healing happens and the chains stay broken regardless of what may happen in our lives.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ April 2, 2018 ~ Guilt Or Gain

One of the biggest blessings for me this past Lenten and Easter season came from realizing how much my motivation has changed over the years with regards to spirituality and religion. I am so grateful for the grace to begin to grow beyond the guilt or gain phase. I can't say that I have completely outgrown it, but it is no longer the basic motivational foundation for my spiritual life.

I think that most people begin seeking God in Guilt or Gain mode. Guilt, I am dirty, I am a mess, I am facing judgment and I need forgiveness and mercy and to have this guilt and shame removed, or gain, what can or will God do for me? I want to please God so He won't be mad at me, so that things won't go badly for me, or so that things will go well. Neither of these are bad places to start seeking God and getting to know Him, as any time we turn to God is a good time and a good reason. Many an excellent relationship with Daddy began with a desperate 9-1-1 spiritual distress call. Few, if any, would begin to seek that relationship without wanting the fruits and benefits that come with it. Even now, I proclaim the awesome freedom, the life worth living, the peace, love, joy and other results of walking in relationship with the Spirit. They are real, they are true blessings and they only increase the deeper in relationship we go.

There is no question that being made new and clean and to be rid of shame and condemnation is important and a huge reason to come to God, as is the gain of life and freedom and the fruits of the Spirit. No, this is not a bad place to start. But praise God for grace to grow beyond that to a place where the relationship is because of and purposed for love. Where it is about giving and receiving love from the One who loves us and gave Himself for us and sharing that love with others. When love is the motivation it drives us ever deeper, no matter what our circumstances. If our relationship remains guilt based, when we no longer feel guilty, we tend not to seek as much. We can fall into complacency and drifting. When it's based on gain, we tend to examine everything through the filter of benefits, and if our perception is that we are not gaining enough or quickly, then we feel neglected, abandoned or betrayed. In both cases we are still self centered. Our relationship with God is all about  ourselves, and it is a fine line between that and the self seeking life we were fleeing from to begin with.

But when the relationship becomes based on, just that, relationship, then love is the motivation, the reward and the stability. Lack of guilt and condemnation causes rejoicing that draws us deeper and causes love to grow even more, instead of becoming a reason to relax and drift, and the benefit of Daddy's love becomes all the gain that we need to seek Him and stay steadfast, even if our perception of life doesn't show as much gain as it does struggle or suffering.

Sorrow and suffering aren't automatically eliminated because we have a good relationship with Daddy. Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and He had a perfect relationship with Daddy. They were one in unity. Pain is not always removed, and suffering may continue right up to the end, as it did for Jesus on the cross, but the spiritual damage, the emotional despair and the mental anguish of suffering can be done away with so that in the midst of pain and suffering there is joy and peace rooted in love and the assurance of love. That is an awesome place to live, no matter what is going on.

Today, let our motivation be His love for us and our love for Him, and let us ask the Spirit to take us through and past the prodding of guilt or gain.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Our Hope

Darlene Woodard shares briefly on the need to awaken to the reality that He is risen and what that means for us, then Wally Flynt shared on the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus and the truth that there is always hope in the Lord, even at our gravesides, when loss has become seemingly permanent. The message, "Our Hope," is about 7 minutes long and was recorded at Nacogdoches Christian Fellowship on Sunday, April 1, 2018. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen. May God bless and keep you.

This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

If you would like to have notifications of new Unshackled Moments and messages sent to you via email, send an email to dalynwoodard@mail.com requesting to be added to the list. You can also follow Dalyn Woodard (@Dalynsmsings) on Twitter or Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.