Unshackled Moments ~ August 7, 2018 ~ Accepting The Problem

We admitted we were powerless over [Varied], that our lives had become unmanageable,

- Step 1

This is the beginning to freedom and recovery/ I put varied, because the 12 steps are now used for many different issues and for discipleship and not only for alcohol. For some, like me, alcohol fills in that blank, as do other chemicals. For others it may be gambling or shopping or pron or eating or.... the list is as varied as people themselves. Because while it may be a specific issue that brings us to this place, the problem is not what we fill in that blank with. Celebrate Recovery, a program I have not participated in, has adapted Step 1 to read as follows:

We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

This, I feel is closer to the truth, because what most of us in recovery learn is that our main issue is in no way the only one. The truth is what we are powerless over is self.

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

- Romans 7:18

Do you flinch at that verse? I often do.  My knee jerk reaction is that I'm not all bad. Jesus said there is none good but God, and we know He spoke true, but don't we often still feel that most people are as good as they are bad and that some are mostly good? And if we feel that way, how can we agree with the idea that there is no good in us?

It's not that there is nothing good, that we are all 100% bad or evil. We are all, even people who never believe in God, created in His image, and He is good. But whatever good we have in us or are is never enough to make us love and live unselfishly and do right consistently.

It is common to hear in the rooms of recovery that Step 1 is the only step that must be done 100% in order to have success. What that means for someone like me is that we have to acknowledge and understand that we are completely powerless over alcohol and must rely totally on God and abstain. If I begin to doubt the truth of this then I naturally begin leaning on my own strength and sooner or later begin to think that I can control my drinking. I have had this happen before, and I relapsed. I did control it for a short time, but what I learned was twofold. First, I learned that if I control my drinking I don't enjoy it, but if I let myself enjoy it, I can't control it. Secondly, I learned that even with that I can not control it for long.

When it comes to the spiritual life and discipleship, this is also true. There is an old song that I no longer appreciate. In it is the line I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back; no turning back. Why don't I like it? Because I fell for it too many times. I would decide to follow Jesus and then try as hard as I could to follow through and not turn back. And then I would fail. Because this idea puts the burden on me. But I am powerless to deny self and follow Jesus. I will stop. I will turn back. I can not rely on myself at all. I have to have that understanding down 100%/ When I remember that, I remember that it is only by grace and His power that I can walk with Him. I may not be all bad, but the good in me is not enough to succeed. It might as well not even exist. If I owe a million dollars, having a hundred bucks in the bank may technically mean I have some money, but the reality is that I don't. I'm not just broke. I'm in the hole. I have good, but not nearly enough to get me out of the hole.

We must accept that we are bankrupt. We are the poor in spirit and must rely totally and completely on the mercy and grace of Daddy and the work of Jesus to save us. And while that sounds like defeat, it is freeing. It is freeing because we can stop the fight and the wearisome struggle of trying to do it ourselves. I don't have to try. I only have to surrender and rely on His love and grace for me. Then, and only then, can I love and live as God would have me.


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 ~ August 6, 2018 ~ Stop Trying So Hard

Trying doesn't work. Neither does trying harder. Yoda was right. Do or do not. There is no try. But doing doesn't mean instant success or ability. We are told that trying hard and never giving up is the secret to success, but those who are successful know that's a lie. We all do when we stop and think about it.

The trick is not to try but to train. This is obvious in so many things. Actors don't read scripts once and then hope for the best. They memorize and rehearse and run lines and do it all until they know their part. Athletes don't wait until game time and try hard. They exercise and practice many more hours than they'll have in game time. Do any of us think for a minute that Jimi Hendrix just picked up a guitar when he went on stage and tried very hard? No. He practiced until his fingers bled. He played those riffs over and over until he could play them without even thinking. And everyone in those examples begin or began as, well, beginners.

Musicians start with scales and basic tunes that they can't get right long before they play masterpieces. Those who make it are the ones who keep training. We may say they keep trying, but it's more than trying. They evaluate performance. They receive instruction. The learn what they're doing wrong and they continue to work at it until they get it/ The rest of us sit at home and listen to their work or play Rock Band video games.

Two months ago tomorrow my wife had open heart surgery. In October we plan to take part in a charity walk that is important to her.  She walks several times a week. I have been walking as well. We aren't just waiting until that day and setting out to try hard to make the distance. We are building up to it. To do otherwise could mean being unable to walk the entire distance. It could mean worse and be unhealthy.

A life worth living comes with relationship with God, and that comes from following Jesus. And trying to just wait until the moment of trial, for time to perform is a set up for disaster. Don't try. Do. But like every marathon runner began with a crawl and a few wobbly steps and falls, followed by learning to walk well and run. Then, once the goal is set, training and building the body and running regularly are all prerequisites to the race. No one just gets up and runs that far. We will have to start small. We will have missteps and mistakes. We need to learn and train with information, instruction and regular exercise. Don't give up in discouragement when you can't go the distance from day one. And don't wait until time to race to start getting ready. Practice doing right when it's easy. Pray. Study the word so that it will become a part of you. That way, when the trouble and temptation come, you are ready. You don't have to try. You have trained yourself to remember to turn to Daddy and rely on His strength.


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.

Acceptance Is The Answer

In order to be set free and have a life worth living, we must accept that we need help and that we can never be our own answer. Dalyn Woodard shares on there are things in life and us that are not acceptable, but there is an answer to every need we have. The message, "Acceptance Is The Answer," is about 13 minutes long and was recorded at Nacogdoches Christian Fellowship on Sunday, August 5, 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.

Unshackled Echo ~ August 4, 2018 ~ But God

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

March 20, 2015.

The children of Israel had been slaves for 400 years. Moses gets a message from God promising freedom and a life worth living in a better land, the Land Of Promise. But when he tells Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, he is denied and ignored. God preforms awesome miracles and displays of power, to show that His people are indeed to be released. This is not a mere man's desire, but the Creator Himself wants to provide freedom for His people. But after each miracle, things actually seem worse for the children of Israel as Pharaoh retaliates.

Finally the slave master is broken, and those in bondage are free to go. But Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues to take back those whom he has lost to God. The people find themselves in an impossible situation. The water before them, an element of the world that they can not control or overcome. Behind them a massive army, their worst nightmare come true as their former master comes to take them back into bondage in a fury that promises to make things even more miserable and painful than before. There is no possible hope but God. But God.

God loves letting us and the rest of the world know that victory over our difficulties, freedom from our bondage, the defeat of our enemies was only possible because of Him. No, it's not an ego thing. It's an important message so that we don't forget where and to whom to turn, so that our lives tell the rest of the world where they too can find freedom. That sounds good, but in order for it to be clear that God did it, things have to get impossible enough that there is no hope but God.

If Moses quit declaring to Pharaoh the demand of God to set the captives free because things seemed to get worse, he would've missed the miracle, and the people would've stayed slaves. He himself would've been made a slave. If Moses and the children of Israel had turned their back to the sea and tried to wage war with the army of Pharaoh, they would've been slaughtered and or taken prisoner. They had no hope of winning on their own. And if they looked at the wall of water and refused to trust God, if they were too afraid to step out in faith and move through the sea because God made a path rather than ships, the battle would've been lost. But by realizing that God would do what He said He would, by understanding it's God and His way or not at all, the children of Israel gained their freedom from the most powerful nation on the planet at the time.

Whatever our area of bondage, no matter how powerful our master that has enslaved us, God is more powerful. He desires to free us and restore is, if we will let Him. He does all the work. It's only by His power and might and grace that we have any hope. But we can't quit before the miracle happens, before we see the fulfillment of the the promise. We can't turn back, or fight on our own, or give up because there's no way. We need to remember but God.

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 ~ August 3. 2018 ~ Growing Gills

It's been  about eight months since the fire Leah and I had before Christmas last year. The heat in my study made me think of how hot it was when I ran into the house with 5-gallon buckets of water to put out the blaze. The fire was much hotter and worse than the August heat. The air was too hot to breathe, and even if it wasn't, the thick black smoke didn't have a lot of oxygen in it.

I knew the heat and smoke would mess up my lungs and cause me to cough. I remember taking a deep breath outside and determining that I would hold my breath before each trip inside. The plan I came up with was to take a deep breath of air, run in empty the bucket on the flames and exit before taking another breath. Unfortunately running makes it harder to hold my breath. So inevitably I would end up involuntarily trying to breathe the hot air and smoke. Each time it hurt and caused problems. Each time I became more determined not to make the same mistake. It never worked.

I simply don't have that kind of control over my natural instinct to breathe. None of us do. No matter how determined we are to hold our breath, there will come a time when that determination is outweighed by instinct and need, even if we are under water or surrounded by toxic fumes. The need outweighs even the understanding that there's nothing safe to breathe.

This is also true of the bondage of sin and addiction. It doesn't matter that the consequences have become toxic. It doesn't matter how well we know that if we give in to the desire to do wrong, to go for the quick fix and escape. etc., there will come a point in time when all that isn't enough. We can be submerged in destruction and know with every part of our being that to give in is to die, and we will still take that breath. We can't stop it. We have no more control over our selfish nature than we do over our lungs.

Changing our environment, our people, places and things will only help for so long. Avoiding triggers will only work until the stress of life causes us to create new ones. We can know this truth, but without something within us actually changing. The need that we are so desperate to fill has to be met. Being underwater can be fine, if we have scuba gear so that we can breathe without taking water into our lungs. Firefighters use air tanks to counteract the heat and smoke of fires. And when we it comes to breaking selfishness, habitual sin and addiction, we need an infusion of power and another, new nature. The only way to stop a moth from going to a flame is to put out the flame or change the nature of the moth.

We can't put out the flame of life, but we can have a new nature. Not by doing something ourselves or becoming more determined than ever to change or do better. That won't work any more than making up our mind to hold our breath will keep us from breathing. But by surrendering our lives and will to Daddy's care, He can and will do for us what we can not do for ourselves. He makes us His and gives us His very Spirit to strengthen us and change our very nature into His likeness. What does that mean? That means that we can be like Jesus and do what He did. What is that? Well, it is the ability, because of the Spirit within us, to walk through the mess and stress of life without breathing in the sin and being poisoned by it.

We will stumble and fall. We will take that breath that we don't want to take from time to time. This is because we are not capable of perfect and constant surrender, because we have not yet been made perfect. But we can surrender enough to stay close to Daddy and walk free from our addictions, to break the bondage of our destructive habitual sin and to rely on His power to love Him and love others more and more. We don't have to flee the world and all that is in it. God can give us spiritual gills and set us free.


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.

Who's Your Jesus?

Whenever something really good comes along there is opposition and counterfeits. Dalyn Woodard shares on how there can be no close enough substitution for Jesus and that it matters what we believe about Him. The message, "Who's Your Jesus?," is 51 minutes long, and was recorded at Nacogdoches Christian Fellowship on August 1, 2018. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen.

If you missed the first message in the series "The Daddy Heart Of God," entitled "Redirected By Love," it can be found here. The second message, "God Is Light," can be found here. The third message, "You Are Beloved," can be found here. The fourth message, "You Have Overcome," can be found here, and the fifth message, "The Trouble Of Tribbles." can be found here.

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 ~ August 1, 2018 ~ Faithful Fan

Wow, August is here. My favorite baseball team is in last place in their division, and with only two months left in the regular season, it'll take a miracle of parting of the sea proportions for the Rangers to win the world series this year. A wild card playoff slot isn't even likely, but I'm hoping. That's because I am for the Rangers. They are my team. Period. I have been a fan of the team for nearly 40 years at this point, and that won't change.

I have pulled for them and rooted for them and proudly declared myself a fan during seasons where it seemed that they couldn't win if the opponent didn't even show up. I have rejoiced with victorious seasons and championships as though I actually had something to do with the win. I am a Rangers fan, and I can relate to all those faithful Cubs fans who stayed loyal despite the jokes about the Cubs never winning a world series until they finally did.

Sports fans understand that concept. The concept of sticking with your team no matter what, win or lose, good season or bad, year after year. But I know that many of you, like my wonderful wife, are not sports fans. So why did I start with two paragraphs about something that many will not appreciate? Because I can't think of a better illustration of what is on my heart this morning.

My being for the Rangers is not based on their performance. It didn't even start that way. I didn't jump on their band wagon after a good season. I have listened to many a game where I knew beforehand that they would most likely lose. That's what it means to be a faithful fan.

So, Dear Reader, what does it mean to you when you hear that God is for you and not against you? Can you hear that and relax? Does it take the pressure to perform away? When we can rest in the understanding that Daddy is for us, that He loves us as we are, not as we should be, we can simply rely on Him and enjoy the game. We still want to do well, to please Him, but the fear of rejection is gone. God is your most faithful fan. He is for you, because He loves you, not because you are good. He loved you before you could handle the simplest situation without error. He cheered for your victories and extended love, grace and restoration during times of distress and failure. He is always rooting for you! He proudly declares His faithfulness to us, even though we can never win without His help.

It is not God is for us, when our hearts are right. Somewhere there is that person whose heart is more wrong at this moment than any other person on earth. God is for him or her. His greatest desire is to entire into relationship with that person and to transform them into His likeness and give them a life worth living.He knows are potential and how far below the standard of perfection and victory it is. Instead of rejecting us as worthless losers, He made it possible for us to be more. He did everything necessary for us to be more than victorious. We don't have to earn His acceptance or love. We have it, win or lose. He is for us.


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.