The image is forever seared on my mind. Buried for more than a week under the debris of the devastating earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in January 2010, the man had been pulled from the rubble. He was being borne above the heads of his rescuers, and with his arms raised to the sky and a look of sheer ecstasy on his face, his face shouted, “I’m free!”

Freedom is a marvelous thing. Yet somehow the thrill of freedom that we experienced when we were first delivered from the crushing weight of sin has a way of fading. The ecstasy of freedom from the things that held us in bondage to fear, anger, bitterness and immorality loses its wonder. Sometimes we slip back into the sinful patterns from which we had escaped. Or conversely, we so distance ourselves from that former life and from people who are still trapped in it, that it no longer seems relevant.

The apostle Paul once said this to a group of believers who had lost the wonder of their freedom: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!” In other words, God intends freedom to be our ongoing reality. Freedom was never intended to be merely a historical event. I need freedom today from the greed and fear and lust so prevalent in this world.

But where is it found? How can I continually be free? The Spirit of God working through the Word of God that first set us free is still what we need. “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (John 8:32; 2 Corinthians 3:17). The simple truth of God’s Word that freed Seila from her fear of ghosts (read “No More Ghosts!”) is the same truth that I continually need to keep me free from the rubble of sin and death that threatens to bury me once more under its wreckage. The Word of God plus the Spirit of God equals freedom.