Freedom From Sin

Sin always sends an invoice, and Romans 6 refuses to let us pretend otherwise. I open by reading Scripture that draws a hard line between two kinds of slavery: obeying sin that leads to death or obeying God that leads to righteousness, holiness, and eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. If you’ve ever wondered what “freedom” actually means in the Christian life, this is a direct, Bible-centered reset that puts grace, baptism, repentance, and daily obedience in the right order.

From there, I move into a conviction-heavy look at marriage through Hebrews 13:4. Faithfulness is not only about what we refuse to do, but what we choose to give our time and attention to. When sports, entertainment, social media, or endless scrolling get our best energy while our spouse gets leftovers, we should at least be honest about what that says. I share a practical marriage insight that stings in a helpful way: a healthy spouse learns to care about what their spouse cares about, not just what they personally enjoy.

We also step into American Christian heritage with a Medal of Honor story about Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr.’s extraordinary courage, then I read a powerful paragraph from Benjamin Franklin as the Constitutional Convention struggled. Franklin’s question still echoes: why don’t we humbly ask God for light and help when we’re groping in the dark? If you want Christian encouragement, biblical teaching, and a call back to prayer and providence, hit play, then subscribe, share the show, and leave a review so more people can find it.

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Transcript

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Romans 6 Wages Of Sin

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Romans six starting with verse twenty. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You were now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Honor Killing Case And Worldview Critique

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Sandela Canwal, twenty-five-year-old Pakistani woman living in Clayton County, Georgia. Murdered by her father in July of 2008 in an honor killing. She had entered an arranged marriage to a cousin in Pakistan. Her husband lived in Chicago, had not seen her husband for months and was seeking a divorce. Her father, mid-50s, also a Pakistani Muslim immigrant who held U.S. permanent residency, ran a pizza restaurant in the area. Strangled his daughter with a bungee cord. Burned the cord flush the ashes. That is Islam, folks. It never changes. We're foolish to think that it will.

Welcome And Thanks For Support

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Wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. Sure do appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and attention, a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. For those of y'all who continue to share the two podcasts with others, the American Soul Podcast and America's Christian Heritage, thank you. For those of y'all that continue to leave reviews, thank you. Same thing with the Countryside Book Series. For those of y'all that continue to share those with others and leave reviews. Thank you very much for that. And most of all, for those of y'all who continue to pray for me, my family, the writing, the podcast, thank you. Very, very grateful for your prayers.

Prayer For Mercy And Guidance

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Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son, Jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace, and your forgiveness of sins. Through the merit of your son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for all the blessings you bestow upon us, the ones we admit and the ones we don't. Forgive us our sins, forgive us when we turn and go our own way.

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When we rebel against you.

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Against your son. Our pride and our greed, our arrogance, our gossip, our slander. Our cowardice and our unbelief. Help us to overcome them all we do believe. Be with our leaders in the pulpit and in the state. Help them to rule and lead in fear of you. Be with them to listen to the Father podcast, Father, please, wherever they are. Comfort them with ease and pain or injury, illness, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. Comfort them.

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Draw close to us who are brokenhearted, Father. And please guide my words here.

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Your son's name we pray. Amen.

Marriage Must Be Honored

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Marriage verse for today, Hebrews 13, 4. Marriage must be honored in every respect with no cheating on the relationship, because God will judge the sexually immoral person and the person who commits adultery. Can you be faithful to your spouse? If you give hours of your time and attention, energy and affection to sports, TV, entertainment, social media, scrolling, phones, children, friends, parents, but you don't fulfill your obligations, your roles and responsibilities to your spouse. Is that not cheating on your spouse? Is that not being disloyal? Just a question, folks.

Romans 6 Read Aloud

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Romans 6, 1 through 23. Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with Him in His death, we will also be raised to life as He was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ, so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin, for when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin, but now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace. Well then, since God's grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not. Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God. Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living. Because of the weakness of your human nature, I'm using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living, so that you will become holy. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You were now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Psalm 16 Refuge And Joy

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Keep me safe, O God, for I have come to you for refuge. I said to the Lord, You are my master, every good thing I have comes from you. The godly people in the land are my true heroes. I take pleasure in them. Troubles multiply for those who chase after other gods. I will not take part in their sacrifices of blood or even speak the names of their gods. Lord, you alone are my inheritance, my cup of blessing. You guard all that is mine. The land you have given me is a pleasant land, what a wonderful inheritance. I will bless the Lord who guides me. Even at night my heart instructs me. I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice, my body rests in safety, for you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.

Plans And God’s Purpose

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Proverbs 19, 20 through 21. Get all the advice and instruction you can so you will be wise the rest of your life. You can make many plans, but the Lord's purpose will prevail. I heard that years ago from my mother. There was a little book, I think it was just simply titled God's Will. There's God's original will, right? There's the way that he would like things to work out if we were really paying attention to him. And then, but he gives us free will, and so we go in and muck it all up. And that's our will being asserted. But at the end of the day, folks, in the long run, God's will is going to get accomplished one way or the other. And we can either be on board with that or we can fight against it. The second one doesn't end very

Meeting Your Spouse’s Daily Needs

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well. Other thing that popped in my head, actually, before when I was getting ready for the podcast, is a conversation I had with a friend of mine that I've had for a long, long time. And we were talking about marriage, and they made the comment that as a spouse, you ought to be as interested in what your spouse is interested in as you are what you're interested in, right? And one of the ways you see that is when you when you look at two spouses and one of them is constantly talking about what they're interested in. But they they never ever talk about, and the talking is the simple part, right? It's the actions that really that's the big part, but the talking is it gives you an indication that the actions definitely aren't there. If the talking is not there, the actions surely aren't. But but those spouses are never interested in focusing on, that's the really that's the best way to say it, but talking about, but focusing on what's important to their spouse. They're willing to talk about what they're interested in all the time, all the live-long day, right? Hours and hours and hours. They'll talk about the same thing over and over and over again. But as soon as their spouse tries to talk about what is interesting to them, they either shut them down or they just shut down themselves. They're just not interested. And it's not just true of stuff outside the marriage, which is also important. You know, you've got some hobby or something you want your spouse to be interested in. That's that's a big deal. But the the really just heartbreaking part is inside of marriage. When you've got a spouse that that really likes one aspect of the marriage and they talk about that all the time, but then the other spouse really needs this other aspect, and it's just completely unimportant. If you really want a healthy marriage, folks, and there's a lot of scriptures that back a lot of things up. I would argue that this falls under a husband's responsibility to love and nourish and cherish. And I would argue that this falls under uh the wife's responsibility uh to eagerly satisfy. But the point is, at the end of the day, your spouse's daily needs, interests ought to be as important to you as your own.

Edward A Carter Jr’s Valor

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Medal of honor for today, Edward Allen Carter Jr. Staff Sergeant, highest rank sergeant, first class, World War II Infantry Company number one, provisional 7th Army, U.S. Army, March 23rd, 1945, near Speyer, Germany. Speyer, yeah. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at his right life at the risk of his life above and beyond the call on duty. Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr. distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 23rd March 1945. At approximately 0.830 hours, 23 March 1945, near Spayer, Germany, the tank upon which Staff Sergeant Carter was riding received bazooka and small arms fire from the vicinity of a large warehouse to its left. Staff Sergeant Carter and his squad took cover behind an intermediate road bank. Staff Sergeant Carter volunteered to lead a three-man patrol to the warehouse where other unit members noticed the original bazooka fire. From here, they were to ascertain the location and strength of the opposing position and advance approximately 150 yards across an open field. Enemy small arms fire covered this field. As the patrol left this covered position, they received intense enemy small arms fire, killing one member of the patrol instantly. This caused Staff Sergeant Carter to order the other two members of the patrol to return to the covered position and cover him with rifle fire while he proceeded alone to carry out the mission. The enemy fire killed one of the two soldiers while they were returning to the covered position and seriously wounded the remaining soldier before he reached the covered position. An enemy machine gun burst wounded Staff Sergeant Carter three times in the left arm as he continued the advance. He continued and received another wound in his left leg that knocked him from his feet. As Staff Sergeant Carter took wound tablets and drank from his canteen, the enemy shot it from his left hand with the bullet going through his hand. Disregarding these wounds, Staff Sergeant Carter continued the advance by crawling until he was within 30 yards of the objective. The enemy fire became so heavy that Staff Sergeant Carter took cover behind a bank and remained there for approximately two hours. Eight enemy riflemen approached Staff Sergeant Carter, apparently to take him prisoner. Staff Sergeant Carter killed six of the enemy soldiers and captured the remaining two. These two enemy soldiers later gave valuable information concerning the number and disposition of enemy troops. Staff Sergeant Carter refused evacuation until he had given full information about what he had observed and learned from the captured enemy soldiers. This information greatly facilitated the advance on Spare. Staff Sergeant Carter's extraordinary heroism was an inspiration to the officers and men of the 7th Army Infantry Company No. 1 Provisional and exemplified the highest traditions of the military service. Credited to Los Angeles County, California, awarded posthumously, presented January 13, 1997 at the White House by President William J. Clinton to his widow. Born May 26, 1916, Los Angeles, died January 30th, 1963, Los Angeles, buried Arlington National Cemetery, MH 59 451, Arlington, Virginia. Location of Metal, National World War II Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana. Edward Allen Carter, Jr.

Franklin Warns A Forgetful Nation

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So over on uh America's Christian Heritage Podcast, we read a couple prayers recently, and I just wanted to read just a little clip from one of them today. We might read from the other one the next day. But this was from June the 28th, 1787. Benjamin Franklin. The Constitutional Convention was collapsing, and he stood up. And it's a great speech. If you get a chance, you can go over to the America's Christian heritage and we read through the whole thing. But I just wanted to read this one paragraph here in the middle. In this situation of this assembly groping, as it were, in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us. How has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I can't tell you how much I believed that that is the mental state of our country for the last several decades, the last 50 to 80 years, growing more and more that direction that we somehow imagine that we don't need God anymore. You want to look at illegal immigration, mass Muslim immigration, abortion, feminism, LGBTQ lifestyles, no fault divorce, the corruption in our courts, every single problem, uh, education, military, law enforcement, right? Every single problem we have goes back to the fact that we have decided that we don't need God anymore, the Father of Jesus Christ. We pretend that other pagan, imposter, false, evil religions are equal to Christianity. We pretend as Christians, somehow, that there are multiple paths to God instead of just through his son Jesus Christ. We pretend that we're a secular nation, that God had, we had nothing to do with God, and he had nothing to do with us at the foundation of this nation. This, and you know, it's interesting, you've got to remember here Franklin was talking to the Constitutional Convention. This was a political body, one of our preeminent founding fathers, while they were working on the Constitution, and he's saying, look, we got to turn back to God. And it's really funny when you when you remember that so many people claim that the Benjamin Franklin was an outright deist. And he's saying, We got to turn to God and Jesus Christ. And and how do you know Jesus Christ? Because there's there's references to scripture and there's other references in his his whole speech here when he's talking about it. Just a great reminder, folks, that we started looking toward God and Jesus Christ, and when we had problems, we looked toward him even more at the beginning. And throughout other parts of our history, like the Civil War. And the other thing here, and then I'll leave you alone for today, is he talks about how many of the founding fathers saw these frequent instances of a superintendent providence. They saw these times when we should have lost, when we should have failed and we didn't. And that's comforting too if we will just turn back to God and Jesus Christ, repent of our sins, humble ourselves before them, seek the guidance of God.

Lord’s Prayer And Final Blessing

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless you all, your families, your marriages, your children, your nation. God bless America. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.