Two Freedoms, One Source, 250 Years of Grace

​Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of men signed their names to a document that changed the world. They were not perfect men. The nation they were founding was not a perfect nation. But they were men who understood something about the nature of human dignity and the cost of genuine freedom that had been largely forgotten by the governments of their age. And they were willing to stake everything, their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, on the proposition that freedom was not a gift from a king. It was a right endowed by a Creator.

That word matters. Creator. They did not write that freedom comes from government or from the consent of the powerful. They wrote that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Two hundred and fifty years later, on the anniversary of that declaration, it is worth pausing to ask whether we understand what we have been given and whether we understand the deeper freedom that makes national freedom meaningful in the first place.

The Greek Word That Defines True Freedom

The New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek language gave the early church a word for freedom that carried far more weight than a political category. That word is ἐλευθερία, transliterated eleutheria and pronounced el-yoo-theh-REE-ah. It means freedom, liberty, the state of being unbound. But in the New Testament context it describes something the Declaration of Independence could gesture toward but never fully deliver.

John chapter eight verse thirty six in the LSB says: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” The word translated free there is the verb form of eleutheria. It is a freedom that is not granted by a government, not protected by a constitution, and not revocable by any earthly power. It is freedom from sin, from shame, from the weight of a moral debt that no human system of law can cancel. It is eleutheria granted by Christ and secured by His resurrection.

The founding fathers understood that political freedom was worth dying for. And they were right. But political freedom, as remarkable as it is, addresses only the outer circumstances of a person’s life. It can remove a tyrant. It cannot remove guilt. It can guarantee the right to pursue happiness. It cannot provide it. It can protect your liberty. It cannot liberate your soul.

Only Christ can do that. And that is the eleutheria that makes everything else worth having.

What Two Hundred and Fifty Years Looks Like

Two hundred and fifty years is a long time for a nation to endure. Most of the great empires of history did not last that long. The American experiment has survived a civil war, two world wars, a great depression, generational upheaval, and a level of internal disagreement that would have fractured less resilient foundations. It has not survived because it was perfect. It has survived, imperfectly and often painfully, because the foundation it was built on pointed toward something true even when the people building on it fell short of it.

The acknowledgment of a Creator. The understanding that rights come from above rather than from below. The insistence that human dignity is not assigned by the state but recognized by it. These are not just political ideas. They are theological ones. And the degree to which this nation has thrived is inseparable from the degree to which it has honored those foundations, and the degree to which it has suffered is often traceable to the degree to which it has abandoned them.

This is not a political argument. It is a historical and theological observation. Nations that acknowledge God do not automatically become righteous. But nations that forget God lose the very foundation that made their freedom meaningful in the first place. Two hundred and fifty years of grace is exactly that. Grace. Undeserved. Unearned. Given by a God who is patient with nations the same way He is patient with people.

Two Freedoms, One Source

Here is what I want you to hold in tension on this Fourth of July.

The freedom you celebrate today, the freedom to speak, to worship, to build, to dissent, to pursue the life you believe you were made for, is a remarkable and fragile gift. It was purchased with blood. It has been maintained through sacrifice. It is not guaranteed to last, and it should never be taken for granted.

And it is not the freedom that matters most.

The eleutheria that Jesus offers in John 8:36 is the freedom that makes national freedom meaningful. A person can live in the freest nation on earth and still be enslaved, to shame, to addiction, to fear, to the crushing weight of guilt that no law can lift and no right can address. And a person can live under the most oppressive government imaginable and still walk in the freedom that Christ provides, the freedom that no earthly power has ever been able to confiscate.

The early Christians understood this. They lived under Roman occupation. They had no political rights, no constitutional protections, no democratic processes to appeal to. And they turned the world upside down because they possessed an eleutheria that Caesar could not touch.

That is the freedom worth celebrating most on this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Not instead of national freedom. Alongside it. Beneath it. As the foundation that gives it meaning.

The Hive and the Free

A beehive is one of the most structured organizations in nature. Every bee has a role. Every function serves the whole. There is order, purpose, and remarkable coordination. But within that structure, the individual bee is free to fly. Free to range across miles of terrain in pursuit of what the hive needs. Free to navigate, to choose, to respond to what it finds.

Freedom and structure are not opposites. The founding fathers understood this. The Christian faith understands this. True freedom is not the absence of all constraint. It is the presence of the right foundation. A bee without a hive is not free. It is lost. A person without the foundation of their Creator is not liberated. They are adrift.

Eleutheria in Christ is not lawlessness. It is the freedom to become what you were made to be, unencumbered by guilt, unshackled from shame, no longer defined by your worst moments or your deepest failures. It is the freedom to live as a beloved child of God in a nation that was founded on the acknowledgment of His existence and the dignity He grants.

That is something worth celebrating. That is something worth protecting. That is something worth passing on.

Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Gratitude

On this anniversary I want to say plainly that I am grateful. Grateful for the men and women who have bled for this nation’s freedom across two and a half centuries. Grateful for the imperfect but remarkable experiment that has given generations of people the ability to worship freely, speak freely, and build freely. Grateful for a country that at its best has pointed toward the Creator who endows the rights it was founded to protect.

And I am grateful for the eleutheria that no government gave me and no government can take. The freedom purchased not by patriots but by a Savior. The freedom secured not by a constitution but by a resurrection. The freedom that was available to the slave and the founding father alike, because it was never contingent on the earthly circumstances of the one who received it.

Two freedoms. One source. Two hundred and fifty years of grace.

Happy Fourth of July. And if you do not yet know the deeper freedom, the one that makes this day and every day worth living, I hope you will look into it. It is the best thing this or any nation has ever had access to, and it is available to anyone who asks.

So bee grateful for the freedom you have inherited and never take lightly what was purchased with someone else’s sacrifice, bee someone who points others toward the eleutheria that no earthly power can grant or remove, and bee a citizen of this nation and of God’s kingdom who understands that the second citizenship is the one that lasts.

The Words You Speak Over Your Children Will Outlive You

Before our kids could read, they already knew who they were.

Not because they figured it out on their own. Not because the world told them. Because we told them. Every single night, before they closed their eyes, we spoke words over them that were designed to get inside them and stay there. We called it their affirmation. And we said it so consistently, so repeatedly, so deliberately, that eventually they did not need us to say it anymore. They had it. It was theirs.

The affirmation had lines like these. I can do all things through God who strengthens me. I am a beautiful girl, a handsome boy, made in the image of God. My parents love me very much. It is none of my business what others say behind my back.

Simple lines. True lines. Lines built to do battle against every lie the world was going to try to speak over them as they grew.

And when they spent the night at a friend’s house, we sent a copy with them. We made sure the family hosting them knew to say it. Because the affirmation did not take a night off. It was not contingent on whether they were in their own bed. The words followed them because the words were supposed to become them.

Our oldest is twenty nine years old now. She is stepping into a new chapter of her life, a new venture, something that requires courage and confidence and a settled sense of who she is. And she is writing her own affirmation for it. She took what we started when she was too small to read and she is carrying it forward into the hardest and most exciting season of her adult life.

That is not a parenting win. That is a testimony to what words can do when they are spoken with intention, with consistency, and with love.

The Hebrew Word That Carries the Weight

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and Hebrew is a language that understands something about words that modern English tends to flatten. In Hebrew, a word is not just a sound or a symbol. It is a force. It carries weight. It does something.

The Hebrew word for word or matter or thing is דָּבָר, transliterated dabar and pronounced dah-VAHR. But dabar is more than our English word word. In Hebrew thought, a dabar is a living thing. It is spoken and it goes out and it does what it was sent to do. When God speaks in the Old Testament, He speaks dabar, and things happen. Creation responds. Situations change. People are shaped.

Proverbs chapter eighteen verse twenty one in the LSB says: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” The tongue produces dabar. And dabar produces outcomes. Death or life. Decay or growth. Shame or dignity. The words spoken over a child do not evaporate into the air. They go somewhere. They settle. They take root. And eventually they bear fruit, for better or for worse.

This is not metaphor. This is the consistent testimony of Scripture and of human experience. The words spoken over us in our most formative years shape the voice we hear in our own heads for the rest of our lives. The child who is told they are capable, loved, made in the image of God, and equipped for whatever comes, grows up with a different internal soundtrack than the child who was told the opposite.

You are choosing the soundtrack. Every day. With every dabar you speak or withhold.

What Philippians Adds to the Picture

The New Testament does not contradict the Old Testament on this. It confirms it and extends it. Philippians chapter four verse eight in the LSB says: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

The Greek word translated dwell is λογίζομαι, transliterated logizomai and pronounced loh-GID-zoh-my. It means to think on, to consider carefully, to let something occupy your mind. Paul is not just giving a list of nice things to think about. He is describing a practice of intentional mental occupation. You choose what takes up residence in your mind. And what takes up residence shapes how you see yourself, how you see others, and how you move through the world.

When we built affirmations for our kids that included lines from Scripture alongside declarations of love and identity, we were doing exactly what Paul describes. We were giving them true things, honorable things, lovely things, and asking them to dwell on them. Repeatedly. Until the dwelling became automatic. Until the truth became the default voice rather than the exception.

That is not a self-help technique. That is a biblical principle dressed in the practical language of parenting.

The Hive Speaks Life

In a beehive, communication is everything. Bees communicate through movement, through chemistry, through patterns that tell the rest of the hive where to go, what to avoid, and what is worth pursuing. When a scout bee returns with good news about a field of flowers, the entire hive responds. The communication of one bee changes the direction of thousands.

Words work the same way in a family. In a team. In a church. The consistent dabar spoken into a space sets the direction for everyone in it. A home where words of life are spoken consistently produces people who know how to speak life. A home where criticism and shame are the primary vocabulary produces people who struggle to believe they are worth anything more.

You are not just speaking to the moment. You are speaking to the future. Every word you speak over your child tonight is being filed somewhere, being added to the accumulating record of who they are and what they are worth. Make sure what you are filing is worth keeping.

It Is Not Too Late to Start

Some of the fathers and mothers reading this did not grow up in homes where words of life were spoken. Some of you are raising children right now and realizing that the words you have been speaking have not always been building them up. Some of you have adult children and you are wondering whether the window has closed.

It has not closed.

Dabar does not have an expiration date. The words you speak today go to work today. It is not too late to look your child in the eye, whatever age they are, and tell them who they are. It is not too late to build an affirmation. It is not too late to make I love you a daily practice rather than an occasional expression. It is not too late to create a new soundtrack.

Our oldest is twenty nine and she is writing her own affirmation because the practice her parents started when she was too young to read became something she understood was worth continuing. You do not know what will take root until it does. But you have to plant it. Consistently. With intention. Over time.

Start tonight.

Practical Steps Worth Taking

If you want to build an affirmation for your child, start with truth. Pull lines directly from Scripture. I can do all things through God who strengthens me, from Philippians 4:13. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, from Psalm 139:14. Ground their identity in what God says about them before you add anything else.

Then add the relational truths. My parents love me very much. I am wanted. I belong. These are not empty affirmations. They are declarations of what is actually true, spoken with enough consistency that they become part of the architecture of how your child understands themselves.

Then add the protective truths. The ones designed to guard them against what the world will eventually say. It is none of my business what others say behind my back is a line that has saved many a child from the corrosive spiral of worrying about what others think. Speak it early. Speak it often. Let it get there before the cruelty of adolescence does.

Say it every night. Send it with them when they leave. Make it non-negotiable. And do not stop just because they have it memorized. The memorization is the beginning, not the end. You want them to have it so deep that it surfaces automatically when they need it most, in the moment of self-doubt, in the face of rejection, in the quiet of a hard night when no one else is speaking into the room.

That is dabar with intention. That is the tongue choosing life. That is the most important investment you will ever make in another human being.

So bee intentional about the words you speak over the people you love because dabar goes somewhere and does something long after the moment has passed, bee consistent enough that the truth you speak becomes the voice they hear in their own heads, and bee someone who chooses life with their tongue every single day because death and life are in the power of the tongue and you get to decide which one you are planting.