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bigmike

DAILY DEVOTION
Entangled
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
Galatians 5:1-3
In June of 2025, a black bear in Michigan was finally set free. As a cub in 2023 he had somehow managed to get a large plastic lid stuck around his head. The Department of Natural Resources attempted to catch him at the time, but were unable to do so. They finally lured him into a live trap and were able to tranquilize him and remove the lid. “It’s pretty incredible that the bear survived and was able to feed itself,” state bear specialist Cody Norton said Wednesday. “The neck was scarred and missing hair, but the bear was in much better condition than we expected it to be.” A few minutes after the procedure was completed, the bear was revived and ran back into the woods, finally free of the encumbering lid that had been a hindrance for most of his life.
When Jesus paid the price for our salvation, He gave us freedom from sin and the law—not so we could do anything we wanted, but so we could triumph over sin that kept us in bondage. Jesus took care of all of that so that we could walk in liberty. “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Colossians 2:14). Yet all too often we stick our heads into a trap of sin and find that we cannot escape on our own. Just as the bear could not get the plastic lid off his head, we are unable to triumph over sin without help. Thankfully God provides that help for us so that we can truly live in Him. “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13).
We must reject every attempt that sin makes to rob us of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ.
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