While our office was celebrating Halloween, someone had this decoration laying in the floor. Every time I walked past it I thought, “There I am. That was me.” I finally took a picture of it when the decorations were about to come down so I would remember it.

I’m not big on Halloween but this year it was a reminder that sin enslaves us (John 8:34). I know the feeling of being enslaved to sin by living in habitual sin. The deceiving nature of sin means that we often don’t know we’re bound up in chains. We may think we’re just doing what we want or maybe, in some cases, we may even think we’re doing good. But sin binds us and keeps us away from who we really are.

While I couldn’t recognize the chains of sin that bound me at the time, I recognized the freedom when they were taken off. It’s an amazing feeling to be freed. Once you’ve experienced it, you never want to go back even though temptation will try to entice you back into bondage (Galatians 5:1).

If you have never experienced this moment of great freedom, I hope you do. Things become so absolutely clear. Suddenly, things that never made sense do and things that seemed important, lose all importance. Things that weren’t important are. When God, in his mercy, removes the blinders, and strips the chains off of us, it is a life-altering experience.