“Resentment was something I’d held onto so deeply, not realizing it was hurting me more than the people I resented. It was controlling my day-to-day actions.”

Carmen speaks clearly from a church stage, backed by a semi-circle of strangers who had become family in the past 20 weeks. Not long before, everything about this scene would have seemed impossible.

Broken relationships and feelings of animosity had driven Carmen to seek change. She invested thousands of dollars on years of therapy to make sense of her anguish. Nothing seemed to work. The year prior, she’d received a shocking medical diagnosis: thyroid cancer. The ensuing whirlwind of existential questions led her to explore faith through Alpha,¹ and it was here she encountered the Christian God in a profound way for the first time.

Upon waking from thyroid surgery, she received three devastating words: “paralyzed vocal chord.” For months she was unable to speak louder than a whisper. Yet as her newfound faith deepened, it dawned on her that physical healing wasn’t the only type of healing she needed.

She felt weighed down. Persistent questions cycled her mind. Why am I so bitter and angry? Why do certain things trigger me so much? Desperate for breakthrough, she signed up for a 12-step program for heart-healing offered at a nearby church, called Freedom Session.

“Resentment was something I’d held onto so deeply, not realizing it was hurting me more than the people I resented. It was controlling my day-to-day actions.”The Freedom Session course attracts people for a wide range of reasons. Some attend to cure a lifelong addiction, others to grow in self-awareness. They might seek reprieve from low self-worth, anxiety, disordered eating, an addiction to pornography, chronic people-pleasing, or the pain of fractured relationships.

Like so many others, whether seasoned Christian or faith explorer, despite Carmen’s resolve to walk in the light, her path was repetitively shrouded in a sense of darkness. Freedom Session’s mission drew her: equipping individuals to apply the gospel to the stuck or hidden parts of their lives.

From week one, the content dove deep and requested vulnerability. Participants were asked: What is the greatest challenge, fear, or pain in your life right now? For some, the answer rose quickly to the surface. For others, it was buried beneath layers of hurt or shame which they’d resolved, perhaps subconsciously, to never examine.

Founder and pastor Ken Dyck designed Freedom Session from the conviction that followers of Jesus are meant to follow him out of deep hurt and shame.² True salvation is not just the promise of wholeness in eternity, but the experience of wholeness now. 

Carmen rushed home to greet her spouse after her first evening at Freedom Session: “I just learned more in one night than all my therapy sessions combined!” 

Her bold claim was not unprecedented among Freedom Session attendees. With the caveat for those with traumatic memories to first consult a professional, Freedom Session has helped thousands of Christians experience freedom from mental, emotional, and spiritual bondage. Their transformation is consistently contingent on three core elements: belief, confession, and forgiveness.

Freedom Session’s approach to belief is reminiscent of a theologically-grounded cognitive behavioural therapy. Rather than identifying cognitive distortions like catastrophizing or negative filtering, it points its participants to Scripture-focused rationality. Many who subscribe to the Christian faith know theoretically that they are loved by God and that they have access to hope, but they have no framework for connecting that knowledge to their sense of self or well-being. Knowing the facts of the gospel can only take someone so far. Tangibly applying God’s truth to daily thoughts and decisions effects change. 

Identifying one’s beliefs is foundational. Painful memories and hurtful words can plant lies in a person’s mind; when these lies take root, they skew self-perception. I was rejected, therefore I am unloveable. I acted shamefully, therefore I am no good. 

The lies people instinctively rehearse may inhibit them from believing they were created with divine love and intention. They must deconstruct unbiblical notions of God’s character and rebuild a mental picture of God as a caring Father who knit their DNA with purpose and affection, in his own image.

Unbiblical beliefs may also prevent disciples from embracing the reality of their spiritual re-creation. When believers fail to intellectually and emotionally don their identity in Christ and to seek validation from Christ alone, they find illegitimate ways to cope with the inevitable dissatisfaction of self-distortion. Their “drugs of choice” might manifest as over-working or over-eating; dealing with problems through scrolling or shopping; lashing out at others, manipulating others, withdrawing from others. 

Disrupting these cycles of disconnection from one’s divinely-secured identity requires the total surrender of each lie to Jesus’s leadership. Followers of Jesus must choose to believe every truth about themselves, even the truths that are beautiful.

“I’m not gonna lie, Freedom Session is a lot of work,” Carmen reflects. “But you get out what you put into it. There were weeks when I wanted to drop out, but I had to remind myself why I’d decided to commit five months of my life to face the pain and emotions I had buried down.”

As time went on, Carmen started to notice parallels between her physical and inner healing processes. In both cases, she struggled with a strong desire to control the narrative. She had lost her physical voice, and now, in some ways, she had to relinquish her inner voice, with its accusatory tone, in order to become attuned to a heavenly one.

“I had lost my voice physically and spiritually, but now I can say God has given me my voice and then some.”Freedom Session’s emphasis on relational vulnerability amongst participants introduced them to the concept of confession. Each participant connected with a Sponsor to provide support through the process of disentangling and rebuilding. Through confession to their Sponsor, participants incarnationally experienced the love and acceptance of Christ. Deep healing occurred as memories, laden with years of heavy shame, were brought to the light. 

Learning to hear and cherish God’s affirming voice marked a significant change for Carmen. She began to let this voice shape her thoughts, and took another step toward wholeness. 

The next hurdle was the gift and task of forgiveness. Holistic freedom wouldn't be possible without forgiveness: the choice, regardless of accompanying emotions, to accept the consequences of an evil, to unfairly relinquish it, and to refrain from calling it to memory. The Freedom Session content emphasized how this process becomes viable after an encounter with God’s costly, extravagant forgiveness. Participants were then challenged to forgive themselves, and then those who had wronged them. Effective forgiveness hinged on specificity. By precisely naming wounds and offences, participants found freedom from the burden of each one, entrusting each to God.

Finding strength to release resentment, which had once seemed to control her life, changed everything for Carmen. “I feel a lot lighter. There’s no longer a huge anchor holding me down from moving forward.” 

The final Freedom Session night returned to the deep-seated lies participants had been wearing as labels. Unloved. No Good. Victim. Failure. In a symbolic act of faith, the members were invited to physically nail representations of these labels to a wooden cross at the front of the room. A facilitator painted over their words in red to illustrate Jesus’s blood covering every lie, and then prayerfully declared a new name over them. Forgiven. Redeemed. Accepted. Loved. Jesus’s blood always speaks a better word. 

Resentment had strong-armed Carmen, but relief wasn’t found in attempting to master her emotions. It was found in submitting to a greater Master. Salvation looked like discovering his voice and then allowing it to resurrect her own. She laid down her right to pick and choose the truths that felt right in the moment, and fully embraced the whole person of the Spirit of Truth.

“I had lost my voice physically and spiritually, but now I can say God has given me my voice and then some.” Carmen’s voice, once no louder than a whisper, now resonates with confidence from stage. “I am made in God's image and I am enough. No matter what others say, God loves me and I am his daughter.”

This was the recipe for her freedom. Through the gospel, God bestows an eternally-founded sense of self, experienced through honesty, community, and compassionate forgiveness. The salvation offered through Christ is a flashlight believers get to point toward every area of life, especially the darkest corners. Keeping shame hidden gives the illusion of control, while full surrender leads to true abundance. 

For every soul struggling in the dark: God’s deliverance is not just coming on the clouds. As belief is applied, even in slow progression, his chain-breaking rescue begins here and now.