How We Found Freedom
By Gary Keesee
Are you working at the job you have right now because you have to or because you want to?
Are you a slave to your debt?
God wants you to be free.
Don’t stop reading.
I know you may be looking at your financial situation right now and thinking you’ll never be free. I know exactly what that’s like.
You may know my story. For years, I worked hard, but I just couldn’t seem to make enough money to pay my bills, let alone get ahead. When I came up short each month, I would borrow to make ends meet, hoping to be able to pay it back the next month. But after a few years of living like that, I found myself in a financial pit, owing on 10 maxed-out credit cards, three finance company loans, two car payments, back taxes, judgments and liens, and $26,000 to relatives. I was drowning in debt and completely fed up.
And I had a family to provide for! All seven of us were living in a small, broken-down, 1800s farmhouse, complete with weeds growing through the broken windowpanes. Our cars were broken-down, too—with bent frames, rusted out floorboards, and mileage at more than 200,000 on each of them.
I can clearly remember the day I collapsed on my bed completely desperate and crying out to God. Drenda and I were believers, but something obviously wasn’t working. We were faithful to our church, and we loved God, but nothing had changed for NINE YEARS. In fact, things had only gotten worse. I was sick and on antidepressants.
We were at the end of every rope.
That was when God revealed several life-changing things to me: He told me that I had always trusted in debt and the world’s system more than I had trusted in His Word and His Kingdom.
But the conversation didn’t end there.
He said, “Take the time to learn how my Kingdom operates, for most of My Church is in the same situation that you are…I want my people free financially.”
There’s much more to our story, but to keep it brief, after that, we went from financial ruin to being completely debt free over the next two and a half years. We paid cash for cars and for our dream house. Our lives drastically changed.
But I know what financial bondage feels like.
Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”
Debt makes you a slave.
See, you were designed by God to have passion and zeal for whatever you put your hand to, but debt cuts you off. It limits your options. It tells you where you have to work and what you have to do to survive.
Debt keeps you from fully serving God. Debt keeps you from following the path God has for your life. Debt keeps you enslaved.
Debt is one of the greatest deceptions used by Satan to destroy people’s lives.
Lamentations 3:17 says, “I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.”
So many people are under great stress because of debt. Debt steals their peace by demanding more and more of their labor, of their lives. Debt has become a way of life in America, and in the Church.
You’ve got to get out of debt.
Now, that doesn’t mean you need to work harder or longer or more. It doesn’t mean you need to win the lottery or make money and hoard it in order to be able to stop.
There’s another system.
God’s will is for you to be free. He wants you to prosper and have the ability to capture ideas and produce wealth and be about the assignment on your life.
God wants you free. Let Him show you how to go about it.
Listen in Now to Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage and family. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
Gary and Drenda pastor Faith Life Church at The Now Center in New Albany, Ohio and also are the CEOs of Forward Financial Group.
