Increasing freedom by adding rules?!
Prolong Your Days
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and that you may so revere the Lord your God that you will keep all his statutes and commandments that I am giving you—you, your children, and your grandchildren—all your lives, to prolong your days.
Deuteronomy 6:2 (NET)
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I used to think rules were limiting.
Well, I guess by definition they are, but what I really mean is that they used to feel stifling.
Like the rules were a burden to carry and kept me from true freedom.
The illustration that turned all of this on its head for me was thinking of rules and boundaries like a garden.
In the wild, untamed lands the plants can grow freely. Which looks like freedom but is also filled with chaos.
There is beauty to this chaotic nature, but it pales compared to the beauty of a well-tended garden.
What enhances the garden’s beauty?
The boundaries.
The weeds are removed. Only certain plants can grow in certain places.
There is a great design to how the garden is organized and the good gardener tends to it in order to allow the special plants to flourish to their fullest potential.
The boundaries aren’t limiting the flowers -- they help give them life!
And so it is with the boundaries God places upon us.
His statutes and commandments are designed to give us abundant life and prolong our days.
He is a good God, the great gardener, who tends to us carefully. Planting us, watering us, feeding us, and keeping the weeds from choking out our potential.
I no longer feel limited by God’s rules, I feel free.
— Ricky Ketchum
Copyright © 2026 by Ricky Ketchum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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