Set Free, its a place that is difficult to describe, though I’ve often tried. It is certainly something that has effected my life, saved my life on at least one occasion certainly. This place has irrevocably become part
of my life, and as an extension, the lives of my family. That I think is really where I begin to understand the meaning of coming to Set Free’s Ranch, and learning how to be a disciple of my Lord, of Jesus Christ. At the center of everything that goes on here is Christ, which stands to reason for it being God’s Ranch, but at the core of that there lays a single hope in most every heart that comes through these gates; a hope for change.
I spent much of my life progressing from one point to another, growing in my own way (and certainly in my own mind) into the man that at one point stood looking back on everything that had comprised /his journey and finding cause to regret, to sorrow or to long for something more. It was easy at that point to find something to blame, some cancerous malevolence that had eaten away at the sanctity of my dreams of a bright and shinning future, a bright and shinning me. For me I called this demon alcohol, it had consumed my health, broken my family and shattered my honor, but in truth it was just a symptom of the emptiness inside, the
willful sundering of my self from my God.
None the less, I set out to change this (there’s that word again: change) and that is what led to Set Free. So when I look now on the question of “what is Set Free?” this is where I begin to try to explain. Here is a place where change is palpable, where we can see the Lord’s hand at work daily in the lives of so many
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. What is perhaps the most remarkable part for me personally is that the most important person in my life, my daughter Anabelle, says she’s seen a tangible change in me, which quite frankly, is a miracle in and of itself.
So what would you do if you had the opportunity to affect nothing short of a monumental change, if you could be part of the work of the Lord upon the heart and life of a brother or sister in the Lord? I am amazed, that here on the dirt, here is the most remarkable and dynamic environment I could ever imagine, that here we get to witness, participate and rejoice in the mending of a broken spirit. That even if only a single man or woman was forever changed by the hand, and embrace of the Lord then this would be a miraculous place – but its consistently been so much more than a single man, or single woman, brothers and sisters. Here, and honestly here alone, I have found healing, family, understanding, hope and most importantly
– I found my way back to my God. Thank you Set Free.
-Nicholas Sweem September 2017