The Paid-Off Mortgage

In 2019, a woman in Cleveland named Dana Carter made her final mortgage payment after thirty years. The bank sent confirmation: paid in full, zero balance. She framed the letter and hung it on her kitchen wall. But for months afterward, Dana kept getting calls from a third-party debt collector insisting she still owed $14,000 in back payments. The letters came weekly. The threats escalated. Dana lost sleep. She started wondering if maybe she had missed something, if the bank had made an error, if the freedom she celebrated was somehow incomplete.

It took a lawyer pulling up the records to show Dana what she already had proof of hanging on her wall. The debt was gone. Every penny. The collector had no claim, no authority, no legal ground to stand on. The moment Dana saw that clearly again, the fear lost its grip.

This is the Christ-life Paul describes in Colossians. The Almighty nailed every charge against us to the cross — every debt, every failure, every accusation the enemy whispers at three in the morning. The certificate of indebtedness has been canceled. Not reduced. Not refinanced. Canceled.

Yet how many of us still take the collector's calls? We entertain the guilt, the shame, the hollow philosophies that insist we need something more than Jesus. But the letter is already framed. Christ has already disarmed every power that claims authority over you. The only thing left is to stop answering the phone.