Jail. Have you ever been? I’ve never been to jail before, thank goodness. Actually I’m surprised I haven’t been thinking back to my wild days 🤦🏼♀️
But I will tell you that I have been imprisoned, shackled, chained, and bound by a number of things.
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If you read my last post, “War”, then what happens if you’ve been captured and are now a hostage. Bound by chains, imprisoned….
Let me dive into this, because this is all too familiar territory for me.
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With thoughts as deep and dark as a dungeon, I have felt the lowest of low places at many points in my life. I’ve struggled with depression at times, deep pain and grief. Fear is a huge one. Relationships, anxiety, shame, guilt, you name it, I’ve most likely struggled with it. Trapped in the small confines of my own head, I have paced that cell with no where to go. Words spoken to me by others that have cut so deep, they have been carved into me so that no matter what I do I cannot Escape them. Fear gripping my soul so badly I cannot move for fear I’ll alert the enemy. I have worn the hurt, the hate and the fear, all of the things I’ve done or have had done to me like heavy chains wrapped around me. Holding me down. Too heavy to lift anymore. I’ve tried so many times, some times I made progress but just when one chain broke free there seemed to be 5 more that were tangled beneath it. It has left me so many times feeling hopeless, helpless, and wanting to retreat back to the little corner of that cell.
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the biggest prison of all, was the lie that I could never be free of these things.
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Here’s the thing about God. Even in the depths of a dank prison cell, whether it’s a prison of our minds, a prison of sin or addiction, pain, grief, whatever it may be, He will set you free!
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I think of Joseph, Samson, and Paul! He had purpose for them in their time of physical jail. Quiet reflection, healing, strengthening, rest. And then, they broke free and He used them in powerful ways!
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I’m sure they too felt the loneliness and despair in their cells. Hopelessness at times too. But they knew God’s sovereignty. They relied on hope and faith. They kept chipping away the chains of lies.
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When we stop believing the lies, and start combating it with truth, His truth, memorizing scripture, speaking it over our situations, over our lives, when we begin to lay his words over those chains, the chains begin to soften. His strength renews us, and He will bring us to a point where it is time to break free! The chains will begin to weaken, there will be some resistance, but if we keep pushing past the resistance they will come off, the cell doors will opens and we run out, free! We don’t stop, we don’t pick anything up to take with us, we just go! And we run deeper into His truth and love!
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There is freedom in Him, friends. We were chosen to be free! Not to live bondage and chains of our sins and the lies of the enemy. There is power in the word of God. Speak it, read it, know it, trust it. And allow His words to break those chains. Be free!
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
2 Corinthians 3:17
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1
