Psalm 2:3 “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.”
David wrote these words about people who were complaining about the restrictions God’s Word placed on them. They felt they were lacking the freedom to live the way they had wanted. Freedom to them meant getting as far away from God as possible. In the Life Application Bible it states, “Everybody will serve somebody or something, whether a human king, an organization or even one’s own selfish desires. Just as a fish is not free when it leaves the water and a tree is not free when it leaves the soil, we are not free when we leave the Lord.”
We walked through the door of the women’s prison facility as we waited to get searched. Once we walked through the locked doors, we were no longer free to do whatever we wanted. Our freedom would become limited. We had come to a place where women find themselves doing time for crimes they had committed. Behind these walls we found women who are hurting just like us. They too are grieving the loss of their children. How hard it must be to grieve in a place like this. They are held in a cell that is about 15 feet by 6 feet. This tiny space is big enough to hold two women, so obviously the freedom to grieve alone is not granted to them. So much has been lost in this place but the hardest to deal with has to be the loss of independence. The clanking and slamming of each door they walk through reminds them constantly of life’s everyday choices that they no longer get to make for themselves. I felt like this place had to be a place where hope is hard to come by.
Yet I soon found out after talking with these women that God is alive, and He is found when there is no hope. We often hear of a coming to Jesus moment in these places of incarceration. They have lost everything including their freedom. Yet they seem to have found an inner freedom. Contrary to the fish and the tree leaving their natural environments, these women have found that true freedom comes when we cling to the God who gives them the power to break the chains that hold them captive. These women have faced so much and most still have years of jail time to serve, yet they hold on to the hope of Christ that He still has a plan and purpose for their lives.
I thought of myself as I walked out at the end of the day. I have all the freedom I want yet I hold myself captive in my own prison. I keep myself locked in a 15 by 6 foot mental holding cell that keeps me in chains. I struggle to rid myself of the hurts, guilt and insecurities that keep me in bondage. I don’t need the metal bars and a lock and key to keep me locked up. I do it to myself. God created you and me to be what He wonderfully created us to be. He has forgiven me and you, and He loves us unconditionally. So if you find yourself sharing a prison cell with me, and being held captive, let’s break ourselves out and run into the arms of Him who gives us true freedom to have all He has for us.
Lord, we may never know that Jesus is all we need, until Jesus is all we have. (True words spoken by Corrie ten Boom.)
