Jail… Webster says it’s a place. A place of confinement. We think of it now as a place of punishment. But it is really a ‘place’?…
I believe there are thousands of people walking around ‘free’ who are in jail cells of bondage. I myself have experienced bondage….locked away in a cell of fear and a works centered salvation.
David wrote as if he were in prison.. “Set me free from my prison, that I may praise Your Name….” (Ps. 142:7) He wasn’t in a jail facility. He was just hiding from Saul. Running and hiding, trying to escape, all of it serving as walls of a prison to David.
I want to be like David, when situations are dangerous and stressful, I want to look to God with praise in my heart and on my lips. It is easy to see the danger, easy to feel the fear, easy to be discouraged….it is easy to hear the accuser’s words filling us with doubt and fear. Our enemy wants to keep us in jailhouses, tied up with fear, ineffective to those around us, and away from the Throne of God in prayer and praise.
I’m thankful for the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. This fellow made a series of poor choices. He lived in and for the moment….chasing a good time. He thought he had found it…for a while at least. Then it all started turned sour. It wasn’t fun anymore, only misery, and there was nobody that wanted his company anymore…he didn’t have anything to offer them now, so they were gone. He’d left all his family behind, choosing a different life instead of a life with them.
I think the accuser was certainly on the job with this young man. ‘Yes…your dad’s a great guy, but you’ve been so bad, he can’t restore you!!…..and what if he said no?…he probably would if you go back and ask him to take you back…’ I feel sure the devil was on duty, filling this young man with guilt and fear.
But the young man knew the character of his father.
God does not mean for us to live in bondage. But I believe there are times when a jail cell is His blessing. That pig sty was a blessing to that prodigal boy. He had chosen the knowledge of good and evil…another apple off the tree so to speak. He chose wrong, acted in rebellion…..yet the knowledge of the character of his father was the means of bringing about restoration.
God’s last word is always a call for repentance and restoration. Even if it takes being locked up.
….or slopping hogs.
