[The LORD] has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives.

Devotion based on Isaiah 61:1

Jose Pereira [pronounced Pah-RAY-rah] was ready to retire. He had worked in the oil business for 35 years. He was a chief executive. He lived with his wife in a beautiful home in Texas. Shortly before his retirement, he had to attend a corporate meeting in another part of the world. Jose thought nothing of it.

Immediately after the meeting, however, guards appeared. They accused him of all kinds of wrongdoing against their government and placed him under arrest. For the next five years, Jose Pereira was a captive. The conditions were often horrific. He sometimes did not eat for days. There were long stretches of solitary confinement. His physical and emotional health began to break down.

You and I were captives, too. We may not have had Jose’s experience. However, in a very real sense, our captivity was just as serious—even more so. Instead of an underground cell with iron doors and concrete walls, ours was a dungeon of our own making: a spiritual one. So toxic was our rebellion against God that we chose to pile up our sins, brick by brick, to isolate ourselves from the only One who can give us goodness, love, life, and light. And there we sat, captives in our own darkness.

But then came the promised Savior. In our place, Jesus lived a life of perfect good—the life you and I have failed to live. On our behalf, Jesus went to the cross and endured the punishment for our every sin—the punishment you and I have deserved. And now, through faith in what our rescuer has done, we are captive no more. We are free.

Jose Pereira is free, too. Yes, his physical captivity came to an end after five years. But he is free in an even greater way. Through those terrible years, the Holy Spirit refreshed him wth a message he had grown up hearing a long time ago. In his cell, the good news of Jesus set him free from the walls of his own sin. “Now,” he says, “Everything I do is for God.”

Prayer:

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