Jail Cell

John 8:34-36 (NIV)
Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Upon taking a quick glance at Christianity, you hear some of the rules and some the ways Jesus asks us to live and you can almost picture Jesus standing at the door of a jail cell wanting you to go in and be locked up. “Thou shall” and “Thou shall not” can seem like a death sentence to any fun you may ever possibly want to have. But that is simply not the truth. As a matter of fact, it’s radically not the truth. Living the life of a Christian is more freeing than you could ever imagine.

It’s easy to just look at the Christian faith as a bunch of rules meant to suck all the fun out of our lives. As a matter of fact, some Christians treat Christianity this way too. This is not what God wants. Yes, there is a moral code God has given us and expects us to live by, but these aren’t just rules that God made up because He’s mean and wants to take all the fun out of life. God loves us. As a matter of fact I want you to personalize this: God loves you. Say that out loud “God loves me”. He does love you deeply. He wants the best for you, not only in the afterlife, but in this life as well.

The things God tells us to do and the way He wants us to live is for a reason. That reason is that God wants the best for us and He can’t give us the best when we aren’t around. We have an enemy who is actively trying to hurt us at every turn. Satan will take any weakness you have and use it to his advantage. Through God’s word, prayer and His people, Jesus will free us from every weakness we have if we will allow Him in.

I used to think of Jesus just being a jailer, trying to make me do His bidding. But when I started walking closer and closer to Him and that jail cell door, I started to understand that He really does have my best interests at heart. He has your best interest at heart in everything He says and does. When you finally close your eyes and take that last step through that jail cell door to stand beside Him, He smiles greatly and says “welcome to freedom, my friend”. Then as you look back you will realize that Jesus wasn’t trying to lead you in to a jail cell, He was trying to get you to come out of one. Walking beside Jesus is not a jail term; it’s a death row pardon. Keep walking with Jesus, the view just keeps getting better and better the further away from the prison you get.