Unshackled

With a full tank of gas and an unplanned itinerary...my summer intern and I pointed the mini-van Northeast towards Chicago early Saturday morning. With loose plans to visit other urban ministries and attend a Hip Hop church service, we found ourselves touring a rescue mission for the homeless later that afternoon. It was a blessing we could not have planned for, to listen to the life transforming testimonies of faith in Jesus Christ. Pacific Garden Mission is well worth a visit. Visitors are blessed with an opportunity to sit in on a live recording of their radio drama, "Unshackled" which highlights stories of transformed lives and is aired around the world.

Living proof was our tour guide, a refugee from Africa who was living on the streets of New York when he heard an Unshackled airing. He immediately called Pacific Garden Mission as advertised at the end of the program and made his way to Chicago to join their resident Bible program. To see him in his shirt and tie, professionally leading the tour, professing the name of Christ, it is hard to imagine him ever living on the streets. He was so clearly free, unshackled from the bondages of his past.

Through the Beth Moore series, "When Godly People do Ungodly Things" I've been forced to examine a few bondages from my own past. For the first time I realized that I built my faith on top of my hurt and insecurities vs. allowing God to heal me from them. After coming to faith, I immediately went out to help the hurting vs. allowing my own hurts to be healed. Unfortunately Satan uses these hurts and insecurities to stifle our potential. I loved Beth's image of our ticket to freedom when she stated "Chain yourself to the wrist of Christ and start taking your first steps out of the darkness. Don't worry about the future right now. Just offer Him your wrist and tell Him to drag you home."

I imagined being shackled in a dark prison cell and fighting and tearing day and night to be freed from my bondage. After weeks, months, or years I realize the light in the hallway which has been my only saving grace through the darkness has been Christ all along...and now that I recognize Him...all I must do is invite him in...into my cell...into my mess...into my bondage...and my shackles immediately fall away. Now standing in the middle of the cell together...do I run for the door to escape? Or do I chain myself to the wrist of Christ and allow Him to lead me home?

As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.
Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope;
even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.
Zechariah 9:11-12