Freedom and Light In a Prison I Didn’t Belong
The women stay outside. Women don’t go into the dark, musky, dirty, foul-smelling prison. This is the men’s side, no girls allowed. But on this particular day we were miraculously invited in. I still don’t recall how it happened, we just walked in with authority – probably because we have authority in the Holy Spirit, and He invited us in. So, into the darkness we went.
To the physical eye, there is no light in the prison. Not even a crack of light coming in. Yet, I could feel light shining throughout the halls and cells. I couldn’t explain it to you if I tried, it was just pure peace.
That morning before the prison, by no coincidence, I read John 11. In this time in Jesus’s ministry he decides to go back to Judea. The disciples questioned him – “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, why are you going there again?” Jesus stated something that really stuck with me – “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of the world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.”
Jesus isn’t talking about the physical here. He’s talking about the spiritual. Too often we let the physical determine our spiritual, when really our spiritual should determine our physical.
There was no physical peace in this prison, yet I was overwhelmed with it. There was no freedom for the men stuffed in tiny prison cells, yet God kept speaking “freedom” as I prayed. Where fear should fill, peace illuminated the atmosphere. And so did His light. God is there. We weren’t coming to bring the light, because His light already dwells. We were meeting Him where He’s already at work.
God spoke to me that there were free men here. Though physically in prison, they are free in Christ. Jesus came so that the blind would see. He came to offer ultimate freedom. We can have all of these things in the spiritual, it’s not the physical that determines our spiritual. Just yesterday I met a man blind since birth. “I see the light,” he says. “The Lord is with me and I see Him. He uses me to glorify Him.” Men in prison serve the Lord in the community of their prison cells. Blind men share the Gospel.
It hit me that we too have been blind, imprisoned, in darkness. Maybe physically, maybe spiritually.
As I stood in the prison praying and proclaiming truth in the dark prison hallway, the Lord led me to Matthew 4:16-17 – “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.”
After time of praying and reading scripture in that dark hallway, I began to walk out to meet with the rest of my group. I had to walk past an opening to about 30 prison cells. It was in that moment I was handed a microphone. “You want me to speak?” The man with the microphone said “you have something to say.” Well, he wasn’t wrong. “But I don’t speak Spanish.” He proceeded to hand me the microphone. So I went for it. All of that that God showed me, I got to speak to the men. My doubts told me that none of the men could understand a word I was saying, considering many people here don’t speak English. So once I was finished I handed the microphone back to the man. It was then that I heard a voice from a cell – “let her keep speaking!” Someone understood. A language barrier didn’t separate God from speaking to these men. Here I was a woman in the men’s hallway. The very place I wasn’t allowed. I spoke where I physically didn’t belong. But the Holy Spirit was welcome. And He whose power is in me spoke to those men. 30 cells filled with beautiful men created in God’s image heard what He so eagerly wanted to say to them – that they are offered the upmost freedom in Jesus alone, no matter where they are physically.
Where I physically was, I did not belong. Where they physically are, does not determine their spiritual.
Jesus “came to give light to the world. So those in darkness could see.”
Maybe you’re in a prison cell. Maybe you’re in the peacefulness of your home. Wherever you find yourself right now, freedom is yours. “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of the world.”
No matter where you are or what you’ve done, you were created in His image. And He died for us, even when we were still sinners. Don’t let your physical situation determine your spiritual outlook.
