Not everyone has been to prison, but everyone has been a prisoner. Paul had been in prison before, and he would be in prison again. But Paul was always a prisoner, whether in a physical jail or not, and everyone on earth is also a prisoner, enslaved whether they know it or not. We are all either prisoners of Christ or prisoners of self, of sin, of Satan. You might not think you are a slave, but you are. We might be freely able to do whatever we please, but that is the point, we are enslaved to our own pleasures. Even our acts of service for others, they may be good deeds, but they are still ultimately self-serving if we don’t do them for the glory of God.
The secret to spiritual power is to become a spiritual prisoner. However, just like we have been saying for all these weeks in our study of Secrets from the Jail Cell, a secret is no use to you unless you learn it; you must experience it and become experienced in it. It is a process where we have to make continual progress, and we may fall back and have to relearn some skills again, just like when we have to retrain ourselves after a stroke or other medical situation. Spiritual power isn’t a part time passion. A prisoner isn’t free to come and go as he pleases, he is under the direction and the protection of the warden. Someone who thinks they can just put one shackle on and leave the other off is just chained to an idol of his own making and is more of a slave to himself than a servant of God. A person who can come in and out of the jail cell isn’t a a prisoner; he is protector, a guard of his own interests. That isn’t the way to spiritual passion, or spiritual power. That is keeping yourself inside your own prison |
