It happened during the preaching portion of a recent Sunday service in Fort Worth. The sermon was expounding on the account found in Exodus, where the children of Israel had finally been freed after 400 years of captivity in Egypt. During the elder’s final remarks, the Word of the Lord was given to one of our sisters. It was recorded and shared during testimony.

                    O, children. 

                    Why do you return to your captors? 

                    The debt has been paid. 

                    The ransomed made free.

It struck me like a thunderbolt, and I have reflected on these words many times since. 

Why would anyone return to someone or something that has enslaved them? 

In graduate school, I took a course in criminology. It fascinated me to learn that prisoners, once freed, often return to criminal activity for various reasons. One of the most common is that they miss the confines of prison. While they hated prison life, the violence, and the restrictions, there was comfort in the familiar surroundings that it provided them. 

Are we comfortable or content in our enslavement?

Do we choose lives of bondage over lives of bounty?

Let’s look again at the powerful message in the words God gave that day.

• Our Creator, the great I Am, calls us His children. As His children, we inherit the kingdom and all of its glory when we recognize who He is and honor Him by living righteously. 

• What addictions, what distractions, what sins keep us in chains and hold us back from living a life fully realized for the cause of Christ? Why do we return again and again to those things which are unprofitable to our souls and hold us captive?

• Jesus Christ set us free when He died upon that cross. He took our yoke upon Him and released us so that we may have a life of abundant blessings as well as eternal salvation when that life is over. He broke the chains of sin with His sacrifice. He paid our debt. It was bought with a great price by our Savior so that we can truly be free.

Thank God we worship in a church where He still speaks to His people. His mercy and love reminds us that we have been freed, so that we may live…for Him.

This article has undergone ministry review and approval.