REALLY FREE

"War's over," the P.O.W.'s were told. "You're free."

Allied guards, expecting euphoria and relief, were shocked by the expressions of dismay. The German prisoners knew on the other side of the barbed wire fence, lay an overrun land--a defeated country--of dirt and rubble; of starvation, deprivation, and danger of degradation for women. Some began begging to be allowed to stay enchained longer!

The above actually happened.

If you've been a prisoner of a nation that's won the war and know you can go home to a peaceful land and waiting loved ones, you might have cause to rejoice. But if your country has lost the war; there may be no house or family left, "emancipation" doesn't look so good. Rather, being a prisoner means daily food, soap, a bed to sleep in every night, and some semblance of dignity.

But those German prisoners weren't allowed to stay at the end of WWII; they had to go back.

INSIDE the Chain Link Fence

There's a small group of us today that DON'T HAVE TO. We've been given new life in the Blood of Christ and can choose to stay captives if we so choose! We can opt to receive daily nutrition; be clothed more beautifully than the lilies of the field; find shelter in His Name; and work out in His harvest field. We DON'T HAVE TO be "free spirits," as some boast, to go back to this dying world, to starve our hearts with spangles and froth that do not satisfy and endanger ourselves with lower standards calling it somehow relevant truth. No one can make us live as we do not want to live.

"If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36)

For Real. Even Captives.