DAILY DEVOTIONAL – March 10, 2020
“The Great Escape”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You invite us to lay our burdens at Your feet and have promised to give us true and eternal rest in the grace and forgiveness You purchased for us in Your blood. By Your Spirit Lord, help us to forsake ourselves and the comforts of this world, turning to You alone with repentant hearts of faith so that we may receive Your blessing and rest. Amen.
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Devotional – “The Great Escape”
I remember years ago when my wife and I were still in music school in college, we toured with the orchestra across the west coast. One of the first destinations on our trip was San Francisco, CA. If you ever visit San Francisco, you can’t really say your trip or vacation is complete unless you make a stop by the world-famous Alcatraz prison. Located on a giant rock sticking out in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was once considered one of the worst places to be imprisoned and one of the most secure prisons.
While on our stay in San Francisco, the orchestra booked a tour of the now closed Alcatraz Penitentiary. On this tour, you are offered the opportunity to be briefly “locked up” in one of the cells for a brief time while the tour guide took the rest of the group elsewhere. The point was to experience just a taste of what it would be like to be confined in prison. For a few of my fellow orchestra members who elected to be locked up, even just 5 minutes in the cell proved far more than what they wanted to experience.
My trip to Alcatraz came to mind this past weekend when I read an article written by Reuters News about over-stressed workers in South Korea that were seeking refuge by incarcerating themselves.
According to an article by Reuters News:
“For most people, prison is a place to escape from. For South Koreans in need of a break from the demands of everyday life, a day in jail is the escape. “This prison gives me a sense of freedom,” said Park Hye-ri, a 28-year-old office worker who paid $90 to spend 24 hours locked up in a mock prison.
Since 2013, the fabricated prison facility in northeast Hongcheon known as “The Prison in Me” has hosted more than 2,000 inmates, many of them stressed office workers and students seeking relief from South Korea’s demanding work and academic culture.
“I was too busy,” said Park as she sat in a 54-sq-foot cell. “I shouldn’t be here right now, given the work I need to do. But I decided to pause and look back at myself for a better life.”
Prison rules are strict. No talking with other inmates. No mobile phones or clocks.
Clients get a blue prison uniform, a yoga mat, tea set, a pen and notebook. They sleep on the floor. There is a small toilet inside the room, but no mirror.
The menu includes steamed sweet potato and a banana shake for dinner, and rice porridge for breakfast.
A downturn in South Korea’s high-tech, export-driven economy has intensified a hyper-competitive school and work environment that experts say adds to a high incidence of stress and suicide.
Some customers are wary of spending 24 or 48 hours in a prison cell, until they try it.
However according to one of the co-founders, “After a stay in the prison, people say, ‘This is not a prison, the real prison is where we return to.’”
It may seem counterintuitive to want to escape to a prison in order to find freedom and rest, however, though you and I may not literally imprison ourselves our sinful nature certainly does tend to pull us back into the bondage of sin.
When sin is allowed to persist in our life, when we become complacent and turn a blind eye to our sin or the sins of others, or when we live with unrepented sin, we are only imprisoning ourselves and depriving ourselves of the full freedom and rest that Christ died and rose again to give us. The same is true whenever we place ourselves under God’s law by thinking that God’s loving presence or power in our life is proportionate to or dependent upon our obedience to the law of God or the surplus of good works we attempt to accumulate.
As Paul says in verses 3&4, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”
To believe that we are capable of appeasing God with a good enough life, or to believe that God apportions His grace and blessing on a 1:1 basis with our acts of obedience, is to imprison ourselves in an attempt to be free. Scripture says in Romans 5:6, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” And in Galatians 5:1 it says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Friends, this life will wear us down and drive us to despair if we do not make finding rest in the Lord and separating ourselves to Him a priority. Achieving the solace that we long for and need each day to remain spiritually healthy and satisfied begins and ends in a relationship of repentance with the Lord. We repent not out of fear but out of confidence in the promises of God to forgive and provide our hearts, minds and souls with healing and restoration. As God promises in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Any attempt we make to console and comfort ourselves only results in self-imprisonment. We cannot undo what we have done, and we cannot compensate for our weaknesses by doing more. Seeking refuge from the troubles and anxieties of life in the shelter of self-justification or self-improvement only compounds our stress and locks the door to our own cell. The life of freedom, free of regret and full of hope for tomorrow, only comes through faithful, humble repentance before the Lord. Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Bookend each day with prayer and repentance. Receive the freedom and hope Christ died and rose to give us.
God bless you my friends, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
