Heart Tracks - The Lord's Prisoner

      Brother Yun, known as "the Heavenly Man," is a follower of Christ and has one of the most powerful testimonies of the life of Christ working within Him.  Having suffered for years in various prisons in China simply because he would not renounce His Lord, he eventually was freed and embarked upon a wider ministry outside of China.  During this time, he noted how he increasingly became wrapped up in the work of the Lord rather than the Lord Himself.  His heart had grown cold.  One day, while at an airport in Thailand, he was detained by customs, as they found problems with his passport.  He was arrested and once more, found himself imprisoned, and he would be in that "place" for 2 long years.  In relating the story, he said that as His life and heart had drifted from His Lord, the Fathers response was to "give him a holiday in prison."  A holiday.  Does that sound like madness?  Most certainly it does to our flesh, but beyond the cell, Yun saw what His Father was doing in his heart, a heart that had wandered from Him, and what He meant to do through his time in prison.  Equip and make him a man who could bear even more fruit for His God and His Kingdom.  For most of us, our response to such a condition would be to cry out for release, Yun's was to cry out to God, not for His release, but for His Fathers purpose in all of it to be made full.  He didn't see himself as a prisoner of the Thais, but of Christ.  In that, he found a common place with the heart of the apostle Paul.

     Twice, in Ephesians 3:1 and 4:1, Paul referred to himself as "the prisoner of Christ."  He said that it was for his testimony of His Lord that he was there, but he never saw himself as a prisoner of Caesar and of Rome, but of Christ, and because he was a prisoner of Christ, he knew that he was free from being a prisoner to anything or anyone else.  He lived so deeply in Him that his reality was always Christ.  The cell and the bars may have been real, but Christ was more real.  He didn't see himself as a victim, but a victor.  He knew that if the Lord had allowed him to come to this place, that He had a purpose in it, and so he didn't bemoan his circumstances or seek to enlist a prayer movement to get him out of that cell, but instead sought His God and His will and purpose for him in that place.  We see the beauty of that purpose in Ephesians and in the other letters known as the prison epistles.  Out of the seeming ashes of his prison cell came a beauty that continues to speak to and enrich lives and the life of the church 2000 years later.
     I've a friend that wonders if Paul could ever have written the rich, Holy Spirit filled words outside of that prison cell?  There is no doubt that his flesh suffered in that cell, but his spirit soared with Christ.  The result was an encounter with Him that he couldn't have had outside of it.  Yun called his experience a holiday.  The root meaning of holiday is holy day.  Could you and I dare to believe that our present circumstances, which may be hard, seemingly impossible to us, can be used by Him, indeed are purposed by Him, to be for us, and those we are to impact, holy days. Days of bringing forth fruit for the Kingdom?  Could we dare to believe and see ourselves as not being prisoner to our circumstances and conditions, or the opinions and esteem of others, but of Him, and Him alone?  Could we dare to have the courage to be "prisoners of Christ?"
What fruit will come forth from our lives if we are?  What will be the result of our own holiday in prison if we see ourselves not as prisoners of what is happening around us, and truly live in chains, but instead the prisoner of He who lives and reigns within us, and so, free of all chains? Can we embrace our holiday, our holy day in Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O