Walls, chains, bars, and doors lock behind me as the guard walks away with the key to my freedom.  This cold, dreary, isolated, dark place that I speak of is prison. Prison is defined as a state of confinement or captivity, jail, a place where people who have been convicted are sentence or awaiting trial. 

This place of confinement is where Satan has many of us today bound in captivity.  I remember from the age of three and all during my school years that I was sentenced to a conviction of fear.  Satan was the guard who walked away with the key as I look through the bars of anxiety.  I was being held captive without even physically being placed in a prison.

The cell which contained me was my past of being told by some one that I would never amount to anything and I was not smart enough.  The words had been spoken into my spirit and the seed was planted just like Satan intended.  I dread going to school because I felt different from my classmates.  I would know the answer to the questions that my teacher would ask but I was afraid of being called a nerd and picked on by classmates.

Though I had an usually way of expressing myself, my soul felt locked down and confine not to explore the depths of being free.  Yes, Satan had sentenced me and walked away with the key. When all the teenagers my age were planning to go drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and party I simply wanted to learn more about God, read, and write poems and stories but I did not pursue the things of my heart because I was in prison.  The seed that Satan had planted began to take root Fear of not being liked by the popular girls, fear of being called a freak.  Yes, Satan had confined me to prison.

Satan plan was for me was to serve a life sentence but one day at the age of eighteen when I attended a revival at a small church in the country I met the man who held the key to unlock my prison door.  His name was Jesus.  As I sat in the back of the church something drew me to the altar as the preacher called people to come down for prayer.  For the first time I did not fear what others would say about me.  I did not fear being unique because I wanted to be free. 

After I got up off my knees and face I was no longer bound and my soul was release out of prison.  As I walked away from the altar I felt a sense of freedom that I never knew exist, a freedom to become who I was ordained to be before I was conceived in my mother’s belly.  I realized that I no longer had to be shackled by the grips of Satan tactics and lies.  I was free to be an individual and not a prisoner!   I was free to see the potential that God had placed in me and I was now able to move freely towards reaching my full potential.

You may have never spent time in a physical prison but you are still imprisoned.  Satan has held you captive and sentenced you to a life time of fear, unforgiveness, shame, low-self esteem, and brokenness but don’t despair because Jesus is standing with the key to unlock your prison door that your soul may be free.   Satan will no longer deprive you of a bountiful life.  You do not have to wait for the guard to come and release you because Jesus is standing with the key now.  He wants to heal you emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21) and the tongue of others will keep us in prison because we will not move forward from our past.  No matter what my past and yours consisted of Jesus has the key to unlock the door.  I encourage you to walk out the prison door and be release from your past so you may embrace your destiny just as I have.