May 9
Kick Your Captivity
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on the wings of eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” ––Isaiah 40:31
That passage from Isaiah is a picture of trust and elevation in the spiritual life. But, you need guts to go higher—spiritual guts, where you give up trusting self and you start trusting the Lord and rising above the circumstances.
That passage was written to people who had no reason to trust the Lord. The Israelites were in Babylon under the thumb of the Babylonians—conquered and broken and in captivity. The prophet Isaiah turns around and says, “It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life because you can rise in a different dimension in the midst of the stuff that’s going on.” You may think, “That was a couple thousand years ago—how does it relate to me?”
Captivity has different faces. It could be that you are trapped in a terrible financial situation you don’t know how to get out of. Captivity could mean your spouse deserts you for someone else, you lose your job of twenty years, your teenager gets picked up for drugs, when someone you love dies, when the doctor tells you that the cancer in your brain is inoperable, or when you just don’t know what to do. Have you ever had your back to the wall? Felt trapped?
You are not adrift on wild oceans, you are not lost in a trackless desert of needs, you are not abandoned and you’re not in exile. That’s not what’s going on; that’s not what’s happening. It may seem terrifying and overwhelming, but the reality is that from a spiritual vantage point, you can rise above. What’s really going on is that God is up to something and just because he’s not speeding to your rescue doesn’t mean that He’s unloving, disinterested, or incapable.
The world still sits three spots from the sun. It is perfectly tilted, perfectly acclimatized so that your heart can beat and you can breathe oxygen. The same One who reigns over the world reigns over your life. When the walls of whatever “captivity” are closing in, look up. There He is.
Thank you Father for reigning over my life, even when I feel like a captive.