LOOKING FOR THAT GET OUT OF JAIL CARD

Monopoly is quite the board game.  The power struggles to buy, sell, manage, and control are found in the intrigue of the business plots.  That is until our little icon receives instruction to go directly to jail.  Our whole functionality is then limited to lock-down.

All we can do is wait to get out of jail.

This is what people do in real life.  We move through our days accumulating, dispensing, interacting, and plotting our way toward success.  Strategic approaches captivate our days.  Imagination roams the streets of possibility.  Until...until we are put in jail.

I don't speak of a literal cell block.  No, your attention should be drawn those other kinds of jails; the invisible ones we create which has just a much power as the real ones. Those that shut us down because we have volunteered to be arrested even out in broad daylight by our own pessimism are just as cold and just as gloomy.

Receiving negative words seem to toss us into the clink.  Revelation of bad health might affect us as if we are to go directly to jail and not to come out.  Even dark self-talk about how stupid we are, or how abused we are, or how many times we have drawn the short straw, or how lonely, or how neglected we are has a stark and arresting nature.

We must guard against living in self-imposed penitentiaries that have only the walls of our minds as reinforcement.

Philippians 4:4-9 is written by a man sitting in a jail cell.  Paul's words are far from pooh-poohing his day.  Rather, they are inspiring, invigorating, and actually productive.  Anyone can find new life by flipping the switch of our own mind-talk.

Each carries a GET OUT OF JAIL CARD.  It is that one that gives us immediate passage as soon as we reprogram our thinking.  We are not only permitted to be happy and free, we are called to live so.

Everyone has access to this marvelous truth.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, is stronger than a faith that will change our whole world because it reverses adverse course.  It is true.  Abide by it.  No one is exempt.

All have the ability to get out of jail...wherever your incarceration...because due to faithful thinking the doors to our assumed restraint just flew open.