Are you in jail/ prison mentally or physically?

As I sit here at the county jail I watch this young man look out the door of a interview room as he patiently awaits for an officer to come by and take him back to his cell. My thoughts were either this guy is patient, has developed patience or is he silently frustrated and refuses to show it in fear of the repercussions. I can’t help but to wonder as I watch him dance to someone else music waiting for every beat telling him which direction to go in. It’s sad to watch someone look out a glass window staring at the freedom they once use to possess. At least physical freedom.

One can be locked up physically but mentally free and physically free but mentally locked up.

I could only imagine pacing around in a small box like cell imagining what is, what could be, what was, and what’s to come. Echoes of the gates slamming, cell doors locking, people yelling, and predators watching. If you are wise you will do your time, learn from your bad decision and leave, to never return to this place called prison.

When you are in jail/prison you are stripped from head to toe. All your belongings are taken away, one-by-one, as you watch what was once yours be taken away and you wonder will you ever get it back. Jail is short term and prison is long term.

A person in jail/prison does not have to look like someone who sits is in a 4×4, cold, poorly lit cell. It can a 5’7″, long hair, beautiful to the eye, flawless women who can’t seem to let shake a no good man who is dogging her out. It can be a 6’1, tall, dark and handsome guy who convinces himself that the women he loves will come home one day and love him the way he feels like he deserves. It can be a person who feels like they know it all and they can’t learn anything new, refusing to think outside of the box. Jail/prison is the bondage you allow yourself to be in whether it’s physically or mentally. A person mentally locked up can be worst than a person who is physically locked up. If you’re lucky and you recognize you are in some form of bondage it may only feel like being in jail for a short period of time if you choose to make changes and move on. If you being in bondage last a long period of time like being in prison it may feel harder to get out of and may even start to feel normal.

Don’t allow yourself not to be free! Free yourself from bondage of people, lust of the flesh, material things, opinion of others, lack of knowledge, ignorance, loving someone else more than yourself, unforgiveness, self pity, greed, impure thoughts, stinking thinking, fornication, adultery, procrastination, idolatry, fear, doubt, jealousy, enviousness, insecurity, rejection and anything else that will hold you back. Don’t find yourself being stripped from head to toe by allowing any of these things to take control of your life. Don’t be a prisoner within yourself due to fear within yourself or of someone else. If it, whatever it (person, place or thing) is, feels like a weight then you may be in bondage to IT.

If you allow anything to hold you back from being free then you are no better off, in some cases, than an inmate who looks out the glass window wishing to get out from behind bars and be free from jail where life awaits him. Let it go, free yourself, let go and let God!!! Real Talk!!!