Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025
This past weekend Sight and Sound was offering a free viewing of their Daniel play through the app. My family always enjoys their plays. In one of the scenes Daniel was reading the letter sent from the prophet Jeremiah to the captives in Babylon. This is found in Jeremiah 29 in the Bible. Verses 5-7 say this:
5 Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. 7 And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.
This struck a cord in me. Sometimes we think the solution to our captivity is being out of it, but if God is with us can we settle into the idea that this is exactly where we are supposed to be? The more we try to resist what God is doing, the longer we may be stuck there. Sometimes we let our own captivity take us so low that we become unproductive. We mope around spending lots of time and energy asking why and we are missing out on the life God has for us now.
In verses 8 and 9 God specifically reminds the Israelites to not be deceived. Yes, they should settle down and keep increasing, but they also need to seek peace in their captivity and not let the enemy deceive them. When we are in our own places of captivity, it’s more important than ever to use the authority Jesus died to give us to trample the head of our enemy. He thinks our place of captivity is an easy place to keep us bound. And if we spend all of our time in woe-is-me valley then he is right. But if we can recognize, like Jeremiah said, that God is with us and calling us to still walk and talk like Him, then the enemy will have no choice but to flee.
Final Thoughts…
Webster’s 1828 defines captivity as the state of being a prisoner, or of being in the power of an enemy by force; subjection; a state of being under control. If we can live freely in our captivity, is it still captivity? If our enemy has no authority or control over us in our place of captivity what then does that place become? It’s the desert springing forth water, graves growing into gardens and darkness dissolving into the light. Jesus died to give us that kind of authority. Walking in it is a choice no one else can make for us.