Proclaim liberty to the captives!

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound”  Isaiah 61:1

Last monday half my team had the honor of being welcomed into the local jail in Granada, Nicaragua to preach the Gospel! On our way over we were talking about how it’s easy to get nervous when preparing to go out and preach and how we were hoping the Holy Spirit would move in us and guide us to say whatever He wanted to say. When we arrived, we were greeted and prompted to stand in the entrance way to the jail cells and to shout out into the hall. We began with Gabe praying us in, and then Michael shared a message about relationship with God, and how he wants to be in communion with us. Matthew followed with another message, I then got to share about the beautiful gift of repentance and how it allows us to die to our fleshly desires, and to therefore live in the Spirit of freedom and truth! Gabe shared from Psalm 22 on how the Lord hears our prayers. Needless to say, the Spirit of God was moving and clearly softening the hearts of the inmates. We were able to bring them coffee too, and we got to briefly get to know them as the coffee was being passed out! Praise God because we have the blessing of coming to speak at this jail every Monday for the next month!

Something I want to mention as well is what I was praying while we were there! So because I wasn’t speaking at first I decided to intercede Michael as he spoke, but also over all of the inmates in the jail. I had read in Acts 11 earlier that morning where Peter says, 

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

With this Scripture in mind, I felt led to pray for a repentance to break forth in this jail. That Holy Spirit would come upon all of them to bring them strength to walk in the Spirit and to walk in full pursuit of God! That this jail would become a church for Christ! I kept thinking about the fact that if all of them were to turn from the passions of their flesh and turn to God, that this would be such a safe place to be built up in the Lord. I say this because it’s completely separate from the outside world. There was also one specific cell that was highlighted to me and I felt led to pray that the people in that room would become the spiritual leaders in the jail. When we left the jail and debriefed everything, Michael said that he was praying the same things. That the one cell was highlighted to him as people who would be the spiritual leaders, that this jail would become a church, and that this is a safe place to grow in the Lord. So I’m not exactly sure what the Lord will continue to do there, but I want to invite you in to pray with us!