2.12- Enjoy your release. Release others.

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2.12
Have you ever experienced being released from jail?

During the summer of 1966 I sold Bibles in Louisiana.  I had many unusual experiences, but one is a bit embarrassing.  I was told by my company not to get a sales license.  I was taken into jail for a few hours before a local Christian businessman vouched for me.  I still remember that feeling of being scared in jail.  There were only two guys in there.  One said he was there for failure to give his wife a support check.  The other claimed to be in for murder.  They both asked me what I was in for.  I said. "Selling Bibles."  They got a laugh.  I was excited to be released.


Mark 15.
6 Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7 A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8 The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9 “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, 10 knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.

Jesus released Barabbas.  We are all captive to the guilt and shame of our sins unless we accept Jesus' forgiveness won for us on the cross.   If we have received this blessing of forgiveness, let us forgive others.

I heard yesterday of a woman who was in the Murrah building when Timothy McVeigh blew it up.  She was asked did she have hate for him.

"No I would not let my hate for him rob me of one day of life.  I have forgiven him.  I hope he got forgiveness from God."

Larry Wishard
2.12.17

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