I love to share how the Lord set me free while I was in prison. As a member of a white supremacist gang, I spent ten years in a windowless solitary-confinement cell. One night, while scanning the radio dial, the Lord used a program called “Here Comes the Light” to shine the true light of the Gospel into my sin-darkened heart.


Now back up almost 2,000 years. Paul and Silas had been thrown into the “inner prison” for preaching the very Gospel that set me free. Their cell was dark. They were in chains. Having been severely beaten, they were dehydrated, exhausted, and weak (vv. 22-23).


How easy it would have been to give in to despair! Instead they rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 5:41). We don’t know how many Philippian criminals were saved that day because of their joy. But we do read of a jailer who was set free: “…he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God – he and his whole household”
(v. 34). May the true Light, Jesus, set you free!