What is Jesus wanting us to comprehend when speaking that he has come to “set free those who are captive”?  Jesus speaks about our hearts and who or what we turn to in order to find significance, hope, peace, love, and meaning.  In my later teens my greatest sense of significance emerged from excelling in sports signified by winning.  A change in direction of finding hope, love, and meaning in relationship arose as an 18 year old falling in love.  Being enjoyed, appreciated, and delighted by a beautiful girl brought a hope of being valued and loved.  The experience was a life of joy I’d never know before.  Looking back upon my own life, may reflect that each of us take our hearts in different directions of finding significance or love.  Jesus understands these pursuits of our hearts.

When ever we turn toward a person to find a good relationship, performing well at sports, or working hard; we carry within our hearts seeking hope to experience love, support, care, value, significance, and respect.  What ever we turn to find hope may turn into despair.  The accompanying emotions of despair, and how one handles despair may usher in captivity to our hearts. Looking back, when playing well in a basketball game, I felt good inside, when playing poorly I was hard on myself.  When we lost a game I was angry, when we won a championship I was elated.  The joy of playing focused on how well I performed and winning a game.

Being enjoyed and delighted  soon ended when my first love ended. How did I deal with this disappointment? I never understood the importance of struggle and taking my heart to someone who would understand what I was going through.  Instead, I shut down the hurt and sadness in my heart.  I believed that to find love and be valued centered on what I could do to make a relationship work.  In other words, I attempted to be in control of a relationship.  If you have done this you know the mess a relationship becomes.  When attempting to be in charge or control of a relationship, we are putting our trust on what we can do to get others to care for us. When we trust what we are doing to find hope and love from others, this leads to captivity.  As we put pressure on ourselves to get someone to care for us, we become dependent on how this person responds to us.

Jesus offers something that rises a different hope, he loves us for who we are.  He knows the desires of our hearts, what we long to know in relationships.  Jesus wants us to discover who we are and to live our lives out serving others with a sense of joy and confidence.  When we do experience disappointment, Jesus wants us to understand the compassion he offers in our experiences of despair.  The paradox, dealing well with despair is the key to freeing our hearts.  Taking charge of despair and doing what we can to avoid or make it go away leads to captivity of our hearts.  We cannot free our own hearts through what we can do, knowing that we are loved and care for by our creator is the basis of experiencing a freeing our hearts.