Unbelievable, yet true; bizarre, yet it happened. A 16-year-old girl was kidnapped and held prisoner for 4 months. Where? In the attic of a church in Memphis, Tennessee.

Week after week that congregation gathered to worship, to sing, to pray, to enjoy Christian fellowship—and for 4 months in that very same building there was a terrified human being needing to be rescued. Until she was discovered and released by two men on the church’s maintenance staff, that girl was a helpless captive.

Imagine! A prisoner in church! But perhaps there are more people hidden away in church than we realize—people who have been taken captive by God’s diabolical enemy (2 Tim. 2:26). Like the apostle Paul before his conversion, they may even think they are living for God while they are dead in sin. There may be people in our churches who have not experienced spiritual freedom through faith in Jesus Christ.

Evangelist Billy Sunday quipped that taking a horse into a garage doesn’t turn it into an auto, nor does merely taking a sin-bound person into a church change him or her into a child of God. Only personal faith in Jesus does that.

Are you a captive, or have you been set free?

  — Vernon C. Grounds