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Key Bible Verse: You were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you (Romans 6:17). Bonus Reading: Rom. 6:15-23

Every day, some 100 male inmates from the state's entire prison system are released into the streets of Huntsville, Texas.

They emerge from a gate in the unit's red brick walls wearing ill-fitting lime-green shirts and bearing laundry bags stuffed with personal belongings. Each man has been issued a check for $50, and a voucher good for one bus ticket out of town. Most cash their checks in a nearby store, buy new clothes, then head toward the Greyhound station three blocks away.

But positioned to greet them is a welcoming committee of prostitutes and drug dealers whose only goal is to ensnare them in their previous way of living.

The new life in Christ is like that. When you commit yourself to Christ, you leave the prison of your old nature, and take on a new identity. You're free. You've been given a new lease on life. The power of sin to rule your life has been broken, destroyed by the cross of Christ. And you've been raised with Christ into newness of life. But you're also still free to commit sin. Understanding that interplay lies at the heart of joining with God for the transformational journey.

—James Emery White in Long Night's Journey into Day

My Response: In order to live out the transformed life now potentially mine, I'll … —Charles Colson

Adapted from Long Night's Journey into Day (WaterBrook, 2002) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Holy God, enable me to view sin as you do, so that I am determined to reject it.

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