Prayer for Freedom

"If your brother becomes destitute and cannot sustain himself among you, you are to support him as a foreigner or temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among you. Do not profit or take interest from him, but fear your God and let your brother live among you." Leviticus 25:35-36

As Americans we often think of slavery as a racial issue. Through much of human history and in our world today, slavery has been caused by debt. There have always been people who have been willing to exploit the poverty of others by loaning money at high interest rates that the person will likely never be able to repay. These people are often forcibly detained as slave labor. By some estimates there are 27 million slaves in the world today, many of them children, who are caught in this vicious trap. In Leviticus, God gives us a sneak peek of Jesus by describing the year of Jubilee. Every 50 years, lands would be returned, debts forgiven, and slaves would be set free. It is a picture of grace. Isaiah, prophesying about Jesus, said that he would bring "liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners" (61:1) Because of Jesus there is hope for all those who are enslaved. But the passage from Leviticus above also makes it clear that the knowledge of future redemption was not a license to exploit people here and now. We should share His heart that the weak and the vulnerable would be helped instead of exploited.

Starter Prayer: We pray for those who are being exploited and trapped by people who ignore the law and ignore what is right to enrich themselves. We pray, Father, that you would set the captives free and we remember that we too owed a debt that we could never repay and are in debt to our savior Jesus Christ.