Set free to fulfill your destiny 

Michelangelo’s masterpiece David is in a gallery in Florence, Italy. Thousands of tourists wait for hours every day to get a glimpse. But many of them fail to notice the series of unfinished sculptures that line the corridor on the way to David. Their forms are identifiable—a hand here, a torso there. The statues were intended to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, but they were never finished. It’s almost as if these sculptures are trying to break free and become what they were intended to be, but they are stuck in stone. Michelangelo called them captives. Have you ever felt like a captive? You can’t seem to break free from habitual sins that have held you back. You know who you want to be, what you want to do, and where you want to go, but you can’t seem to get there. Regardless of how long you’ve been stuck, God wants to finish what He started in your life. Jesus said His mission was to set captives free (see Luke 4:18). We tend to think of that statement in judicial terms; salvation is our get-out-of-jail-free card. But it’s much more. Maybe we should think of that statement in artistic terms. Jesus also died to resurrect the person we were destined to be before sin distorted the image of God in us. We are held captive by our imperfections and insecurities; by our guilt and anxieties. Jesus died to set us free from all the above. And He doesn’t just set us free from who we were, He sets us free to become who we were meant to be.