Daily Verse
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Freedom in Christ
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Wednesday's Reflection
Luke 4:18 — The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.
Jackie Pullinger was a young Englishwoman who, in 1966, felt God calling her somewhere — she did not know where. She bought the cheapest boat ticket she could afford and got off where she sensed God leading: Hong Kong. There she walked into the Kowloon Walled City, one of the most lawless and densely packed places on earth — a tangle of dark alleys controlled by Triad gangs, thick with heroin dens, gambling, and prostitution, where the police barely dared to go. Into that darkness she carried nothing but the gospel and a stubborn belief that Jesus could set even these people free.
What happened there is hard to explain in ordinary terms. As Jackie prayed with heroin addicts — men who had been slaves to the drug for years, who had tried and failed to quit through agonising withdrawal — many of them came off heroin without the expected pain. They would pray, and the cravings and the violent sickness that normally accompany withdrawal simply did not come, or came greatly reduced. Hardened gang members, addicts everyone had written off, were genuinely transformed. She founded St. Stephen's Society, which has helped thousands find freedom. She wrote about it in her book "Chasing the Dragon," and she is still in Hong Kong, decades later, doing the same work.
Jackie Pullinger took as her life's text the words Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth — that He came to preach deliverance to the captives and set at liberty those who are bruised. She believed Jesus meant it literally, for the most enslaved people she could find. And He did. The freedom Christ offers is not just a comforting idea for respectable people with manageable problems. It reaches into heroin dens and Triad territory and breaks chains that nothing else can break. There is no one too enslaved for the One who came to set captives free.
Prayer: Lord, You came to set captives free — and You meant the most captive of all. Give us Jackie Pullinger's faith that no one is beyond Your reach, and Your power to break the chains that nothing else can break. Amen.