No Longer a POW

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" Mitsuo Fuchida ordered over his radio as he led the first wave of 183 planes into Pearl Harbor. An attack that would take 2,400 lives and catapult the United States into World War II. He would survive the war only to bitterly return to his farm, claiming "Life had no taste or meaning".

On that very day, as the news of Pearl Harbor came over the loudspeaker, Sergeant Jacob DeShazer became full of rage. Shortly thereafter, he volunteered as one of Jimmy Doolittle's raiders, an elite group of Army Air Corpsmen commissioned for offensive action against Japan. A few months later, he found himself dropping over two thousand pounds of bombs, burning up his targets 300 miles south of Tokyo. Then the plane ran out of fuel, he bailed out, broke a few ribs, and was captured by the Japanese. He spent 40 months as a POW enduring the worst torture imaginable. His hatred for the enemy is growing by the day. Then he acquired a Bible.  

"Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them for they don't know what they are doing.'" (Luke 23:34)

Years later, DeShazer and his wife would return as missionaries to Japan, distributing copies of his evangelistic pamphlet, "I Was a Prisoner of Japan", recounting his conversion to Christ as a POW. A copy of which landed in the hands of Mitsuo Fuchida at a train station in Tokyo. The pamphlet motivated him to buy a Bible himself, and when he read the above words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, his life changed forever. So much so that he wrote his own book to draw people to Christ, "From Pearl Harbor to Calvary". 

I don't think I've had too many people out to kill me. I've never been physically tortured. But I have had people whom I've found it extremely hard to forgive. A bitterness raging such that it distracted me from all the good that was right in front of me. Then Jesus showed up and melted that away like wax. My eyes could see again, my heart could love again, and my fear of being hurt by people was gone. That's real freedom.  

How about you?  Are you stuck in your own Pearl Harbor and POW camp, or have you found the freedom of Calvary?

DeShazer and Fuchida would ultimately meet, and in their final encounter, the two men whose mission was to kill the other, DeShazer said: "We shared in that good, wonderful thing that Christ has done."

Don't let the bitterness of whatever war you are fighting rob you of the blessings right in front of you. Most people don't even know what they are doing, or simply see it through a different lens than you. When you read this, who is on your mind? Release them and find freedom. Add a little taste back to your life and swap out the bitterness for love. You are no longer a prisoner of war.