In a powerful prophetic vision, I saw a believer whose hands were handcuffed together. He stood there tired and sore as if he had tried with all his might to pull himself free from his bondage. Before him was a huge pile of keys, as if hundreds of people had come and thrown every possible key to him in an effort to help. I sensed the problem wasn't that he didn't have the right key. He just didn't know which key would open the lock.

Suddenly, a blinding light started to shine from the keys giving off a light as bright as the rising sun. The brilliant glow came from the bottom of the pile, and so, despite the handcuffs, the captive began to push aside all the other keys to find the source of the light. Down at the very bottom of the pile was a small cross glowing as if it were made of molten metal. From the look on the prisoner's face, I could tell he was thinking, “That’s a cross, not a key. It can’t help me open the lock.” I then heard the voice of the Lord loudly declare, “Pick up the cross, for it is the Master’s Key — the key to freedom from all that binds you!” With that, the captive maneuvered to pick up the cross with one hand and push it into the keyhole of the handcuffs. As soon as it was placed within the keyhole, the first side of the handcuffs sprung open and fell off. The prisoner quickly placed the cross into the other side and it too opened setting him free.

Many believers find themselves bound by things from which they seem unable to get free. Though they have tried with the strength of Samson to shake themselves free, they remain prisoners. Hurts and disappointments have formed chains of bitterness, discouragement, and rejection which, despite their repeated best attempts, they seem unable to remove. They have gone to various places and sought out numerous men of God, and from them they have received many “keys” to freedom, only to find each time the promised key would not trip the tumblers of their captivity.

But true Christian freedom is found in returning to that which first set us free — the cross of Jesus Christ. When we accepted the working of the cross, we received the power of salvation and were set free from the law of sin and death. The cross of Christ has not lost its power. It still has the power to bring freedom. We are not in need of a new key … just the right key! The reason for most of our bondage is that we have put down the cross, and God is saying to us afresh and anew, “Pick up the cross!”

The Double-Dynamite Of The Cross
The enemy of your soul wants to take your hurts and disappointments and forge from them chains of captivity that will not allow you to move forward into the things God has for you. But the cross is like nitroglycerine; blasting your chains … setting you free. Originally, nitroglycerine was carried about as two different chemicals that, once mixed together, released dramatically powerful results.

The cross also has a two-fold power to set us free. The first portion of this power comes through obedience. It was at the cross that Jesus “became obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8). Obedience requires us to forgive those who have hurt us (just as Jesus forgave those who crucified Him), and keeps our focus on God, for to be obedient to God we must keep our focus on God. This keeps our eyes from becoming fixed on our woundings or loss, and living in a pity party of our own making.

The second powerful ingredient of the cross is that it kills the flesh. It is our flesh which finds itself in such desperate need of being vindicated and understood. Dead men never complain about pain and suffering, for they have already passed beyond into the next realm.

Are you captive by hurts and disappointments that keep you chained to the past, unable to move on? Use the Master’s key to freedom. Pick up the cross and in obedience, with a spirit of forgiveness, let it kill your old nature, that the fullness of the nature of Christ can be loosed in your life. “It was for freedom that Christ set us free” (Galatians 5:1).