This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor Rick Warren.

Today we begin a series called Building a Better Life.

In these lessons, Pastor Rick draws from the Bible to show you how God can take a difficult situation

and use it to help you build a better future.

In just a few moments, we're going to tell you how you can get a hard cover copy

of Pastor Rick's wonderful book, The Purpose of Christmas.

Just in time for the season, go to PastorRick.com to find out more

or text the word daily to 800-600-5,000-4.

Now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with Part 1 of a message called,

Resuming Life After Captivity.

You know, you cannot read this book through the Bible

without noticing the concept of captivity.

The concept of captivity is a major theme of the Old Testament.

Now, of course, the people of Israel spent 400 years in captivity in Egypt

and then later they spent 70 more years in captivity in Babylon

and the words captivity and the words captives are used over 400 times in the Bible.

Now, I want to understand this concept of captivity better this week.

So I started by looking up a definition of the word.

You know, we talk about animals living in captivity or being kept in captivity

when they're in a zoo.

What is captivity?

Well, I put a definition on your outline.

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