Cage Free Voices Spoken Devotionals

Cannabis: The Plant They Tried to Hide

This episode of Cage-Free Voices Spoken traces the history and meaning of qaneh bosem/kaneh bosem in the Bible, exploring translation choices, ancient botany, and the role of aromatic plants in worship.

It connects biblical language to the historical criminalization of cannabis, examines how racism and political power shaped laws, and calls for justice for communities harmed by prohibition.

Delivered from a spiritual, historical, and educational perspective for listeners 18+, the episode discusses stewardship, safety, and the ethical use of plants without providing legal or medical advice.

Robbing God? A Biblical Re-Examination of Tithes, Trust, and Sacred Responsibility

Hosted by Queen Bathsheba, this episode reexamines Malachi 3:8–10 and the biblical history of tithing. It argues that tithes were part of a land-based covenant and temple system meant to support Levites, protect the poor, and preserve covenant integrity—not a universal, fear-driven rule for all Christians today.

The episode contrasts corrupt leadership and mishandled offerings with voluntary, generous giving in the New Covenant, aiming to free listeners from guilt, coercion, and fear-based practices while encouraging responsible, joyful generosity.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Phoebe the Deacon: The Quiet Power Behind Paul's Mission

In this episode, we uncover the life of Phoebe—a devoted and often overlooked leader of the early church. A diakonos and trusted patron from Cenchreae, she carried Paul’s letter to the Romans and advanced the gospel with both resources and recognized authority.

Join us as we reflect on her quiet courage, faithful stewardship, and the sacred trust God places on those who serve—inviting us to reconsider long-held assumptions about gender, leadership, and calling within the church.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Susanna: The Quiet Power Behind Yeshua’s Ministry

Susanna, named in Luke as one of the women who supported Yeshua and the Twelve, exemplifies faithful discipleship through practical, often unseen acts of service. Likely a woman of means, she used her resources, hospitality, and influence to sustain Jesus’ itinerant ministry, demonstrating the vital role of quiet, essential support in God’s work.

Her story reminds us that Kingdom work takes many forms—financial, logistical, and sacrificial. This week, consider one tangible way you can contribute to ministry with integrity, generosity, and faithfulness.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: The Samaritan at the Well: A Radical Theological Conversation

This episode explores John 4:1–42, focusing on the unnamed Samaritan woman who engages in an extended public theological conversation with Yeshua. It highlights the cultural and covenant context—Jewish and Samaritan tensions, Second Temple norms, and prophetic language—showing how Yeshua treats her as a legitimate interlocutor and reveals his identity as Messiah.

Her encounter leads to mission: she leaves her water jar, testifies to the city, and many Samaritans believe. The episode emphasizes God’s practice of entrusting truth to marginalized voices and calls listeners to worship in spirit and in truth.

 

*Correct pronunciation: 

in·ter·loc·u·tor

/ˌin(t)ərˈläkyədər/

Kingdom of God Series: The Tree That Was a Man: Understanding the Kingdom of God

This is an unplanned, Spirit-led episode born out of reflection on the Kingdom of God and a desire to ensure clarity—especially for those who may be hearing about the Kingdom for the first time.

In this episode, I gently admonish listeners to revisit the Kingdom of God series, and I share a story written to explain the Kingdom in a way that is accessible to everyone—especially young children.

Through the allegory The Tree That Was a Man, we meet a tree whose very nature is love. From him flows life, and from that life grows fruit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance. Those who are joined to him draw from his life and begin to bear the same fruit, becoming part of a growing grove rooted in love and truth.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Deborah: A Prophetess Who Led Israel to Peace

In this episode we explore Deborah, a prophetess and judge raised up during Israel’s era of the Judges. She exercised divine authority without pedigree, summoned Barak, and delivered God’s command that led to Sisera’s defeat and forty years of peace.

Deborah’s story shows leadership rooted in obedience, prophetic clarity, and faithful stewardship of authority — a reminder that calling, not title or lineage, establishes true influence.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Jael: When a Woman Becomes God’s Deliverer

In this episode of Cage Free Voices Spoken Devotionals — Powerful Women of the Bible, we focus on Jael (JL) from Judges 4–5: the Kenite woman whose decisive act against Sisera fulfilled Deborah’s prophecy and brought deliverance to Israel.

We examine how her choice of covenant loyalty over political peace highlights faithfulness after deliverance, and we close with a brief devotional reflection and prayer for courage to remain obedient in compromised seasons.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Lydia of Thyatira: How a Merchant's Home Built the Kingdom

In this episode of the Powerful Women of the Bible series we meet Lydia, a Lydian merchant from Thyatira whose faith reshaped the first church in Philippi. The Lord opened her heart to Paul’s message, she was baptized, and she opened her home as a base for the early believers.

The episode highlights how the kingdom of God advances through faithful stewardship rather than political power, showing Lydia’s courage in refusing idol worship, using her resources for hospitality, and risking economic and social cost to follow Yeshua.

Powerful Women of the Bible Series: Meroe's Queen and the Road to Revelation: The Untold Story of Amanitore

This episode explores the often-overlooked world of the Kandakes of Nubia and the African setting behind Acts 8. Philip is moving within Roman-occupied Judea, and the encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch occurs on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza—a desert trade route long used by African kingdoms to move people, knowledge, and resources between Judea, Egypt, Nubia, and the interior of the land known in antiquity by African peoples as Alkebulon. This meeting takes place within African mobility and sovereignty, not at the margins of it.

Set against the backdrop of Meroe and the Kushite kingdom, the episode examines how Queen Kandake Amanitore and her lineage of ruling women governed a literate, centralized, and independent African state. The eunuch Philip encounters is not an outsider seeking validation, but a senior Nubian official returning home from Jerusalem, shaped by the Kandake court’s intellectual traditions, administrative discipline, and theological inquiry.

Within this context, the eunuch’s encounter with Philip likely extended beyond personal transformation. As a trusted royal servant with direct access to the Kandake household and the mechanisms of governance, he would have been positioned to carry the gospel back into Nubia itself. In this way, gospel expansion into Alkebulon occurs not through coercion, empire, or foreign domination, but through African literacy, established travel networks, and indigenous systems of authority.

The episode reflects on how Nubian resistance to Roman domination, female rulership, and disciplined administration created conditions in which the gospel could move freely without imperial permission. Rather than flowing outward from empire, the gospel traveled along African trade routes, through African political structures, and into African intellectual life.

By re-centering Acts 8 within its African and first-century reality, this study disrupts imperial assumptions about gospel expansion and restores Nubia—and the Kandake queens—as active agents in the early movement of the gospel, not passive recipients of it.

Scholarly note:

The term Alkebulon reflects African oral and philosophical traditions referring to the continent as a unified land long before European cartography. Its use here centers African self-identification rather than later imposed geographic labels.