Back In Prison Again
There are not a lot of churches that have biker preachers do services this time of year so I have been going back to prison the last three weeks now. I had not been back in this unit for a year and I realized how much I really do love these guys. The neat thing is that although my memory is horrible for names I have been able to call many of them by name. When I do call them by name or mention something I remember about them personally they light up and say “I cant believe you remembered.” I don’t tell them that I cant believe it either. I figure that is just a way the Lord blesses them. I had been invited to a Christmas party tonight, but like I told my wife, I cant give them presents but I can be there for them. We gave them free hallmark cards again this year to send their families and on the 23rd we will take a tree into the unit and each of the guys will get to hang an ornament on in. It will remain in the gym for services until after Christmas.
One of the guys that went in with us for the first time was heard saying, “These guys are just like you and me.” Folks, this is the truth. Sure there are the bad seeds, but for the most part just guys like you and I that made bad choices and got caught. Even some of the bad seeds have been transformed by the Word of God. One of the prison people was telling me about one of the guys I visited with the other day. He was constantly in trouble until 2000. The chaplain reached out to him and got him to come to our ministry. Since then he has only gotten in trouble twice. Both of which were minor.
The first four words of Romans 12:9 in the NIV are so true:
SINCERE! It has to be real. Real love is nothing something you can just have. It is not something you can work up. It is God given! The love that we can have for a prisoner, or a homeless person, or some tattooed up old biker is not something we can take credit for ourselves. It comes from God Himself. Isn’t it odd how all the things that He commands us to do and be, He provides for us in the first place? He is not trying to make us “do” something. He is just trying to get us to “be” what He made us and use what He gave us.
Try not to keep Him in a manger,
on a cross, in a tomb, or
just some future coming event…
He is best when applied today just as He IS.
In His service,
Duane