“For the sake of My name
I delay my wrath, and for My praise I restrain it for you. In order not to cut
you off. Behold I have refined but not as silver: I
have tested you in the furnace of affliction for my own sake, I will act"
(Isaiah 48:9-11).
Hey Gang: Several
years ago, after bringing our financial house up to date, God impressed on me I
had completed an inventory of my worldly possessions, which He also reminded
me, it was He who provided all the blessings, but had neglected to do an
inventory of my greatest asset -my relationship with Him.
He impressed on me that I was more concerned about passing
my earthly possessions down to my children than I was I passing down my
spiritual heritage. It was one of those
"gut shots" that makes you sit up and take notice. He also quietly, and with great respect, ask
if I had completed an inventory of my year’s activities? Commitments? And how I used the most precious thing available
- time. Had I used it well?
This brought to mind a story that I have used in previous
blogs about an evangelist who spent a good portion of his life ministering to
those forgotten folks, whose values influenced their decisions and led to
incarceration. Frank had gained a deep
understanding of how to minister to the cons of the world, for he had walked in
their shoes as a con in the Georgia prison system. He often said the best training ground for
learning how to dig deep into the souls of hardened criminals is to spend time in
one of them. He also added he does not recommend that course of training.
The judge had said, "Frank you are danger to society
and need to be locked away from civilized people, I sentence you to solitary
confinement in one of Georgia's finest prisons for the remainder of your
days". But a far greater, and more
powerful Judge, who rescinded that order and opened the prison door much like He
opened the door for Paul and Silas. Frank’s
conversion was very abrupt, much like Saul's conversion. A bright light and a voice in the night
saying, “Frank I have a ministry for you and you are wasting your life in a
concrete cell.” Frank refers to those
years when he did not know the Lord as his ‘Holes in Time’ period of his life.
It took a while for Frank’s sincerity to break through the
barriers that he had earned for himself.
The jail house conversion is a common thing in the prison system and,
although I believe many are sincere, the failure of the Church to meet these
folks, when they walk out the prison door and put their arms around them and
walk with them, drives them back into their previous ways. After serving several years, God did, indeed,
open the prison doors and Frank walked out a free man, never to return again,
right? Wrong, he has spent many hours
with his former cells mates and has been instrumental in leading many to
Christ.
While working at a California Detention Facility I was
blessed to work in the hard-core section with the young men who, as the system
said, "Had not learned their lesson".
The problem was that most had honed their devious skills while in the
midst of others who had followed their same path. As you might guess, to mention God in any way
was far worse than placing them in solitary confinement on bread and water. But, there was an asterisk attached to the
God- law, if one of the young men asked me a question, I was permitted to
answer it.
Soooo, each day when I approached the door I prayed,
"Lord, have one of the kids ask me a question". For the first several months there were no
questions, but one Sunday, a young lad, who had attended Chapel, came up to me
and asked, "Mr. H. How long is
eternity?” The door was opened that day
and it remained open. Today, I being
each day with a similar prayer – “Lord, send someone across my path that needs
to ask a question about the emptiness in their chest cavity that is the same
size as God. How about you? Do you pray that you will not leave ‘Holes in
Time?’
Blessings,
Gramps
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