Suppose your entire wardrobe consisted of the following: 5 shirts,2 pair of pants,1 pair of shoes,5 pairs of underwear,5 pairs of socks, 1 t shirt and, if it was winter you would also have 1 coat, a hat and a pair of gloves? You can’t afford to buy anything more because your wallet contains only $50? You have no job, home or transportation. To make matters even worse, you are branded, everyone knows that you have just been released from prison. How long do you think you could survive on the streets?
Yes it can be hard to be sympathetic to someone who has committed a crime, especially a violent crime. How easy it is to think “They deserve what they get for what they did.” I know because I’ve thought those very things myself, that is until I started spending one 4 day-weekend a year and one Saturday a month trying to be Christ to these men, only to discover how many times they have been Christ to me. I know a man who quit his gang after accepting Christ as his Savior. The gang reacted by ordering his death. Since the threat was discovered he has been switched to four different prisons in an effort to keep him alive. At the last of the four is where I met him. Upon his arrival he was placed in Administrative Segregation, that is where an inmate is locked in his cell for 23 hours a day, let out for an hour a day he must spend that hour in an outdoor cage.
The strain of living in isolation became to much and he asked to be placed back into General Population, knowing that his life would be in danger. What a witness it must have been when he explained to the warden, and to me, that he didn’t fear for his life because he knew God would protect him. This man is a walking definition of what it means to follow Jesus command to “...take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:2) It is men like him who cause me to say that prison ministry is the most humbling thing I’ve ever done.
Is there a crime that Jesus did not die for? What crime is unforgivable, besides unbelief? Does God not love the criminal as much as he does the crime victim? I think the one thing that surprised me the most when I started doing prison ministry is the number of people on the ministry team who have said, as I have “There was a time in my life, when with a little less luck, I could have been on the other side of the bars.” All are now well respected members of the community, doctors, business owners and yes ministers.
This may sound strange, but prison ministry is probably the only ministry where it helps to have a past. During a talk one team member mentioned that he used to farm. His main crop: marijuana. During a break I jokingly told him that I could have used him when I was dealing it. That was when I heard an inmate behind me exclaim: “You guys are criminals!” That opened the door for us to explain that, yes we had been criminals, but with God’s help it was no longer true. One thing the inmates discover quickly is that, if they want to believe that God can’t change people, they’re talking to the wrong people.
Of course, if you know the bible at all, you know that we are in good company. Moses committed manslaughter, Noah was a drunk, King David could well have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Rahab, an ancestor of Jesus was a prostitute, And how could we leave out Peter, the ultimate perjurer. Yet, all of them are now in Heaven because we worship a God of second chances.
So, when someone is incarcerated and accepts Christ as his Savior, how do they turn their lives around? How do they stay on the straight and narrow path once they are released? For some they can count on family support, they have come from Christian backgrounds, but at some point they lost their way and fell into the wrong life style. But what if your family is part of the problem? I know of one family with three generations in lockup. One man’s cell mate is his biological brother. What then? Some of the members of the ministry team are ex-offenders them selves, and one they preach over and over again is that for a lot of people being released home is the worst place they can go. Because if they go back to the same family ,the same friends they will end up going to the same places and end up right back in prison. They know because, while lockup themselves they’ve seen it time and time again.
So, where CAN they go? Maybe part of the answer lies with their other family, their brothers and sisters in Christ. Do you have clothes that you never wear for some reason? There are collection centers that specialize in providing clothes for those recently released. Clothes they can wear to interviews and to work in. Do you need to hire someone? Spend some time in prayer asking God’s guidance, pray that he will bring the right person to you, even if he is an ex-offender. Do you have an apartment or house to rent? It’s hard for people to find a job when thy don’t have an address. What about your church? The best way to keep someone from going back to prison is to give him hope. Hope is something these men and women are greatly lacking. Help them to see that their hope is in the Lord, without whom they can do nothing. Don’t let the fact that you can’t do everything keep you from doing anything!
Never let us forget that the first person Jesus took to Heaven with Him was a thief. Luke 23:43
