This weekend we had 504 Bill Glass – Behind the Walls prison ministry Teammates, (211 of them freshman), go into 9 prison units in the Fresno California area with the opportunity to share the Gospel with over 24,000 inmates. 2,938 made decisions to follow Christ, 1,267 for the first time!
It was an interesting weekend. We arrived on Thursday night for what is called “spiritual enrichment” and freshman training and Bill Glass had his volunteers hand out cards to all in attendance that outlined his rules of life and engagement. As is typical of the Bill Glass ministry, all were backed up by Holy Scripture. They are listed below along with my humble interpretation of what Bill is trying to tell us . . .
No Whining – Numbers 14:28 – In this passage the Lord finally tires of the Israelites grumbling and vows that not one of them, (with the exception of Caleb and Joshua), would enter the Promised Land – They didn’t . . .
No Blaming – Genesis 3:11 – Adam tried to blame Eve – Eve tried to blame the serpent – The Lord held them both accountable for their sinful actions and banished them (and us) from the Garden of Eden.
No Excuses – Romans 1:20 – In this passage God explains that ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything that God has made, we can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. We have no excuse for not knowing God for who He is and we know that He can handle it. We just need to put our faith in Him.
No Ducking – Acts 1:8 – I think the aforementioned statistics of hard core prisoners that came to know Christ this past weekend reflects that our team didn’t duck and the Holy Spirit came through. This passage states: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere
These rules of life should help us all. Nothing good comes from whining, blaming, making excuses, or trying to duck. We merely need to call upon the Holy Spirit to give us the power to succeed in our mission, whatever that might be.
I once made the statement that I was too far gone to change my life. I’d sunken so low that I wasn’t at the bottom of the barrel, I was buried six feet below it and I was graveyard dead spiritually and headed straight to hell. I read the verse Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and didn’t believe it, because I didn’t think I could change. I was partially right, in that I could never have changed my rotten life on my own. My problem was that I didn’t read the rest of the sentence, (“through Christ who strengthens me”).
I received power when I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior and asked the Holy Spirit to come upon me. He did and then He allowed me to soar like the eagle that Isaiah wrote about. I learned that our power is derived from the precious blood of the Lamb. It comes from God.
Whenever we go to one of these Bill Glass events we are inevitably faced with stuff to whine and complain about. There were huge delays that resulted in our having to wait in the hot sun literally for hours. The food was gross, the water was hot and tasted like crap, our microphones didn’t always work right, we weren’t recorded correctly on prison entry lists, we couldn’t find a bathroom when we needed it, blah, blah, blah – poor little old us.
It would have been easy to give up; after all we had plenty of excuses. We could have cried a river or maybe even a sea, but there was old 77 year old Bill Glass who suffered a stroke a few years back limping along and shuffling forward and leading us into battle and yelling at us in his foghorn voice to “suck it up” and keep charging.
Okay so there I was, I’d been standing around for hours waiting to get on the inside; finally we were ordered to walk through a series of razor wire enclosures and gates, and at every entry point we had guards wearing bullet proof vests suspiciously looking at our ID’s and barking orders at us like we were four year olds. Finally we were allowed into a large prison yard.
I’m standing there sweating profusely in the 100 degree desert-like sun, (wearing a black shirt like an idiot), waiting for my opportunity to speak and some guy comes running up to me and tells me that I only have ten minutes to give my testimony; the program is being cut short.
That is less than half the time I need!
I think, “I flew all day from my home in Florida facing airport delay after delay to cross the country to stand out in this hot desert sun to fry like a piece of chicken on a hot grill and be dehydrated for two days at great expense, and now they have reduced my time with these poor lost inmates to TEN DAMN MINUTES!”
No whining . . . No blaming . . . No excuses . . . Call on the Holy Spirit to give me power . . . ”Gr-r-r-r-r-r-r – Rah – Rah – Rah – Argh-h-h-h – Okay I’m better now . . . ”
I gave my abbreviated testimony the best I knew how. As we were preparing to leave, a teammate came up to me and told me that when I finished speaking an inmate literally came running over to him with tears streaming down his face and told him that he wanted to know Jesus Christ and get some of whatever I had for himself – He wanted to be saved by the blood of Christ.
It turns out that during my abbreviated testimony that I’d mentioned that my grandfather and my only brother Jim had both committed suicide and that I’d wanted to do so, but Jesus Christ changed all that for me. I almost left that part out, but included it I suppose at the behest of the Holy Spirit who wanted me to leave it in because this man needed to hear it that day.
It turns out that this inmate’s father and brother had just committed suicide within the last couple of weeks/months and he’d been planning on hanging himself. After hearing my testimony he wanted Jesus to change him and give him a reason to live too.
So today think about all of those problems you have.
Are they really all that bad?
Are they insurmountable?
Are you spending your time whining, blaming, making excuses?
Or have you made up your mind that you cannot duck these issues so you might as well ask the Holy Spirit to take over your life and let Him lead you to victory?
The power of the Holy Spirit is an awesome thing. Read the book of Acts if you want an inkling of it. That same Holy Spirit is alive and well today and He wants to empower you to conquer this old world. God is our Father and He loves us and He will lead us to achieve good things and we can have his holy happiness forever (and a day), if we allow Him to take over our lives . . . Keep the faith and keep on smiling.
Romans 8:14
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.