Burnt Bridges
In reading last week, I was reminded of the difference between "accepting" Christ, and making a "decision" for Christ. "Acceptance" does not have the sense of completeness as does "decision", which implies a cut-off point, a turn around, of burning one's bridges. A favourite hymn states "I have decided to follow Jesus, No turning back".
A man recently came to the Lord later in life. He felt convicted about a criminal act in his past and sought to confess and make amends. Though he has forgiveness from the Lord, the law of the land did not, and he is now serving a prison sentence. For him, taking up his cross to follow Jesus has had an enormous price. Please pray for him, his family and church, and remember the prison ministries and other prisoners who have come to the Lord through them and are still serving their time.
Addendum 2018: Sufficient time has passed and the people involved have passed on, that I can now write about the above story in detail. The couple were friends of my parents and I have met them personally a couple of times. I will call them Bill and Mary, though not their real names.
Mary had been a believer most of her life, but Bill had consistently resisted. But in his mid 70's, Bill finally found faith. Bill, like many new converts, was inspired toward evangelism and prayed for guidance to find his mission in life. But the answer received surprised him - there was some sin in his past that he should confess and redress.
Now Bill knew immediately - he had molested his daughter as a young girl. So he set out to try and make amends. He went to his daughter and confessed and asked forgiveness. She was shocked, having no memory of the event, was very angry and refused to forgive him. She called to police and demanded he be arrested.
He meekly complied, was sent to trial, pled guilty and sentenced to 5 years in a low security prison.
During his first week in prison, being the grand-father figure amongst the inmates, a young man approached him, asking for help to write a letter to family. Bill was quite happy to help, but it very quickly became obvious that the young man could neither read nor write, so Bill asked him if he would like to learn to read and write. After a couple of weeks working with pencil and paper, Bill asked Mary if she could get some simple reading material they could use. Now Mary was a quick thinker and she approached her friends at Scripture Union and got copies of the Gospel of St.Mark in Modern English.
The news of Bill's teaching quickly spread through the prison and he quickly had several others wanting help. The class was meeting daily. Then he started getting questions about what they were reading (the gospel of Mark), and a separate class started as a Bible study. Yet more prisoners joined the class. There were a few conversions, so Bill started discipleship classes. Bill was soon working full time with his classes. Over time, some of his prisoner students were paroled or released and new inmates joined.
At the end of his 5 year term, there was much sadness at Bill's departure. As Bill met Mary outside the gates, he turned to Mary and said, "You know what? My prayer was answered after-all. This is my life mission.". They turned around and went back to the prison governor and asked if they could come back a couple of times a week to continue the classes. He agreed. Bill was now 80. Bill and Mary continued this prison ministry until age and illness over-took them.
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