Back to the Basics

What lessons do you take into prison? What are your real goals with the sessions?

I want to present simple, short lessons that the guys can:

• Understand / comprehend
• Remember
• Utilize in their life right away

For these in prison lessons, I'm drawn to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. 

The Lord's Prayer is in there, along with the very important concept of forgiveness:

14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

We must forgive other people in our lives if we want / expect God to forgive us. 

This provides good group discussion questions. 

• Do you need to forgive someone? (No names please!)
• What sort of things have been keeping you from forgiving someone?
• Can you think of a time someone forgave you, that surprised you?

We can talk about the poison that unforgiving can cause in a person's life. Damage done. 

In the following weeks we kept reading a little forward, to the part about not being able to serve two masters. I use illustrations to help dig into the meaning:

• Why does a car have just ONE steering wheel?
• Why can a country have just ONE president at a time?
• Why does an army have just ONE general in charge of it?

We can only serve ONE master at a time. God, or ourselves. 

Last night in the session, I asked the guys to raise one hand. Most did. I pointed out that either the person lifted a hand or not. There is no middle ground. 

Then, I pointed out that at 11:59 pm there were some absolutes:

• Either I had read the bible that day or I had not.
• Either I had spent time in prayer that day or not.
• Either I had shown kindness to another person that day or not.

These are the disciplines of Christian living. As each day passes into history, either we have spent time praying, reading the bible and giving service to another person or we did not.

If we did not, how can we say that God was our Master that day?

After a nearly ten year hiatus, my hubby and I have returned to in-prison Yokefellow ministry.

For that time we had volunteers going in to lead sessions every week, so the work was being done.  Recently the main volunteer had something come up so he wanted a couple weeks each month off. So, we're back in!

We've aged, we have some health issues, some walking problems. But we're still both in love with God, and try to follow him. So, we go!

I wondered what we'd find inside now. How did the prison population change in ten years. What were the inmates like now? Would they be different from men we ministered to years ago?

I was sort of surprised to see that the guys are much the same, dealing with many of the same issues: Loneliness, anger of self, anger at the world, desperation.

This is why prison ministry is so needed. The inmates are hungry for hope. They have been set aside on a side railing of life for a bit of time. They have time to read books and pray and seek God.

I'll be posting our Yokefellow Session notes again.