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?