Tag Archives: Bible

Life Lessons

A Word in Season.

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     Our friend Harold had worked for many years in the prison service, and he had many stories to tell of opportunities taken to share the good news of God’s love and grace.                                                            But before he went into the prison service, he was working at selling life insurance. As he was going on his rounds in a certain area, he heard of a family who was wanting to take out life insurance on some of their family members. He decided to make them a call and see if he could help in this way at all. When he knocked on the door, a lady answered it and she appeared to be in tears.                                      “I’m awfully sorry,” Harold said, “I seem to have come at a bad time. I’ll come back another day.”                                                                                      “No, no”, she said, “I really need someone to talk to.”                                             And so the  sad story came out. Her marriage had just broken up, she said, and her husband had taken the two older girls, leaving her with two young sons. Harold listened sympathetically for a while, and said, “Well, there’s not much I can do to help, but do you have a Bible in the house?”                                                                                                                “Yes, there is one here,” she said, “It belongs to one of the boys,” and she went off to get it.                                                                                                                 Harold took it, and showed her one or two verses. After he had been talking for a while, she said that she had been going to church for over twenty-one years and never realised that she needed to have personal dealings with God. She could see now what she had been missing out on. Harold was not one to ever miss an opportunity, so he asked her if she would like to pray the sinner’s prayer of confession of sin. She was glad to do this and became a new person in spite of her continuing bad circumstances.                                 Harold lost touch with her after that, and eighteen years later, two women came into the prison where he was working to visit an inmate. Harold immediately recognised the older lady as this same person.                                                                                                                                              He reminded her of this occasion and asked her how things had been with her over the intervening years. Her face lit up, and she told him how one of her boys was now serving as a Youth Pastor in a church in Australia.

This story bears out the verse that says…..Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning…Psalm 30:5b

Adult Testimonies

The Importance of Reading the Bible

BIBLE1As new prisoners came into the system, Harold always had an introductory chat with them, finding out why they were there and filling in forms. He wasn’t always able to introduce the matter of spiritual topics at the beginning of their time in prison, but did it whenever there was an opportunity.

This particular man was in for child abuse, and as the conversation moved along, Harold was able to bring it around to spiritual things. The man was convicted while Harold was talking with him and admitted that what he had done was sin in the sight of God, and he realised that he had to do something about it. Harold was able to tell him how to pray and confess his deeds as a sin against God, thus becoming born again.

The next day, Harold saw him again and asked how he had slept now that he had made his peace with God.

“You know Boss”, he said, “It’s fascinating! I woke up as usual and lit up a cigarette like I always do, and it tasted terrible! I threw it away and haven’t wanted one since!”

Harold was so pleased to hear this, and encouraged him further.

Not every one who turned to the Lord had such an immediate deliverance from this debilitating habit…..some men indeed, had quite a struggle to give up smoking.

But Harold kept in contact with him and was able to encourage him to continue reading his Bible and doing the Bible Study Courses he was able to get for him.

The prison population was around 400, and over time, Harold was able to see forty men do the Bible Courses. Other than that, there wasn’t much follow-up work done with the men, especially when they were transferred elsewhere or moved out of the prison system altogether. When he could, Harold would contact the local minister where they were going and hope they would follow them up, but there was no guarantee that this would happen.

Those who were able to, would find a church they could go to, and continue with their daily readings of the Bible. This would continue to feed them spiritually, and they would grow in their faith.