“I was in prison and you came to me.”
Topic: Community
One of our church members is a very committed volunteer with Set Free Ministries, a ministry that brings the good news of the forgiving–yet–just King to prisoners.
I recently accompanied him on one of these adventures. Wow. I now know what an acquaintance felt when he once wrote this:
“I think this is one reason I find worship services in prison so compelling — the joy and delight on the part of the guys in coming together as a forgiven community is almost palpable. They act as men who have lost almost everything, including their dignity, and then gained the world in gaining Christ. And they act like it. They delight in recognizing that they had nothing at all, and now they have everything.
God spare us all from having to learn the lesson in as costly a way as they learned it, but it’s important to learn the lesson nonetheless. As members (mainly) of respectable, middle–class churches, we often do not realize that, despite our external affluence and our external dignity, we have nothing truly in this world. Looking at our external affluence, our eyes deceive us, blinding us to the fact that, in truth, we are ‘wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked’ (Rev.3.17).
Not realizing that we have nothing, we then also neglect to realize the fullness of what we gain in Christ. And not realizing the fullness of what we gain in Christ, we do not have the same joy and delight that the prisoners have, even though we have truly gained as much as they, truly having lost as much as they. He who thinks he is forgiven little, after all, loves little in reply.
Respectable, middle–class churches nonetheless need to break through the patina of respectability that holds back expression of our joy and delight at having nothing of value in this world, but being given everything in Christ.”
Exactly.
To read a very interesting article that our church member, Bill Swenson, wrote about Set Free Ministries, click “Read More” below…