Best Thing I've Done in Years!

Larry was feeling like the believers in North and South pod needed to gather together in more intimate fellowship than the Bible studies.  At church one Sunday afternoon, he announced that there would be a prayer meeting that evening at 8PM.   The men were asked to skip the TV, skip the card games, and skip the clattering noise that is the trademark of jail life.  He was asking the thirty or so men who came to church from that section of the jail to come and pray.

Susan was amazed that he asked the men to do such a vulnerable thing.  "Do you really think any will come out?  That makes them really open to others.  Do you think they can risk it?   Prayer meetings are always the lowest attended meetings in churches on the outside, so what do you think will happen in here?"

Well, Sunday evening brought 21 men striding down the gray hallways, filing quietly into the stark all-purpose room we call the chapel.   There was no plush carpet,  no padded pews,  no gentle praise music to usher in the Spirit of the Lord....just gray plastic chairs sitting on gray tile floors in a room where the temperatures hovers between 60 and 65 degrees. 

Larry gave a much-needed encouragement talk on prayer.  He told the men they didn't need any "thee's" and "thou's" or fancy words.  They could just talk to the Lord from the heart.

For an hour the men prayed....some sitting, some kneeling, some quietly crying.   They lifted up our nation and our president.  They beseeched God to protect their loved ones while they are incarcerated.  They prayed for their enemies.  They asked God's watchcare on the officers and staff.  They asked forgiveness of sin and for power to start life anew.  They praised the Lord for His majesty and his mercy.   The Holy Spirit warmed the room as  heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of grace!   

At the end, the men filed out shaking Larry's hand, thanking him for the opportunity.  For the next week, we were asked again and again if the men could pray again.  One man told his reading tutor,who always reads the Bible with him,  that they had had this wonderful prayer meeting.  Another man told Larry that it was the best thing that had happened to him in years.  Another told Susan that it had refreshed him and brought him back into close communion with the Lord.