The skit

This is the skit that Mom & I did in the jail. Enjoy!

Theme: Salvation message

Characters:

Rebekah: A lost person who is miserable but open and seeking

Susan: A Christian who is counseling her to salvation

 

R:         Oh, I am so empty, so hopeless, and so miserable! Everyone around me is annoying. Everything is going wrong. My life is out of my control, and I keep making mistakes that make things even worse.

S:         It sounds like you need Jesus. Can I tell you about him?

R:         I already know about Him. He is the Son of God, he died on the cross for my sins, and he rose again from the dead. It doesn’t help. I went to chuch all my life.

S:         That’s great that you know about Jesus, but you know, knowing about Jesus is different from knowing Him.

R:         What do you mean?

S:         You might know about Barak Obama, but you can’t call him on the phone and talk to him about your personal problems and know that he cares or expect him do something about it. Lots of people know about Jesus, but they don’t have that personal relationship with him. When I came to know Him personally, He changed my life.

R:         Okay, that makes sense. What do I need to do differently? I mean, what have I done wrong? I did everything I could. I went to church.

S:         Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going in the garage makes you a car. When Jesus died on the cross, He shed His blood for your sins so that you could be forgiven.

R:         You know, that’s the thing I don’t get. How does the blood of a guy who died 2,000 years ago have anything to do with me?

S:         Well, let’s go back to the beginning of time to answer that question. God created the world and placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. He gave them a command: “Don’t eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you do, you will surely die.” In other words, if you disobey, you will pay for it with your blood. Adam and Eve disobeyed, and now they owed God their blood. All their descendants committed sin, too. You’re included in that. You owe God your blood. You deserve to die for the sins you have committed. When Jesus died and shed His blood, He offered himself in your place. God is willing to accept His sacrifice on your behalf—His blood for yours.

R:         That’s cool…so does that just automatically happen to me?

S:         No, God’s word says, “The just shall live by faith.” It also says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He hath sent.” Your job is to have faith. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”

R:         [shrugs] I do believe.

S:         There’s a difference between Biblical faith and checking off a mental True/False test in your head. Many people can spout off the correct answers. Jesus was the Son of God: True. Jesus died for my sins: True. Jesus rose from the dead on the third day: True. That’s mental assent, but it’s not Biblical faith.

R:         Then what does faith mean?

S:         Faith means abandoning all hope in yourself that you will ever do anything good, and placing all of your trust, hope, and dependence on Jesus. You give every part of your life to him. You turn from your way of doing things and make Him the Master. You trust Him to do what you could never do—not just obtain forgiveness of your sins from God, not just get a home in heaven someday, but you look to him and believe that He can enable you to overcome sin. You surrender. You let go of your way of doing things. You invite Him to come in and change you.

R:         Ha. My track record is so bad, I’ll never be any different.

S:         Well, see there? You don’t really believe. You are looking within yourself for the solution. You have tapped into all of your inner resources and have come up empty. That doesn’t matter. Jesus lived out a perfect life while He was here on earth. When you invite Him to come in, He can live out His life through you. But you must look to Him and believe Him to do it.

R:         That sounds like wishful thinking to me.

S:         It would be wishful thinking if it wasn’t based on the Word of God. But God cannot lie. His promises are trustworthy. You can depend on His Word. What He has revealed to us in Scripture is the truth. He offers Jesus to anyone who will believe on Him, not just to leave us miserable on earth and then take us to heaven when we die, but to change us, enable us, and empower us to live out His commands while we are here on earth. Admittedly, His commands are impossible for us to carry out. That’s why we need Him to live in us and carry them out through us.

R:         Does the Bible really say all that?

S:         Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

            Romans 8:11 says, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

            There are many other passages that teach this truth in depth, but the fact of the matter is, God offers you His own Son. Jesus offers to come and indwell you with His Spirit (the Holy Spirit), and His power becomes available to you to live out a holy life.

R:         Well, I certainly know I can’t trust myself to get anywhere. I want Him to do it for me. I don’t know how it works, though.

S:         You believe Him. You come to Him by faith. That’s your job. You believe, and He works. Believe that He can do this, believe that He will, and believe that it is available personally for you. He said so, and it’s the truth. Invite Him to come into your life and change you, and surrender the control of your life over to Him. “The just shall live by faith.” You don’t just say “I believe” and then go on and forget about it. You live each day trusting in Him to do His work in you.

R:         Ah. Well, that’s amazing if He can actually…work…in me…like…my life would be a stage for divine action?

S:         That’s exactly it.

R:         I’ve never seen it happen before, but if He’s God, He can do anything He wants, right?

S:         He sure can. Why don’t you tell Him right now that you trust Him to do this?

R:         OK. Um, Jesus? I’m in a mess, and I know I’ve done it all wrong. I know I’ll keep on doing it wrong and I can’t depend on myself. Help me to believe—I believe in you, but I want to believe in the way that actually means something and gets somewhere. I offer myself to you. I’m backing off. I’m letting go of the control of my life. You can take it. I want to know you, not just know about you, but know you personally. Will you come to live in me? Will you do God-sized things in my life? Thank you, God. Amen.

Multiplied Ministry Opportunities

Now I have a list of 15 women who want to receive discipleship material by mail. How easily ministry opportunities multiply!

In the old days, I would have lived by the rule of self-preservation. "Don't love too much. Don't get too involved. Don't offer to do something that will take too much of your time. Don't commit to doing a task, because that's overwhelming."

But now I live by the rule of obedience. "Do what the Lord calls you to do. Love with all your heart--you won't run out of love as long as it's coming from the infinite source of God. Be willing to get involved. Be willing to care. Be willing to write 15 letters.

In the old days, I would never have discovered this opportunity because I would have shielded myself from it. I would have shrunk back from it. I didn't have the tensile strength to bear it.

In the old days, I was stumped by the question, "How do you DO ministry? How do you find ministry opportunities? How do you invent ways to serve the Lord?"

Now, my perspective is quite different. "How do you NOT see MILLIONS of opportunities? There is an explosion of possibilities. The fields are white unto harvest."

In the old days, I was constantly stressed, overwhelmed, and stretched thin, because I was inventing things for myself to do.

Now I am at peace, calm, unstressed, and abounding in strength to be poured out, because I walk in obedience. I aim to do only and exactly what God wants me to do. I trust Him never to fill my plate too full. I wait for His leading, go when He says go, and do nothing when He is silent. How marvelous is this way of life! How blessed is this style of ministry! Having tasted of this, I never want to go back to the old way.

A phone and a slice of bread

"Please write to me," one woman named Crystal said to my mom while we were at the jail. "Do you recognize me?"

"I know you look familiar," my mom said.

"I was the one who came to your front porch that day," she said.

"OH!" my mom said.

Two or three months ago, she had been walking down the road and came up to our house to ask if she could use a phone. She hadn't eaten. I brought out a glass of ice water, a thick slice of buttered homemade bread and an orange. She ate and used the phone and told us her story. She had been beaten up by her boyfriend. She called and asked a friend to come and pick her up. We offered to take her anywhere she needed to go, but she declined. While we were sitting there, her boyfriend drove back and forth down the road several times. Finally, he stopped in front of our house and called Crystal over to the car. "Get in," he said. She got in the car with him and they drove off. We never knew what happened to her after that, but she told my mom that that after they left our house, her boyfriend beat her up really bad. Now, she said, both of them were in jail.

It's amazing how a small act of kindness--a glass of water, a slice of bread, an orange, a seat on our porch, a listening ear--can be used by God to open up a future door of ministry.

Jail Ministry Update

The Carter County Jail (while still under construction)

We walked into the brand new jail for the first time and a guard escorted us through a number of locked doors into a large room walled on all sides with one-way glass. (You could see in from the outside, but not out from the inside.) This jail was just recently built, and they had moved all the prisoners here since the last time we had come. Gone were the peeling paint, leaky ceilings, and ultra-dingy, drab surroundings.

Fourteen women came in to the room to have the Bible study. There were tables and chairs set up in the room, another welcome change, and they filled in the first three rows. Their careworn faces, unadorned with makeup, did not hide their eager eyes. They were hungry. They were glad we had come. Kim, one of the women we have built up a relationship with, brought a Bible. It was brand new two months ago, but now the pages were well-worn and betrayed many hours of reading.

Lois began with a word of prayer and then we passed out song sheets. "Oh!" exclaimed one girl. "They were telling me about the song sheets we get!" She eagerly took the two pages of the printout we had brought. We stood to sing, and the women stood with us. They sang along, not beautifully, but from their hearts.

Then Mom and I read a short skit that I had written, a simple dialogue between a lost, hopeless person (played by me) and a Christian who was witnessing to her (played by mom). As I wrote the skit the night before, I had stressed the concept of Christ's indwelling presence, His very life that He lives out in us, His power that gives us the ability to live the impossible life. The skit ended with the unsaved girl praying a prayer. I had written out what I was going to pray, but I just put the script in my lap and looked up to heaven and prayed what came from my heart in that moment. Tears came into my eyes as I prayed. I could hear sniffles from the room. Some of the girls were also in tears. God was touching their hearts.

This went along with the Bible lesson that Debbie had prepared, so after the skit, she passed out the sheets with the Bible verses and began to speak on salvation. Before she had gotten halfway through the lesson she had prepared, the door at the back of the room opened and a guard appeared. Thirty minutes had passed. Our time was up.

We were a little shocked, because before, in the old jail, they had allowed us as much time as we wanted. Now we were not nearly finished with our material, because after the Bible lesson, we intended to have a question and answer period where the women could interact with us. Kim especially always had questions.

Mom looked at the guard with her most cordial smile and said, "Do you think you could ask if we could have a little more time?" The guard hesitated, and then left the room.

"I have a question," one of the women in the second row said. Her name was Tina. There was a sense of urgency in her voice.

"When I came in here, I was so ashamed. I know God knows what I did, but I'm too ashamed to come to Him. How do I get past the shame? I've known Him all my life, but I can't bring myself to approach Him because I'm so ashamed. How do I deal with that?"

We just barely had time to squeeze in an answer before the guard came back and said that we couldn't have more time. We briefly talked about forgiveness and about how when Adam and Eve sinned, they were ashamed, yet it was God who sought them out, not the other way around.

The women all filed out the back door, and we were left alone in the front of the room. We thought that it was over. But as one of the women was leaving, she told us that they would be bringing another group to see us. Apparently there are two floors of women prisoners, and they have to bring each floor separately. We hadn't known this.

~ ~ ~

A few minutes later, the second group came in. There were nineteen of them. This time, they congregated towards seats at the back, and they all tended to sit far away from each other as well. When we sang, only one girl stood with us, and only a few of them sang along, but in low, muted voices. We had a word of prayer, and this time we asked for prayer requests. Several people asked for prayer for various needs, and we prayed. We had changed our plan slightly, knowing that our time was precious, so we only did the skit and skipped the Bible lesson (we had already given out our handouts to the first group anyway). We asked if anyone had any questions. Only one person did. These women were not as hungry or as engaged with us as the first group had been. Because we had been more efficient, we now had like 15 minutes to fill.

Mom spontaneously shared a brief exhortation on gratefulness that was very good.

Then I said, "Can I ask you all a question?"

A few heads nodded dully.

"We really love you," I said. "We want to treat you like royalty, and serve you, and wash your feet." The love of God was pouring into my heart and gushing out almost palpably as I said it. "But I'm new to this--this is my second time--and I'd like to get to know you. What are some of the ways that we could practically meet your needs? What are some things that we might not think of that would bless you?"

It was like an electric spark went through the room. I made eye contact with one of the girls. Her eyes were filled with tears. Love was working on hardened hearts.

"We just appreciate it that you come to talk to us," one woman said.

I knew there must be more. A sudden inspiration dawned on me.

"Can you all get mail?" I asked.

"Yes," they replied.

"How would someone send mail to you?" I asked.

"You have to write it on a postcard and address it to the jail. The postcard has to be completely blank on the front. It can't have a picture or anything." Then she added, with an eager, hungry smile, "But you can write with colored ink!"

(Colored ink. It is amazing how hungry for color the eye can get when you're inside the jail. The walls are painted a yellowish-beige color and the floors are dark gray concrete.)

"So would we address it to your name? Or do we need a number or something?" I asked.

"Our names," came the reply.

We used the back of one of the song sheets, and fifteen girls wrote their names on the list. The dull, uninterested atmosphere had completely changed. God had moved again in this second group in a completely different way than He had moved in the first--but in both cases, He was at work.

Thank you God!

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Follow-up posts:
A phone and a slice of bread
Multiplied Ministry Opportunities
The Skit

Avery

(Follow up to yesterday's post)

In the third cell we visited, one girl seemed different from the rest of the prisoners. She smiled a big happy smile at seeing us and immediately welcomed us into their midst. "Yes! Something different to do!" she exclaimed. She seemed like the kind of person who is always the life of the party, and I thought, "Wow, it must be nice to have her as one of your cellmates!" We sat down on the floor (a little awkwardly, I might add, because the ceiling was leaking and there were rubbermaid bins sitting around to catch the water. One of the bins itself had a big crack in the bottom of it and was propped up at an angle so that the water wouldn't run out of the crack) and introduced ourselves. Then she announced her name, "Avery," and several of the other girls said their names, following her lead. This was also a first. In the other cells, we didn't learn the girls' names.

We passed out the hymn sheets and Sally started the first hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross." Avery sang loudly and wholeheartedly, with a big smile on her face. Then we moved on to "How Great Thou Art," and Avery again sang with fervor and emotion. We were going to stop there, but there were two more songs on the printed sheet, and Avery begged to sing "I'll Fly Away." Sally said we would maybe sing two of the three verses, but when we got to the end of the second verse, Avery proceeded on undaunted to the third, so we all joined in with her. Then she convinced us to sing the last song, too, which was "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High." We had just begun when, overcome with emotion, she broke down in tears. When it was over, she asked for it again, so we obliged.

"Wow," I was thinking. "Here is somebody who is really hungry. I wonder if she became a Christian here in jail?"

Lois announced that we would have a word of prayer next and asked if there were any prayer requests. "Oh, I'll pray," Avery volunteered. So after receiving the requests, Lois allowed Avery to pray. She did so with loud abandon, sobbing out the needs to God, and ended with, "In Jesus name--In JESUS's name, Amen."

At this point Debbie said that we would begin the Bible lesson.

"Oh, I think we have a couple of Bibles that I could pass out," Avery offered. ("No, we don't," the other girls said.) She went to the table and picked up a few books, but they were not Bibles, so she put them back down.

"That's okay," Debbie said. "I have the verses we're going to be studying printed out here on this sheet." She handed out the sheets to the girls.

"Today we will be talking about hope and encouragement," Debbie began.

"You know, that's funny," Avery interrupted. "I was just thinking about hope this morning. And I knew that meant a baby had been born."

We all paused and looked at each other. Debbie continued.

"The Bible says that God is our refuge and strength. Isaiah 40:33 says, 'but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.' "

Avery interrupted again. This time she said, "You know, when I think about Jesus coming back, you know he'll have to come first as a baby, then as a child, and then as a man, and I'm not sure, but I think I have been sterilized one time when I was put to sleep against my will. So I would just ask for prayer for that. I  want to do my part to purify the human race."

Two or three of the other girls said, not too kindly, "Avery, we're here to listen to these ladies, not to you. Can't you hold your tongue for just a few minutes?"

"Ok, you're right," Avery agreed.

Debbie started in again on her material, but then Avery cut in again.

"You know, I reserve the right to do whatever I want to with my body, so when I get out of here, I'm going to cut off my right leg below the knee, have it amputated two inches below the knee..."

"Hush!" the other girls commanded.

Debbie tried again. She got about one verse read before Avery was at it again. This time it was something about how very, very painful her past had been, a boyfriend in New York, and "I don't care if I have to wait a billion years, I am never going back to being a man again."

The girls were beginning to lose patience with her. "Stop it. We are not here to hear you talk. Now let the ladies finish," they commanded.

Debbie read the next verse on her sheet. Avery took it upon herself to read the verse after that. Then she continued, "Now I also believe in reincarnation (major groan from the other girls at this point), and I believe that every person, every human being is born saved. We are perfect. We are little gods. We are like Jesus."

By this time, Lois and I were exchanging significant glances, and I asked a question with my eyes ("Do you want to say something?") and she mouthed the word, "you," so I launched in.

"Avery," I said as kindly as possible, "If you want to believe in reincarnation, you are free to make that choice. But I would just like to point out that God has revealed to us in his word what happens when you die." I opened to Hebrews 9:27 and read it. "'It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.' That means that you get one chance. The chance you get on this earth is your one chance. You are here alive today in this body, and this is your first and last visit to earth. You will have to stand before God at judgment day and give account to Him for what you did in this life, not any other."

"You're absolutely right," Avery said, looking me straight in the eye and nodding with conviction. "Yes. Yes. That's right. You're absolutely right," she said.

"And I also have to disagree with you about everyone being born saved and perfect," I continued. "The Bible says we are all sinners, separated from a holy God. Only those who put their faith in Christ will be saved."

"Yes," Avery said, nodding again. "Yes, that's right. You're absolutely right."

I paused to allow Debbie to go on with the Bible study. But it was Avery who read the next verse on the sheet, and the next, and on to the end.

At this point, Lois gave a stirring and passionate challenge to Avery, setting forth the truth in clear and certain terms. All the while, Avery was nodding seriously and saying, "Yes, yes. You're right. That's right."

When Lois was finished, Avery started to say something more when one of the other girls asked her to shut up. Avery stood up. "Okay. I'm finished. I'm just going to go over here now for a little while," she said. She left and went over to the bathroom.

All the girls started apologizing for Avery's behavior, and we said, "Oh, no, you don't have to apologize." But one after the other said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I asked one of the girls how long Avery had been in the cell with them. "About 3 hours," she said. "But I don't think she's getting ready to last much longer in this cell block." I said to the girls that I would be praying for them to be able to deal with that. Think of being locked in with a person like that...and being unable to get away from her.

I do worry for Avery, though--I worry that the girls will do violence to her. I don't know what circumstances she has suffered in the past for her to be the way she is, and if I knew what she had passed through, it would undoubtedly be a story to evoke compassion, not scorn or contempt for her. I pray for her. I pray for her future. I pray that she can be set free to be able to understand and accept the gospel. Join with me in prayer, will you? And may the God who is able to penetrate even the darkest cell and the most hurting heart do mighty wonders in her life.

I went to jail today.

The cell was painted a dingy yellow--a soul-killing, colorless yellow, and the trim was painted an equally soul-killing dark gray. The women's uniform was as unattractive as it could be--wide green and white stripes on a shapeless top and elastic waistband pants. The only variation came in the way some uniforms were severely faded from washing and others had seams fraying apart with only a few unskillful stitches holding them together.

15 beds were in the cell: five triple-high bunk beds made of gray steel. They were narrower than a normal single bed by about a foot, and most had no mattress--not even so much as a thin mat to sleep on. In addition to this, three women were sleeping on the floor due to overcrowding in the jail.

Two toilets were in a room off to the side. The only privacy was a falling-apart curtain that was so short, the curtain rod had to be placed at about chest level in order for it to cover any bit of the doorway. You had to duck under the curtain rod to get in the bathroom.

The women had white, pasty faces (no sunshine ever penetrated these windowless walls) unadorned by makeup. Their eyes had a hollow, hungry look, eager for a distraction, something new, anything to while away a few minutes. Each sat on her bed--her own little private space--and no one moved around the room or made conversation or tried to interact with one another.

There I was, in the middle of all this, dressed in my jeans and t-shirt with the bright orange and hot pink flowers. The guard had let me in, along with four other women, and had left, locking us in.

We were there to do a Bible study with the girls. We passed out song sheets, sang a couple of hymns, had a time of prayer, listened to Debbie teach a Bible lesson, and answered questions if the girls had any.

What a contrast we made--bright, happy, and allowed to walk out the door when we pounded on it to call the guard's attention.

We had been there about three hours and were in our last cell block when one girl wistfully asked, "What is the weather like outside today?" I looked around for the sky and realized there was no sky, no view of the outdoors, no tiny little crack to let in sunlight. It was just fluorescent bulbs--and I realized I had already forgotten what kind of day it was.

But oh! The glory of the presence of God that penetrates even to the deepest, loneliest cell. The girls were hungry for the Bible study. The guard would poke his head into a cell and say, "Y'all want a Bible Study?" We wouldn't be allowed in if they didn't want us. But we were never refused admittance--each time, a resounding "YES!" rose from a chorus of voices at the guard's question.

What an open door for ministry to hungry, broken, hurting people! When I prayed in the first cell, I felt the presence of God just rush into our midst, and hardened, grumpy, sullen-faced girls were suddenly sniffling audibly. Five of these same girls had raped a new prisoner just the night before (We met her in the fourth cell where she had been moved, and she told us the story, utterly traumatized and quivering with the memory of the abuse. I prayed for her, too, with my arms wrapped around her, pleading to my Abba Father to wrap His arms around her and bring her healing. Incidentally, though she was not the first victim, she was the first person ever to press charges for that, due to a system of intimidation and corruption that prevails within the prison walls. And though the whole thing was caught on camera, the guards did nothing to stop it until it was over.)

What a load of spiritual opposition confronted us, though! What a brazen, daring thing it is to walk right through the doors of one of the enemy's most formidable strongholds and presume to bring the light and truth of God's word there! (That story coming tomorrow.)

God's power has conquered Satan, has conquered death, and has conquered sin. By the blood of Christ, we have the right to march right into Satan's territory, flags flying, and expect to come forth victorious.

But it must be God who wins the victory. In ourselves, we are nothing. I have no strength to fight. I can't even see the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spiritual wickedness in high places--and if I blindly swung at them (what? my fists? a sword? they would laugh at me!) I couldn't possibly expect to hit them.

My weapon is prayer, and the battle takes place before I ever set foot on the drawbridge to Fort Despair. I prevail through the power of the Holy Spirit in fervent prayer, and pray until God assures me that the victory is won. Only then do I walk through the gates. Only then do I invade the enemy's fortress. Only then do I reach out to the unfortunate prisoners he has bound in chains of sin and death. My God is with me, and He is the one who can rescue the captive. I look to Him, depend on Him, and trust in Him for victory. Alleluia!

Valdemingómez

The road in

Arrow pointing to the right says "Vertedero," which means "dump."

Ironic: Above the head of the woman in the middle is the word "Cristo" (Christ) written in red graffiti.

The quality of the street goes down...

The black van on the left is a police van.

More police (the guys in the lime green vests)

Two police vans

Rubble from a broken-down house

The cross and the church

Ramshackle dwelling right up against the church