Friday, January 18th, 2019
On Monday, January 14, I received this email from Ben, who, with his partner Steve, had this experience with a young man named Michael.
Hello Pat
I hope you had a great weekend. I was serving with Steve yesterday and after the meeting one of the men asked us if we knew how to get him shelter, food and clothes when he gets out. I know that Wright county has organizations that do that, other than Teen Challenge, but we didn’t know where to send him. We prayed with him and asked God to show this man what he needed to do. Our question to you is what is your advice on how we should have directed him?
Thank you and God bless you,
Ben
This was my message to Ben and Steve, last evening, after I had met with Michael that afternoon.
Dear Ben and Steve,
Your intervention (and I expect a healthy dose of prayer) in the life of Michael has resulted in two miracles.
Most importantly, Michael committed his life to Jesus Christ this afternoon at 4 p.m. in the smaller classroom in the Wright County Jail. As he said, of all the times in his life, after he had been broken and stripped of his pride with the arrest and jail, he was ready to become a believer. I explained the plan of salvation to him (I think you’ve seen me do that, Steve) and we prayed the ABCs of salvation together. I felt that your prayers for this young man bore fruit, both of you.
Remarkably, in God’s choosing of this young man, He intervened in his life (again, I expect with your prayers and intervention) to cut through a lot of red tape and bureaucracy and putting the right people in the right place at the right time. The Salvation Army will be coming to the Sherburne County Jail tomorrow to pick up Michael and bring him to their housing in Minneapolis. I told Michael to tell them he was saved today, and he just smiled. “I will tell them that first thing.” What’s remarkable about the Salvation Army opening up a bed for him is that it all happened in two days. A person named Amy had talked to Michael and told him she’d do everything she could to keep him from being out on the streets in Elk River tomorrow afternoon. And she did it (wink, wink, we know Who did it.)
So guys, chalk one up for the Holy Spirit with the help of you two in taking care of the physical and spiritual needs of Michael. He’d been asking to see a chaplain for the past two weeks, but I would never had seen him (I had others I needed to see) without your email, Ben, and your giving me his name and release date. That put an urgency on it. God is definitely at work in our midst and we got to see it. What a blessing!
In Christ’s glorious name,
Pat