You can find unusual people in offbeat places who serve as spiritual partners. I have an African American spiritual guide named Ricco in the Wright County Jail. I look forward to our visits when I come into the jail Monday afternoons as a chaplain. We share our spiritual insights, but I think I learn more […]
“How do you see God, Brian?” I asked one of the men I mentor who is a new Christian. “He’s the Guy upstairs who I follow. He’s the one who created the world and me. He’s the one who died for my sins. I don’t know if I’m answering it the way you want. Why […]
Just before I stepped up on the stage to give chapel at the Adult and Teen Chapel in Brainerd, Minnesota, yesterday, a guy named Adam stood at the podium and everyone cheered. He was one of them returned. Adam told his story of going through the 13-month program there in the past and had been […]
I met with John again a week later. His face looked like he’d just been told his best friend had died. “What’s wrong, John?” I asked. “That getting rid of all the impurities in my heart and seeking all that’s true is really hard, Pat,” he mumbled. I smiled. “It’s more than hard, John; it’s […]
Some time back I was going through a spiritual dry spell during a time I had taken on two new clients in my business coaching and was editing a book that had almost as many errors as there were sentences in the manuscript (a slight exaggeration). In addition to this were the controversies over wearing […]
Danny is a real person I met in the Wright County Jail on two different occasions. The first time around, he was indicted on a bogus charge of rape by his girlfriend who wanted to get even with him for calling the cops after she hit him repeatedly while high and distraught. We prayed and […]
There was no doubt about his resolve, but the garden of his soul didn’t have the composition to carry it out. For too many years, it had been nurtured by himself, the world, and the evil one. As such, it was filled with poor soil, stunted plants, and an abundance of weeds. What Danny needed […]
Tony, an inmate in the Wright County Jail, asked me if I knew what it was like to be homeless. Could I personalize it? I’ve been away from home and lonely before, I’ve had times when money was tight, and I’ve been hungry before. But I’ve not been homeless. Before you start thinking, “Why doesn’t […]
If you want to watch one of Billy Graham’s early sermons, when he still had the thick Southern drawl of a North Carolina preacher boy, click on the link below. If you want to know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you’ll have direct evidence of it within a half hour. […]
Tony was released from jail last Saturday and had no place to go except his deceased father’s unheated home. It was 20 below that night, as Tony, draped with blankets, huddled in front of a small space heater. At 2 a.m. Sunday morning, he called a suicide hot line and told them he was freezing […]