One of the men at Forging Freedom, a Christian sober house in Buffalo where I conduct a Bible study on Thursday evenings, got married two weeks ago. That may not seem remarkable to you, but it is. You see, Joe had been a meth addict for the past 20 years, up to two years ago […]
The Zoom screen opens up, and there’s Ricco, an inmate at the Wright County Jail I meet with once a week. “How did things go for you this past week?” I ask him. “Not good, Pat, not good. I let myself be overcome with all my problems (Ricco is facing up to 28 years in […]
Monday afternoons are my chaplain times at the Wright County Jail. I had been at the jail on Sunday for a Gideon Bible study. That Sunday (two days ago) only four inmates signed up. One of them was Corey. He was somewhat knowledgeable about the Bible, but I had a feeling that he wasn’t saved […]
The difference between the inmates I chaplain and us is that our sins dirty our souls and theirs put them in jail. This blog is from Ricco, a believer in the Wright County Jail whom I have come to know and love. “You ask me how I can be a believer and get myself in […]
This is a poem written by an inmate I’ve been visiting in jail. It will give you a glimpse of how men and women end up in jail and then turn to Jesus. Dangerous shortcuts I’ve taken all my life,They led me down lonely roads, ending with lots of strife.This is the enemy’s strongest tool,It […]
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. […]
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to […]
As we start a new year, we look to our past sins and say, “I will do everything well this next year, or at the very least I’ll do a few things better than I did last year.” Let’s look at what Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to say about that. “The evil fruit of my sin […]
I smiled. “Absolutely. And do you love God, Danny?” [Should be Jeremy] I inadvertently used the name of another inmate I’ve worked with along the same lines.
David Wilkerson, the author of The Switchblade and the Cross and the founder of Teen Challenge, was a modern-day prophet who died in a car accident on the plains of Texas nine years ago. I have a book of 365 selections from his writings, entitled GOD IS FAITHFUL that I use for one of my […]