Tuesday, February 18th, 2020
In last week’s blog I ended with this note: “I’ll tell you why Henrietta was such a delightful person to talk to and the deep, deep knowledge that she had of Jesus and His Father, given to her by….” So, here’s the rest of the story.
On January 23, 2019, Henrietta was born-again and baptized at the Shakopee Correctional Facility for women. As we talked for nearly an hour, I was struck that she was so grounded in her faith and had a knowledge of the ways of God miles beyond anything she could could have learned in a year. I mainly listened to her because I didn’t find anything in what she said that needed to be added to or corrected. She was downright bubbly about Jesus and what He meant to her. I think maybe captivating might be a better word. It was like I was listening to a preacher talk about how wonderful it is to follow Jesus after a lifetime of doing so.
Here’s a couple of Henrietta quotes I wrote down: “The more you entertain wrong, the more you will do wrong; and the more you entertain God, the more you will do what is right.” And,”If you don’t find something greater than you, then you’ll be right back in prison or jail or some other bad place.”
When I asked Henrietta where she learned so much about God and Jesus, she smiled and said, “Well, the Holy Spirit done a lot of teaching me in the last year, and my grandmother told me all about God and Jesus when I was growing up, and she done prayed for me for many a year.”
There you go. If there is someone in your family who needs praying to meet Jesus, don’t give up. I’ll bet that grandmother was pounding on the gates of heaven for years and years, pleading that her granddaughter would one day become a Christian believer. And I’ll bet she prayed even harder when Henrietta ended up in prison. And now her prayers were answered, and I was blessed to hear another story of God’s great grace that can change even the most reprobate of women and men.