Friday, April 20th, 2018
You’ve all heard of Doubting Thomas in the Bible. Well, yesterday I met Believing Thomas at the Crow Wing County Jail in Brainerd, Minnesota. He’s an inmate there who attended one of my presentations on How To Stay Out of Jail. He sat with his arms crossed, expressionless, not saying a word for 50 minutes. I wondered if I was getting through to him at all.
Then with ten minutes to go, after I had drawn the plan of salvation on a whiteboard, Thomas spoke. I can’t remember all he said, but it went kind of like this, “Whatever we do to stay out of jail, we fail. Whatever we try to do for God, we can’t do it. Even being saved is beyond our reach.” The other inmates were hanging on his every word; so was I. “It’s only through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that we can succeed at anything.”
I talked about Thomas with my last group of the day. One man said how much Thomas had helped him understand the gospel. The others nodded.
I thought of the song played during chapel at the Central Lakes Adult and Teen Challenge facility three miles away, where I had given the morning message – In Christ Alone.