A World Wide Prayer Request: One Day A Sower Was Observed As He Sowed His Seed.
Devotional Reading: Matthew 13:1 - 9
Well, it has been five months since I have last posted to my Blog. It has been a long time since I have found the time to be able to sit down at my computer to jot down some thoughts in the name of God. The long and the short of it is that over the course of the past year, I become more and more heavily engaged in actively participating in the Kairos Prison Ministry (http://kpmifoundation.org/index.php) here in the state of Maryland where I reside (http://www.marylandkairos.org/). From March 27 - 30, 2014, I will be going 'inside' Maryland Correctional Institute (men) Jessup for the third time in the past year with a group of 38 Christian men from across the denominational spectrum to share with the 42 in house resident participants, the awesome grace and agape love of God over a 72 hour period.
Three years ago a seed was sowed in me by a very good friend of mine who is now leading the team in. He told me "It would be wonderful if I would go to prison with him one day." We spent the next three days together and all he could talk about is how wonderful it would be to join him in prison!" I can guess what you might be smiling about right now because it was the same thing I was smiling about ...he wanted me to become his cohort, his confidant in planning in and carrying out some crime spree, throw our 10 commandments tablets down like Moses did at Mount Sinai, and engage in some wild (and illegal) revelry! I could tell he was being quite serious about his intentions for my ruining my life. I tried to laugh it off politely, ignoring him and his scheming. However, it was just too late.
I finally took him serious enough to ask him what he truly meant about joining him in prison. This is when he introduced to me the Kairos Prison Ministry program. He explained it to me in some detail. How a group of men enter into a Correctional Institution to minister to the residents there. What they did was spend 72 hours testifying to them of the love of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit they experienced in their own lives. At the end of the weekend, the resident participants had accepted the love of God into their hearts. To a man, they each professed Jesus Christ as their personal Savior! I was visibly stunned by this revelation. God goes into prisons? God's grace behind the razor wire? It was the last place I ever thought I would deliberately and/or intentionally find myself entering into.
I took two classes in prison ministry, and found that God was repeatedly calling out to me, talking to me like He did Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1 - 10) though revelations and His holy Scriptures. Then I heard someone testifying to their own 'seeding' experience and I realized, that like Samuel, my heart was captured by God's voice calling out to me: "Here I am, Lord! Speak, for your servant is listening." One year ago, I participated in my first Kairos Inside Teaming experience at Jessup (MCI J #1). It was the most eye opening experience in my Christian journey. My previous expectations and those preconceived notions about the residents were transformed. I witnessed the agape love of Jesus Christ wholly transform the hardened life of a gang banger, someone struggling mightily with their belief.
I went back a second time this past December (MCI J #2) and witnessed a 28 year old gang banger hardened by life on the streets of Baltimore, testify to just receiving a 50 year sentence, then instead of joining his 'gang in the yard' to continue his life of hardness, join us and then profess Jesus Christ as his personal Savior by the end of the weekend AT THE VERY REAL RISK OF HIS VERY LIFE!
This was God at work in the life of these men incarcerated behind miles of razor wire and high walls. I had never seen the like of it before and I realized that if I had not been obedient to the call of God on my life I would have never seen it at all and inspired to change my heart about the current state of humanity, inspired to let God have more spirited access to my mind that it might be transformed too.
But now the big question I feel I must answer. Why use the Parable of the Sower instead of the more familiar and traditional passage from Matthew 25:34 - 40? First: Prison Ministry is Ministry people might associate with anyone of the first three types of ground mentioned in the Parable associated with ground that is best left avoided. It is a difficult and highly challenging field to try and sow in. Most people would go straight to the types of soil that will yield 30, 60, 100 fold of God's blessings, will yield all kinds of very obvious and acceptable fruit for the onlookers to marvel and wonder at. But then I would have to call your attention to the third verse "Behold the sower went out to sow;" It is rather obvious by reading this passage that the Sower - God sowed His seed on ALL three grounds!
Why would the three other soil types even be mentioned by God? Would it not simply be that much simpler on the hearts and hands and back of the readers of the future to go straight to the easy soil to immediately get their manifold blessings? I mean who of us or the ancient Israelite would start their fields deliberately in grounds that are manifestly unworkable or more difficult to work at all? Mission
and ministry fields are no different than the types of soils mentioned. Some like Prison Ministry are genuinely overlooked because their soil is all rocky (high walls), or filled with 'birds' hovering around the prison yard stealing the hope of a life transformed by the Living Word and Agape' love of God. It is NOT mentioned nor implied by Jesus that these 'unworkable', 'undesirable' grounds not be worked.
This is what we are doing at Jessup. Working those most difficult of soils to bear a harvest of souls for the Lord who is Salvation for all who come to know Him and confess Him as their own Savior! With God's grace and by His infinite mercy we starting the seeding process of a brand new garden in the Maryland Correctional Institute at Jessup. We plant the seed with the Living Word of God. We water the ground with the Living Water of Abundant life found only in and through Jesus Christ. It is here where I am asking the Body of Christ for support of our prayer vigil which is posted below. I am asking that members of the Body come together in 1/2 hour sacrifices of their time. One half hour in which they too may become participants in the preparation of the hardened soils (participants hearts).
http://www.3dayol.org/Vigil/GetVigil.phtml?pvid=8990&commid=1937
Thank you all for your prayerful attention and consideration.
Tom Meyer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rOoqzVLkw
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