Prison Freedom?

As the Folsom Prison stop on our book tour approaches, thoughts of past prison visits flood my mind.  I have been invited and spoken in numerous prisons.  My memory of these events serves me well.  They are as planning points; navigational points to know what to do and what not to do.  When I go into a prison I have to sign a waiver that states, ‘I understand that I cannot be used as a bargaining tool.  If taken captive or held hostage, the prison officials will not negotiate for my safe return’. 

The first few times that I went into speak, it was kind of sketchy.  But once inside, I realized there are so many men and women who made a mistake and got caught.  Some are just like you and I; good people who just made a mistake.  Some are more serious mistakes.  Some are mistakes that you and I have made.  Think about it.   Have you ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong friend?

A bar room scuffle that went bad…

An auto accident where someone was seriously hurt…

An decision that was ethically wrong…

When I am speaking is a prison and looking through God’s perspective, I realized that because I have transgressed His perfect will for my life, I too have been guilty.  You are guilty.  We are all guilty.  Because of bad decisions, bad relationships, addictions, abandonment, pain, problems, [fill in your issue here], we have all been in a bad position, held in a proverbial prison.  It just was not behind bars.   Being held is bondage.  Losing freedom is crippling.

On a recent prison ministry day, I had a God moment with an incarcerated individual.  I had just finished speaking and a gentleman in his mid-forties stood to the side waiting for me to reach him.  The line of waiting inmates was 10 or so deep.  It would be a bit.  Patiently, he waited; and waited.

When I got to him he smiled and immediately opened up and told me part of his story.  Addiction, violence, abuse, and rejection lined his mind as he told a concise story of crime that led him to prison.  Then he said a few words that stunned me.

Pause and prepare to read his last statement a few times.

“Jason, I need to tell you, I had to go to prison to be set free.” 

His statement was ironic and strange, poetic and a paradoxical.   His words moved me.  The very thing that he hated and avoided was the tool that God used to help him get his mind cleared.  His problem and his incarceration brought him to a place where he could no longer escape the love of God.  In prison, he gained the freedom he had always wanted.  He said it, “I had to go to prison to be set free.”

Look at your problem differently.  Maybe a slight adjustment to your vantage point could change everything. 
Prison freedom?  It is only possible because Jesus loves crooks.

Peace to the prisons,

Jason

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