Good Morning. Just got back from a Bill Glass Prison Ministry weekend in Montgomery, Alabama and I want to tell you all about it. I’m sorry, but this is going to be long, so I’m sending it in several parts. I know you’re busy. You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t read it, but I’m hoping you will. If you read nothing else, please read the last part.

On these weekends, the teams usually visit nearly a dozen prisons.  Men counselors go to men’s units. Women counselors go to either women’s or juvenile units. If you’re on a motorcycle you’re considered part of the “entertainment” and you could be sent anywhere. Still, it was unusual that I was sent to Tutwiler Women’s Correctional Facility. Usually only the bikers that are accompanied by their wives are sent to the women’s prisons. So three couples and myself rode in on Saturday morning to the prison yard, parked our bikes and waited for the women to come out and talk to us. I was the only one on a Harley and I went out of my way to make sure that the women HEARD our arrival. Hey, I was just making a joyful noise unto the Lord! Pulling my jacket off and removing my vest from it, I slipped it back over my sleeveless T shirt and found myself feeling thankful that Keith and Kevin had taken me under their wings and into the gym. I left my chaps on, prayed, and waited.

Tutwiler is a little unusual. Women serving all kinds of time are gathered there since it’s the only women’s prison in Alabama. There were lifers and women with DUIs doing time together. And upstairs in the unit, in a place I never got to go, was death row. We were there all day and we had a great turnout from among the 800 or so women there. Attendance to our programs was voluntary, but I’d say it looked like nearly all of them decided to attend. During our time there, the women got to hear David Scott and Len Cain, both former Atlanta Falcons; see a demonstration from Paul Wren, the world’s strongest man; listen to the Blues of Zach Reynolds; and hear how Harold Thompson had robbed over 10 banks and been sentenced to 105 years in Alcatraz before being given a presidential pardon and becoming active in prison ministry. I had the privilege of praying with 23 women who chose to make decisions for Christ! But there were three women that really touched my heart and I’d like to tell you about them.

Shirley is a black woman, probably around 50, who’s been there over 20 years. She’s doing life for killing her third husband. She told me that she’d become a Christian since coming to prison and that now she served in the chapel programs. She freely admitted though that needed help with her walk. Her anger was bothering her. She said that she found herself getting angry with God and then getting angry with herself for getting mad at God in the first place! She began to tell me her story. She’d been abused by her husband physically and emotionally for as long as she’d know him. Unable to take it anymore, one night, she ended his life. He wasn’t the first man to abuse her, she told me. She said that each of her husbands abused her, and that every man she had ever known as an adult had mistreated her as well. She came to realize in prison that perhaps many of her patterns as an adult had been shaped by her childhood. She accepted responsibility for all the poor choices and decisions that she’d made as an adult, but it was memories of her childhood that triggered her anger with God. She told me that when she was only six years old, her thirteen year old brother began a habit that lasted until she left home. He raped her whenever he felt like it. She was angry
because there had been no one to protect her, seemingly - not even God. She waited for my response. Where is God when a six year old cries for help? What could I tell her? God reminded me of a story I had read once in an email.

“Shirley, once there was a thirteen year old boy who was in a hospital, dying. He had an incurable disease and as his days became fewer, his pain became greater. Nothing however seemed to dampen his spirits. He was always cheerful and polite to the doctors, nursing staff, his family, and his friends from church. One day a nurse came and talked to him. ‘You’re a 13 year old boy. You’re dying. 13 year old boys aren’t supposed to die of incurable diseases. I don’t understand how you can always be so bright and cheerful. Aren’t you mad?’  ‘Of course I’m mad,’ was his reply. ‘But I can’t be mad at any of these folks. They couldn’t handle it. But you can bet I’m mad.’ ‘Well then who are you mad at?’ she asked.
‘I save my anger for the only person who’s big enough to handle it. I save my anger for God. And He says my anger is ok.’ This boy had no answering for our suffering Shirley, and I don’t either. But he knew and I know that God is big enough and strong enough to absorb all of your anger. It’s OK. Shirley, do you know what a two year old looks like when it’s throwing a temper tantrum?” She nodded. “It rages against it’s Mom and pummels her with tiny fists that can’t reach much above her knees. But the Mom doesn’t swat the kid across the room, she picks it up lovingly, and holds it and comforts it, and tells it she loves her precious little child. Shirley, you’re that little child. There is no amount of anger that will ever make God retaliate in anger. Nothing will ever separate you from His love. Right now, He just wants to pick you up and hold you. He wants to tell you He loves you, and He’ll never let you go.” I watched as this tired woman, this hardened criminal, this weary child began to cry softly, tears wetting her cheeks. As the tears poured out, God’s healing began to pour in. I hadn’t known what to say, but God had simply told me,
“Tell her I love her.”

I had heard about Judy from one of the other counselors and I was anxious to hear her story. I kept having to counsel other women though, and she and I could never quite get together. She was very understanding and we promised we catch up with each other later. Finally it was time for chow and I found her and asked if we could go in and sit together. She showed me how to get my tray and my drink and I sat down with Judy and her friend Linda. I’m not sure what kind of meat that was. It was the worst prison food I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve eaten a bunch. I could have skipped the meal. In a couple of hours I’d be back at the hotel and then I could eat anything I wanted. It broke my heart though when I realized that this was the only food Judy and Linda would ever taste - until one day they sit at their Father’s table, and eat the manna of heaven. I ate every bite.

I already knew this much about Judy’s story. She’d been on death row for sixteen years. She told folks she’d become a Christian right after her arrest, but as she waited on death row she became harder and meaner and more cynical. Appeals came and went, and still she sat there, waiting. Finally her last appeal was denied. Her hope was exhausted. She would die within the next 30 days. It was time to quit running from God. It was time to give up her anger and to become meek. It was time to make herself ready to meet her maker. Then something happened - something unexpected - something that had never happened in the history of the Alabama state women’s prison system. The governor granted her a stay of execution, her sentence was commuted to life. She had been spared! God was still in the miracle business! I wanted to hear all about it, but they don’t give you much time to eat in prison and somehow we never got around to it.

She told me that all the other prisoners would be envious that she and Linda were getting to sit with me. I was the one who felt honored. Something didn’t occur to me until much later, when I was on my way home. Most of the guards were women. In fact, I only saw one male guard in the whole facility. I was probably the only single, white, male they’d seen in years, and I might easily be the only one they would see for many years to come. As I rode home, I wondered if just for a second, maybe she’d fantasized that she was somewhere else. Instead of in a prison, maybe she’d been able to dream that just for a moment, she was in a nice restaurant in Atlanta, and that I was her date. Maybe that brought her a moment’s comfort. In spite of all I did that day in prison, maybe being her beau for that moment was the most important thing I did all day.

As we walked out into the yard again I asked her friend Linda if she was a Christian. Linda had been there a while also. Involved as an accomplice in a double homicide, she was also doing life. She had come to prison after a life on the outside that included among other things, drug use and bisexuality. She was fearful when she arrived and admitted that Judy had made her even more fearful. God works in mysterious ways though. She and Judy were now friends, and Judy wanted nothing more than to see the fire of Christ returned to her friend’s heart. Linda told me that she’d been a Christian for a while but that she’d given it up. It was impossible, and Christians had offered her nothing but condemnation. She quit, tired of being a “phony.” I asked her to tell me about how she’d gotten saved. I asked her if she’d been born again. She told me that she’d gotten saved in prison and was baptized and that yes, she had been born again; cut to the heart, she had given all of herself to Christ. I told her I had some news for her. The following words must have come straight from the Lord, because I was stunned as I heard them come out of my mouth. “Well then if you die tonight, you’re going to heaven anyway, so you’d just better get over it.” She looked shocked. Here when she had “tried” to be a Christian she kept hearing she wasn’t “good enough” from the other Christians. Now here was this crazy man telling her that right now, even though she wasn’t trying, she was going to heaven, not because of what she did, but because of who she was. She told me that when she first became a Christian, she was doing drugs every day (what’s available in prison would amaze you) and that she “had a woman.” She took her woman to church, because, as she put it, “If I left her in the cell, would it be like God didn’t know what I was doing?” I told her that it was wrong of the other Christians to condemn her, no matter what she was doing. I told her of Romans 8:1, that there is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! I told her that she had been saved by God’s grace; that He had saved her, and that it was His job to change her. I told her that her job was to try less, and to trust more.

“Try less?” “Linda, if you got down on all fours and growled and barked like a dog, would it make you a dog?”  “Well, no,” she admitted. “Because you were born a human, right?” “Right,” she said. “So who you are isn’t determined by what you do. Your identity is a matter of birth, and not performance. Right?” “I think so, well, yeah.” “You were a sinner because you were born a sinner. You are a descendent of Adam and you were a sinner before you committed your first sin. Your birth determined your identity. You got saved. You were born again. You became God’s child at that very moment, redeemed by the blood of Christ. Your identity changed the moment you were born again. You became a Christian at that very instant. You can die, but how can you be unborn? You can’t. God says in His word that, ‘My sheep hear my voice, NO ONE will snatch them out of my hand.’ You’re still a Christian whether you like it or not. When you asked Christ to be the Lord of your life and invited him to work in your life, He took that invitation seriously. Even if you’ve run from Him, He hasn’t run from you, and He hasn’t stopped working in your life even for a second.” We talked for probably an hour and in that time I learned a couple of amazing things about her. She didn’t get high anymore, and she no longer “had a woman.” I watched the light come on, as she realized that God had indeed been working in her and through her the whole time! God truly was, “Working in her to work and to will for His good pleasure!” He had changed the desires of her heart, slowly but completely. I began to watch her hardness melt away. 

“Well why did you come over and talk to me? No one else did. You got guts, I’ll give you that,” she said. “Why wouldn’t anyone else?” “I know the image you’re trying to project,” I told her. “You want to appear tough, you want people to be afraid of you. When I look at you with my earth eyes, they eyes in my head, I see the same thing. When I look at you with my spirit, I see something else - I see a hurt little girl. I have a little girl at home, and I know what it looks like when she’s hurt. You look just like her.” It was if I had just stripped her naked, and revealed the one thing she wanted to hide from the world more than anything else. She reached up to catch the tears that were trying to flow from her eyes and I remembered for the millionth time why bikers where dark sunglasses - so no one can see the tough guy crying. Linda renewed her commitment to Christ that day and we prayed. I also had the opportunity to pray that she would be healed of cancer, but I’ll save that story for tomorrow. In the end, I hadn’t known what to tell her either, but God had said the same thing, “Just tell her I love her.” Sharing the love of Christ was all I could do for these women, but the love of Christ was all they needed. Later, as I got ready to leave, Linda and Judy stood there and told me that I’d been hanging with the baddest of the bad. I told them that I didn’t see them as bad and scary, that when I looked at them all I saw was my two sisters. The world calls them criminals, riff raff, scum, but I know who they really are. They are children of the King - the greatest king the world has ever known - the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! They’re His kids. Period. They asked me to be sure and make a lot of noise when I left. They were lined up to go into the building as I cranked my Harley. Hundreds of women cheered as they heard Suzanne spring to life. Maybe for just a moment, their very spirits were joined to the thunder produced by the Milwaukee Iron. Maybe as the roar of my engine slipped over the walls, they, just for a moment, slipped over with it - to somewhere else, to a better place, all the way to heaven. I was the first one to mount up and I jammed the throttle open and popped the clutch. With a tremendous roar the bike leapt forward and I raced around the prison yard, revving the engine and breaking loose the back end. Finally I pulled up right in front of their lines and stopped. They roared and clapped and cheered. I have never felt like more of a hero in all my life. And I have never felt more unworthy. The only reason I was there, was that one day God had nothing better to do than to roll up his sleeve, reach down into the slimiest muck there was, and rescue me, redeem me, and change my life. I cried all the way back to the hotel.

After His resurrection, three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him. Three times, Peter said, “You know that I do Lord.” Jesus replied, “Then feed my sheep.” Knowing that man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, Peter went out and fed Christ’s sheep. He fed them the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news. He told them that the salvation of the Lord had come! I’m reminded of what God said in Isaiah 6:8.   “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’  And I said, ‘Here I am Lord, send me.”  Right now He knows you love Him, but will you feed His sheep?  Right now, He’s asking who will go? Will you?  “He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.’”  I have asked. Will you be the one to come?  Bill Glass comes to Atlanta in three weeks. There is still time to get your application in.