A Little Bit Can Go a Long Way

  "Hey, I just want to say to you
that I'm very grateful that you've came into my

life at this point. For the very FIRST time I feel like I'm actually being helped or

guided and I just wanna add that it feels great knowing I have someone there for me who I can go to that really does care and doesn't make me feel like I can't say certain things without being judged or looked down on. So thank you for being there and supporting and believing in me. I know we only met this summer but I know you've been there more than my own family and I feel like God answered my prayers from jail by sending you to me when I asked him to help me stay strong. I truly believe that more every time we talk I feel like "wow he actually made me feel better" sorry such a long text but I wanted to tell you how much you really are helping me by just being there.

Can we please meet up in a few days and finish the talk we were having??

 Thanks for listening."  

   I want to share this text message that came to me yesterday. A fellow I had spent 30 minutes visiting with earlier in the day sent it to me.  He is a young man who has struggled with addiction issues and has lived through a lot of trauma in his childhood- he grew up in a very violent and unstable environment and has been in and out of prison for much of his adult life. I have met with him perhaps five times after he was referred to me earlier this year. What struck Lil and I is that his text shows that it doesn't have to be a big thing we do in order to be used by God to encourage someone. It isn't all that complicated to do and it isn't necessary that we have a lot of skills or knowledge to be an effective help in the lives of others. We can be used to bring hope to others as we take time, and motivated by God's love, and make ourselves available to gracefully listen. People who need someone to care about them surround us. Some of them are like the young man who sent me this text message; others perhaps carry burdens that are not so evident. I am sure many of you who will read this have been used in the lives of others in the same way (feel free to leave examples in the comments section). I want to encourage you to keep going, to remember how important it is to just give people time and to be present with them as they share what is going on as they try to survive life with its many twists and turns, ups and downs. For others, I want to help you see that you have what it takes to be that person who is an encourager, an influence for God and for good as you rub shoulders with the people He brings into your life. If God brings them into your life, He will also give you grace to show His love and be that encouraging presence. Lets be all ears!

"Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.” 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

Testifying

  I was recently reading in John 16 about the time Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit coming to testify about him. Then he also says: “But you also must testify about me because you've been with me from the beginning.”  This then is my attempt at explaining how God has brought me to where I am now, especially focusing on His intervention in my life to turn me around. As I publish this, my only desire is to help others deepen in their faith and appreciation for the work of God in their lives. 

   During my teenage years I made some decisions that took me down a path that could've been disastrous. I decided that God didn’t make sense so I began telling people, and living like, I didn't believe in Him. As I look back now, it was more that He got in the way of me doing and being what I wanted to do and be. What I wanted was to live for myself and derive as much pleasure in my life as I could. Was this a conscious decision? No, I just sort of went with the flow, looked around me and decided I would just join in with other people were doing. That decision let me into alcohol and drugs. I only every tried “soft” drugs such as marijuana, hash and mushrooms (only one time.) I remember being offered LSD and pills various times but declaring that I didn’t want to put “unnatural chemicals in my body.” I started with heavy drinking patterns on weekends with my friends. Our drinking always was accompanied by loud, hard, angry rock music glorifying rebellion and expressed through drunkenness, drug use and sex with no strings attached.

  I knew better than this because of my family background but I rejected all my parents talked about.  I just wanted to have fun. Because of my attitudes and behaviours, even though I completed high school, I never actually graduated. Weeks after my final year I began travelling. I was attracted to a lifestyle of freedom, hitting the open road.  The “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe, novels by Kurt Vonnegut and the lifestyle and philosophy of the Woodstock generation were my inspiration. This led me to a bohemian lifestyle of hitchhiking around Europe. To finance this I would work in Canada during the wintertime and as soon as I had enough money would leave. I wanted to get as far away from life in Canada as I could.  I hated my life and found it, and who I was, much more exciting on the road. I wasn't interested in sightseeing.  I wasn't interested in culture. I was seeking new experiences through new relationships, daily alcohol consumption and drug use. I remember more than once, when looking at my dwindling money supply, choosing to drink rather than buy food. That was my priority. I managed to stretch my time away from Canada longer and longer by picking up informal jobs and living as cheaply as I could- that meant camping out in parks at times, sleeping along the side of the road, in parks and train stations and for free at youth hostels where I would pick up janitorial work. I worked as a labourer at a construction site, in a restaurant for a few months, in a bread factory, at a corner store.

   After my 4th visit to Europe I realized that the old song was getting boring and the travelling life I sought was getting stale. It wasn't happening for me anymore. Even that “romantic” life on the road was becoming “the same old, same old.” Although it wasn’t from lack of trying, I wasn't capable of maintaining relationships because I was too self-centred. It really was all about me. My heart got broken a few times, and I returned to Canada knowing that Europe wasn't going to satisfy me. I kept on drinking, smoking and living my life centred on music and pleasure-seeking to escape the drudgery.       

   In terms of my spiritual life: I had dabbled in eastern meditation but really I was thinking and acting more like an existentialist. “So it goes” (Kurt Vonnegut) was one of my favourite phrases.  I was sliding into depression.  My outlook on life and the future was more shaped by negativism and pessimism than hope. I really didn't see much of a future. My “blueness” never led me to contemplate suicide but I do know that my journals reflected an inner darkness.  I didn’t think about the future because I had no idea who I was or where I was going. After returning to Canada the 4^th time, I knew I would not be going back to Europe for a 5th.  I was done.

   I joined a high school friend in his house in the country and found a job as a security guard. Punk music and its anger became part of my vocabulary. My job was unsuccessful and short-lived. I eventually got fired for consumption of drugs during my shift but not before I was involved in a pretty significant car accident.

   My friend and I had closed out a bar that night. As we got into the car to drive home we were very drunk. Drinking and driving was something that wasn’t foreign to me at all- I had grown up doing it, living out in the country as we had. Many times as teenagers, our only entertainment was to buy a “case of 24” and drive around with music blaring, using traffic signs and country mail boxes as targets for our empties. March 4, 197_ was a different night. Ontario had only recently brought in the, what I considered invasive seat belt law.  I did not obey it.  My rationale- no gov’t was going to tell me what to do. That night, as inebriated as I was, I remember clearly the powerful sensation telling me to “put your seat belt on.” That night, for some reason, I obeyed that voice and I did.  On the way home we hit a patch of ice on the road and the car spun out of control, flipped over a number of times and ended up wrapped around a telephone pole off the road. It all happened so violently and so fast and then there was silence, broken only by the unconscious moans of my friend. We were sideways; my feet had broken through the front windshield and were lying in a puddle of icy water in the ditch. I was alone with my thoughts and unable to move, trapped by that seat belt.  I didn’t feel any pain but I knew we were way out in the country and it was the middle of the night. I was trapped and couldn’t move. At that moment I prayed: “God, if you are there, I don’t want to die right now.” Eventually the fire truck and ambulance arrived and we were cut out of the car. There was concern for a gas explosion as they used a blowtorch to cut through the metal and extract us. One of the ambulance drivers told me: “We were told by the person who reported the accident that there were two dead guys in this car.”

   After a couple of painful weeks in the hospital with a cracked pelvis and bruised spleen, I was released.  My friend suffered a broken neck but we both recovered fully from our injuries. I look back now and wonder where my head was. It wasn’t more than a couple of months later that I remember driving into Hamilton under the influence of substances and thinking to myself: “Tim are you stupid or what!” 

    After I recovered completely and was able to get a job cutting sod, my mind started wandering again.  I had itchy feet and wanted to go back on the road.  I chose California as my destination because of a friendship I had made during my European years. That didn’t develop well and I soon found myself hitch-hiking around California alone. I went to San Francisco.  There I hooked up with a couple of other backpackers lost in the city and we got on a bus to find somewhere on its outskirts to pitch a tent.  The driver of the bus told us there were no campsites in the direction we were headed but another passenger, hearing we had no where to sleep, offered a space on his floor and breakfast along with it. He told us we had to agree to be on a panel the next morning at his class, and to “represent the counter-culture in America”.  We decided we would. Little did we know he was a Catholic priest and was teaching at a seminary in San Francisco.  His students came from a variety of different religious backgrounds and the next morning we found ourselves behind a table, facing them and their questions about our lives and beliefs. They asked us about our lifestyle and beliefs. I remember two questions that, although I answered them quickly and definitively, caused me problems.  The first was: “What do you believe about God?”  My response: “I don’t believe in God.”  My response seemed fake to me as the image of me being trapped in the car and calling out to Him came to my mind immediately.  The second question was: “What do your parents think about your lifestyle?”  My answer to that was a curt: “I don’t care what they think.” That was a lie too.  It went through my head like a flash- “they have never hurt you. They have never done anything but accept you and support you. You do care what they think.”  I left that room that day feeling uncomfortable with myself, like a hypocrite, and realizing my life was a farce.    

   I returned to Canada and managed to land a job in Brantford.  It was a tough one, working with children who were living with significant disabilities. It was a dirty job as it entailed cleaning their messes daily. It was a depressing job because it seemed to me that the kids I was working with weren’t going anywhere and had a pretty grim life ahead of them. I was living alone. It was Brantford, ON (apologies to any Brantfordites who may read this). I fell into a deeper depression and I felt the walls closing around me.  I could see no way forward. One Sunday I went to visit my parents and they had invited the speaker from their church for lunch.  After we ate he and I went to do the dishes and ended up having an important conversation. During our time he asked me: “Do you believe in God?” I quickly replied, (but again with the image of me trapped in the car in my mind) “No, I don’t”. He came back with: “Have you ever given God a chance?”  Faced again with my hypocrisy I had to acknowledge that I probably hadn’t and he challenged me to buy a Bible and begin reading in the book of John.  I told him I would, and I did.

   Initially, as I read, my attitude was “Yeah right. This is garbage” but then I remember clearly that I had said I would give God a chance, so as I sat in the crook of a tree along the Grand River in Brantford, I prayed: “God, if you are there, I want to give you a chance.”  After that things began to change and that book, the Bible, began to speak to me.  I don’t know how I ended up in Isaiah but I read a verse there that repeated itself two times: “There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked.” That verse hit me between the eyes.  I realized that what I did not have and that I had spent years seeking without finding it was peace.  I wanted inner peace.  I wanted to feel good in my skin.  I wanted to rest from the endless and fruitless pursuit of it through relationships, music, drugs and alcohol. I came to understand that it was only by getting right with God that I would find it.  I began to see as I read Jesus’ story that he came to give me peace: first of all with God, and then from that-inner peace. As I observed the response of those early disciples to Jesus and His words to them, I also came to understand that Jesus came to not only save but also give life a purpose. I was convinced about the person of Christ through my reading of John and through Frank Morrison’s book: “Who Moved the Stone,” an exploration of the historical reality of His resurrection from the dead. After a few months I got down on my knees and said: “God, I can’t fight you anymore. I am sorry for all the time I have wasted. I want you to take control of my life, I want to live for you.”

    Since then, I have been seeking God, through His word, through prayer and through His people, the church. I struggle with some of the same issues even now, at 56 years of age. I am selfish.  I am proud.  I want to be noticed. What people think of me is too important and can influence what I do and say. I still have issues with my thought life. I am judgmental of others. I am disappointed with my spiritual maturity and depth- I figure I should be much more like Jesus after 33 years of following Him. But, I do remember where I have come from.  I do remember clearly the emptiness of trying to make it without Him in my life. I do reflect on how He kept me and how He “got” to me. I am eternally grateful to Him for giving me peace, and for filling my life with purpose as I seek to put Him first and do what He has asked me and all of His followers to do: Luke 9:23: Deny myself, take up his cross daily and follow Him and to: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”

  This is a verse that challenges me every day: 2 Corinthians 5:15 “He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

  I am ever thankful for His forgiveness and patience, fruits of His love for me. I depend on them each day as I stumble along. God has used and is now using many people to influence, teach and guide me.  And now, I have the wonderful privilege of having others inspire me as I watch them struggle for recovery and progress in their lives in my role in aftercare with New Life Prison Ministry (http://www.nlpm.com/). I want to learn from everyone who crosses my path- many have much to teach and I know I have much to learn. 

How Amazing is it?

     

     I have been thinking about grace and its power to change how we see ourselves and therefore how we live.  God teaches us often through the people He brings into our lives. I want to talk about my relationship with a man that I have gotten to know even before I started in street support with New Life Prison Ministry.  I first met him at a soup kitchen and when I did I could see in him someone who had a very dark life.  It wasn’t just the ominous tattoos on his shaved head and all down his neck and arms, he also had a hard face and cold, aggressive eyes. He was obviously there that day to make connections with other known drug users and many seemed to know him. I remember throwing up a prayer that day:  “Lord, I want to get to know that man.”  He seemed very, very far away.

    He and I did meet months later, when he came looking for me with two friends, a man and a woman.  They were high on something when they came to my office.  They were boisterous; laughing at their own private jokes, loud and crude.  They asked me for help in finding them an apartment.  The two men told me they had just been released from prison and were homeless.  The woman with them seemed obviously unhealthy, very thin and unsteady on her feet. I told them I couldn’t help them that day but would be thrilled to do so the next day when they were sober and we could work together.  They didn’t come back. In fact, it took my friend about a year or so before he eventually did return and ask me for support to make the changes he wanted to make in his life.

    It is now two years later and a lot has happened. There have been many ups and downs in our relationship but slowly trust between us has grown.  A lifetime of addictions, deceit, violence, theft and incarceration has meant a great deal of instability in his life. People from his past who seek him out easily influence him. He has been re-arrested two times, relapsed many, many times, been housed and then lost his housing one time and lives under the constant threat of eviction in his new place. Each day he walks a tightrope of recovery and could easily fall off. Looking at him from the outside and you might not see much change. Something is happening on the inside though. He is using less street drugs.  He has been in his own apartment now for almost 2 years, the first time he has been able to hold onto an apartment for decades.  It has been over a year since his last arrest and he is coming to the end of his probation time. He is lucid and alert much of the time, able to paint, reading books again. 

   Last week things took a turn for the worse and I thought we were done.  I got a call from the hospital telling me he was in emergency, bloodied and high on drugs.  By the time I got to the hospital he had been discharged and had started walking back to his apartment.  I drove the route but didn’t find him until I pulled into his parking lot. He had just arrived at the front door and was standing outside: shirtless, unsteady on his feet, one pant leg ripped off.  I have no idea how he made it back safely. He hadn’t remembered walking home and thought I had driven him from the hospital and that his keys were in my car. It was obvious he had been in a fight as the corner of his eye was cut and a thread of dried blood wound its way down from the gash to his jaw. He was angry, as he couldn’t find the key to get into his apartment. The people in his apartment responded to his yelling and banging and opened the door for him. I followed to make sure he was going to be okay.  Once in he went right to the coffee table and started preparing another pipe to smoke. His “guests” then became acutely aware of my presence and yelled at him to stop. He yelled at me to leave, so I did.

     I left that scene pretty certain that our relationship would never be the same, that we had crossed a line and that he was lost again to that lifestyle of addictions and crime.  I felt defeated and was resigned to the fact that he was going to lose his housing and that all the other progress he had made would be reversed.

     I have been taking him to church for a number of months now.  Most people in the community who know him are amazed that he is going.  I wouldn’t say he exactly blends in or that he even really understands everything said and done, as church is such a foreign environment for him. He sometimes comes and sleeps through the sermon but most times is attentive. He tells me he feels good there, enjoys the music and the Bible messages.  He attributes his most recent bout of stability and near-sobriety to God and his daily prayers to Him.  He tells me that God has made the difference this time for him. I felt that this was over because of what had happened and the condition I had seen him in during the week. How could I go back this coming Sunday and expect him to join me again?  Would he feel ashamed?  Would he feel he had let me down and therefore distance himself? Would he feel like giving up because he had failed?

    I had decided I wasn’t going to “bother” him that week about joining me in church. Then, on Sunday morning, I felt God directing my heart a different way and I changed my mind as I was driving.  I decided that I would drive by his house just on the off chance that he was ready and willing to go to church.  I said to myself: “I don’t want to be the cause of his giving up on God and on himself.” As I pulled into his parking lot I was very surprised to see that he was there, waiting for me, with one eye purpled and the cut above it still swollen and scabbed. In the car we talked about what had happened a couple of days before.  He acknowledged that he wasn’t doing very well and was allowing others to influence him.

   The message spoken by the preacher that morning touched on who we are in Christ.  He spoke about faith in Jesus that brings about new birth. He highlighted the truths about us being a new creation and how the weakness and sin of Romans 7 doesn’t define us anymore, but that we live in the truth of Romans 8 and the power of the Holy Spirit in us to live up to our new reality in Christ. He spoke about us seeing ourselves, as we are, a new creation in Jesus; “the old has gone, the new has come.”  As I looked at my friend my question was: can that message of a grace that totally transforms us and changes for eternity our destiny really work for someone so enslaved by a lifestyle of defeat? Can that message be powerful enough to empower my traumatized, addicted friend to see himself differently and live in his new reality?   Can I believe that God’s grace is sufficient for him and will see him through to a life that glorifies God? Can I treat him and others I meet with the same grace that I experience? I said to my friend: “It doesn’t matter how much you have failed during the week- I never want to hear you say that you feel too ashamed to come to church, because God will never close the door on you. He will never give up on you. He loves you that much.” In the car, as I drove him home afterwards, we listened to a song by Big Daddy Weave from the album “Come to Life” called “Redeemed.”  It seemed appropriate.

   (see it at http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=0BBCCCNU )

“Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son
Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, now I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, I'm redeemed

All my life I have been called unworthy
Named by the voice of my shame and regret
But when I hear You whisper, "Child lift up your head"
I remember, oh God, You're not done with me yet

Because I don't have to be the old man inside of me
'Cause his day is long dead and gone
Because I've got a new name, a new life, I'm not the same
And a hope that will carry me home”

  I must believe the message of the grace of God that has transformed us. It is what gives us cause to hope.  Can we live in the reality of that grace that allows us to live up to what we have already been made? 

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

1 Corinthians 15:10 (NIV)

Prayer for April

     

Ever need others?

  

    Dear friend:
       This psalm is a prayer of David.  We are told he wrote it while trapped in a cave, hiding from those who would kill him.

Psalm 142:7

Set me free from my prison

that I may praise your name.

Then the righteous will gather about me

because of your goodness to me.

       I was thinking about the confidence he expresses to God, that once he is freed, God’s people will gather around him to support and encourage him.  How much we all need this.  I think of the people God has surrounded me with, and others that He brought into my life for a season.  I think of family, both immediate and extended who loved me even at my worst and have always supported Lil and I in our attempts to serve God.  I think of leaders and co-workers who have shown us what it means to be loyal to God and to put Him first in their lives, sometimes very sacrificially.  I think of our dear friends in Guayaquil and other parts of Ecuador who taught us so much about perseverance and faith.  The times that I have felt alone have been very few in my Christian life.  Who has been an important part of your life and been an encouragement to you? Lets give God thanks for those who have “gathered about us.”

     At the same time, lets remember that we too are called to “gather about” those around us who God has set, and is setting free.  He can use you and I to encourage and build up others as we show His love to those who are emerging from a place of darkness and hopelessness- and this can find its expression in many different forms: depression and other mental health issues, addictions, broken relationships, and yes, prison.  God is working in the lives of many- how can you and I be a part of what He is doing?  Lets not let fear stop us.

     Lil and I want to thank you for your support, and the love you show us as you “gather about us” either in prayer, words of encouragement or through your financial support.  

Prayer:

1/ I am visiting Guayaquil after almost 3 years from April 22-May 7. Pray that God give me wisdom for use of my time.  There are many people to see and many conversations to have. Pray that God will use me to encourage both the church and the school workers in Bastion Popular.  Pray for Lil too as she “holds the fort” in Cambridge.

2/ Give thanks for Michael, Darryl, Rob, Chris, Mark, Ben, William and others who are doing well, connected with churches, encouraged in their faith. There are many men and women who God has allowed me to get to know through the Aftercare ministry at New Life Prison Ministry- pray that their lives will help others to trust in Jesus Christ as He works in them.

3/ Pray for wisdom for us as we support others going through complicated and difficult times

4/ Pray too that God will open doors for this important aftercare work to grow and develop

      In Christ’s love, Tim and Lil

  For more thoughts on how we can “gather about” check out my blog at: http://timhorne.blogspot.ca/2013/03/thoughts-on-gathering-about.html

If you feel God is encouraging you to give financially: contact Lil or I at 519-653-4136 or New Life Prison Ministry at 519-666-1950 or info@nlpm.com

Follow @NLPMAftercare on Twitter for daily prayer requests from the ministry

  

Thoughts on "Gathering About"

Psalm 142:7

Set me free from my prison,
    that I may praise your name.
Then the righteous will gather about me
    because of your goodness to me.

I met with a man in prison a week or so ago now.  He had requested a visit to discuss his discharge plans as he nears his release date. During his time in prison he had come to understand more about who Jesus is and how his life will be transformed if he trusts Him and seeks to follow Him. He has no church to call “home”.  It will all be new. I told this man I would do a bit of research into different options near where he will be living after he leaves prison. I checked into a few places and wrote an email to one that seemed that it might be a good fit. In my note to one of the pastors,  I introduced New Life Prison Ministry (http://www.nlpm.com/).  I explained that my role as Director of Aftercare is to help men and women leaving prison find a community of Christ-followers where they can grow and contribute.  I then shared a little bit about the man I had visited and his needs.  I asked if he thought the church would be willing to welcome him. Here is his encouraging response:  “Absolutely, I would love to speak with you this week and get some information and find out how I could connect with him. No fears or worries, this is what the people of God are supposed to be anyway.” 

    I don’t for a moment believe the transition process is going to be easy for this church, or for the individual trying to fit in, but the initial attitudes are positive and good. I look forward to meeting with the pastor and talking about how the church can do its job. There may be some training and follow-up involved.  One thing I am sure of though, for this to work, there are going to have to be realistic expectations on both sides. 

   No church is or ever will be perfect and the “returnee” must understand that we are all just trying to survive sometimes and can’t respond to every need the moment it arises. The “returnee” also must understand and take ownership of his/her own walk with Jesus.  There are things that no one can do for us and that we must accept responsibility for. Having a supportive church doesn’t mean I have no responsibility to take care of my own relationship with God.  Being disappointed with a church also doesn’t give me an excuse for giving up, it really just means I need to keep on looking for that place that meets my needs as a growing Christian and offers an opportunity to serve. 

   For the church, it is critically important that “patience” and “mercy” be evident in our dealings with men and women either coming out of prison or out of a lifestyle that has enslaved them. It takes time to change.  It takes time and it takes failure. There are many stops and starts. It involves going through setbacks and successes. When we as Christians forget just how patient and merciful God is with us then impatience and judgment can set in and ruin the restoration process both for the “returnee” and the church that opened its doors to her/him. I am so thankful that God doesn’t give up on me- how can I give up on someone else? As Christians we must overcome despair and discouragement and believe that God can redeem and restore.  Our role is to “gather about” those who have trusted Jesus for release from their prison, whatever that prison may be.