God still ...

Luke 7: 42 -- "When they couldn't pay, the lender forgave the debts of them both. Which of them will love him more?"

I spent a weekend in prison, again, and I was amazed, again. God still is moving among his people.

We were a sad-sack kinda group, if you know what I mean. Me...bad back, knee screaming, heel yelling and a long, long bout of IBS (and if you take the time to look it up you will know it has nothing whatsoever to do with the IRS); one dear soul with a ticker that we worried might not keep ticking; a leader who followed and followers who led and all in all we wondered half the time what we were doing.

But as Andre Crouch wrote, "Through it all, through it all..." God still is moving among his people.

We sang, we prayed together and alone, we wept together and alone, we talked and we preached and we taught and we sought and through it all, through it all we bled together and we were resurrected together. One. Without out understanding or logic, we were one...prisoner and free men.

Two came to Christ as I reckon that term to me. Many had their walked deepened. We were the stooges 17, yet God still is moving among his people. We took a program that has a true, real method in its Pharisitical madness that has proved to be successful over a long period of time and broke it into inexplicable pieces and through it all, through it all God still is moving among his people.

The hard case, the man who couldn't read, the ones in prison a long time then one who has been in four years for driving drunk and killing his own little girl and on and on they came to the cross and if they didn't fall to knees they at least had to deal with its meaning and to a man God moved among them.

When it was done I went to the back of the chapel, stole, er, took down the banner that told us this was Kairos 13 at Raymond Correctional Center, March 22-25. I began to gently, carefully fold it and the weight of three talks and three chapel meditations and constant prayer and pain in all the wrong places and in a couple of right places began to hit me. My breath was shallow as I carefully removed two-sided tape from the paper. Then, then I broke down, knowing this as far as I can see it is my last one of these after doing four of the past five in a 2 1/2 year span.

I'm moving, away, far away and I won't see these men at reunions and I won't see the team again and on and on and on. Then, with tears rolling, and I mean rolling, that gut-wrenching, gut-grabbing kinda tears you get sometime, the kind you hide away from the others because even though we're free men we're supposed to be tough like these offenders are supposed ot be tough, I stopped. Thought stopped me like a guard at check-in or check-out.

God still is moving among his people, and that means I have no idea if this is the last time or the beginning of new ministry elsewhere. Maybe like many, he has need of me, true need of me, elsewhere.

I thought about Friday's talk, the one we failed to assign, the one I took because no one else seemed to want it. I was supposed to give it about 10:45. I went into the back of the chapel to be prayed for by a prisoner who never prayed but instead told me about his love of Christ, which was fine by me. As I was supposed to come out and "hit it," lunch arrived. It would be an hour before we got back to things and we sang some and all in all I began at noon. As I was talking, I suddenly realized that my folks who were assigned times on the prayer chain for sometime in the weekend, were assigned beginning at noon on Friday. So, the talk I wasn't supposed to give, the one I was supposed to then give about an 1:15 earlier was delayed till my churches could pray for me.

God still moves among his people. Do not doubt that. Do not ever doubt that.