God for the Gang-bangers
This Week's Theme: Contagious Faith
Len Maselli
Thursday, November 9, 2000
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Key Bible Verse: "I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest" (John:4:35b).
Bonus Reading:Matthew:9:35-38
When I first started volunteering at the Cook County [Chicago] Juvenile Detention Center, I was very nervous about encountering the incarcerated. I thought that these gang-banging, gun-toting, drug-dealing youth would be the most resistant, hard-hearted souls I'd ever met. After all, the "nice kids" in the suburban churches I was part of weren't very interested in the things of God; so how much more uninterested would these troubled youth prove to be?
I was dead wrong.
These youths were sincerely eager to learn about God. All of a sudden [today's Key Bible Verse] came alive to me. I praise God that I found my field of human souls, ripe and ready for reaping.
From then on, I discovered, one day a week wasn't enough time to meet the requests from the youths for prayer and Bible study. After volunteering for three years, God chose me to be there full-time as a chaplain. Six days a week still isn't enough time to conduct all the Bible studies, counseling, prayer sessions and worship services. As chaplains in the criminal justice system, we desperately need the help of the local church. The fruit is ripe and ready to be picked!
Len Maselli in A Heart for the City Respond:
Are you assuming someone doesn't want God? Thought to Apply:
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
C. T. Studd (missionary to Central Africa)
Adapted from John Fuder, A Heart for the City (Moody, 1999).
NOTE: For your convenience, A Heart for the City is available in the ChristianityToday.com Shopping Channel. 1 of 1
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Lord, I pray you would use me to share Christ with one person this week.
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