Christmas Goody Bags distributed

The Weidner clan during assembling

As part of my ministry at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, I serve as president of our Chaplaincy Advisory Group which meets the second Monday monthly.  

We support all the 33 ministry groups serving at the RJC under trhe direction of Mary Ann Morbley, the programs director at the RJC.  

For the past several years, the CAG has sponsored a Christian Goody Bag distribution to the 700 inmates and officers. It is amazing how genuinely touched and appreciative the men and women are when we pass out the lunch sack size bags.  

Merv Weidner, one of the chaplains, and his family come in to assemble the bags.  A group of elementary classes from Kentview Christian School color the bags.  The supporting ministries brought in candy, cookies, and crackers and the CAG provided additional items.  One of our board members worked with area grocery stores to provide candy items.

I was privileged to assemble some extra bags and distribute the bags with Chaplains Dick Rothlisberger and Mary Rutter to several of the units.  I have been able to follow-up with inmates for one-on-one Bible studies and visitation.

Real repentance in prison ministries

Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent

 Over December and the Christmas season, I am serving faithfully at the Regional Justice Center in Kent.  I've been back from the short-term missions trip to Rwanda and Burundi in Africa for a little more than a month.

John, an inmate at the RJC, who I shared with earlier this week.  His journey with Jesus began when he was 18.  He's 40-something now and his story is constantly intertwined with drugs and alcohol.  He's in jail now because while he was drunk he struck his two children and frightened his wife.  

He doesn't get it.  I repeated, "You abused your family...that is abuse...that was violence."  He said, "but it wasn't a crime...I pushed them with an open hand.  I shouldn't be in jail...."  

What?

His life does not show fruits of repentance, by his own admission.  His life is without evidence of real change.

He is sober, right now, so he is set on reading the Bible and pursuing Christ.  I told him I just am not sure what happened when he was 18.  He hasn't read his Bible, nor gone to church, nor pursued recovery support groups.  


Without effective recovery support group involvement, the drug, alcohol, or self-medicating addict is setting himself or herself up to fall.  They could remain clean and sober for a season.  They are more likely to fall.  They need a solid, Christian mentor.  John needs a group like Alcoholics Anonymous or Celebrate Recover.  I shared with John he needs a group he will go to regularly.  He needs to engage in his daily and weekly recovery in Christ Jesus.

This is not "works salvation," but the fruit of sanctification through the gracious progressive work of the Holy Spirit.

This real life anecdote is exactly why I am so cautious about leading converts in salvation prayers and altar calls.  Yes, the lord uses these prayers and altar calls.  I am very cautious about giving a seeker or new convert a sense that they might trust in the prayer or walking down the aisle and to think those acts save them or prove their salvation.  

• Where is a contrite and broken heart?  
• Where is the repentance?  What does it look like?
• How will "John" make things really right before God and his family?

I have John reading and studying through a worksheet I developed on living faith in keeping with repentance.  I'll go back in later this week to see where he is at.

I just read an a real life story from missionary John Paton about genuine conversions and changed lives in a missionary setting and what we can observe.

"When I have read or heard the shallow objections of irreligious scribblers and talkers, hinting that there was no reality in conversions, and that Mission effort was but waste...

oh, how my heart has yearned to plant them just one week in Tanna, with the "natural" man all around in the person of Cannibal and Heathen...

and only the one "spiritual" man in the person of the converted Abraham [Paton's Aneityumese friend who worked tirelessly for the kingdom of God], nursing them, feeding them, saving them "for the love of Jesus"--that I might just learn how many hours it took to convince them that Christ in man was a reality after all! 

All the skepticism of Europe would hide its head in foolish shame; and all its doubts would dissolve under one glance of the new light that Jesus, and Jesus alone, pours from the converted Cannibal's eye."

Dave Niehaus--we saw it on the radio

Katharine is involved in ministries to the sight-impaired and recently shared with me a letter from Marlaina Lieberg, from the Washington Council for the Blind, who spoke at the Seattle Mariners Dave Niehaus Memorial at Safeco Field.  

Here is an excerpt from Marlaina's reflections:

"I was seated in the second row just behind Rick (Rizz--Dave's radio and tv M's partner for years). He is a very tiny man as men go.

He is a very nice guy, and we were all moved and felt helpless when we saw him fall apart emotionally. When Edgar, Jay, Dan Wilson and Kevin Kremmons went up to surround him, you could feel everybody just letting go.

Marlaina speaking

The stage had four steps to walk up and the podium was a few feet away from those steps.  Originally John Olerud was going to escort me, but he ended up sitting in the wrong seat so a guy from the Marketing Department escorted me instead.

It was very weird at first to speak and hear my word a fraction of a second later!

I was using my BrailleNote Apex, and the one time I deviated from my notes, I nearly got lost because my hand was so cold it was almost numb.  They gave me hand warmers, but those only work if you keep your hands in your pocket!  Oops!


While I was speaking, I really felt aware of the fact that I was representing all fans, but especially we who are visually impaired.

I wanted to make the point that because of Dave, you didn't need to see the game.  When people applauded, I almost fainted!  It was very awesome to hear the sound coming from left, center and right of me.  

But what was more awesome was the fact that over 5 thousand sighted people clapped when they understood you didn't need sight!  I never thought that would happen in this lifetime.

Edgar Martinez and his family sat behind Gary and me.  After the ceremony was over, we shook hands.  Let me tell you, that man has the most muscular hands I've ever felt.  They aren't fat, but oh boy are they muscular!"

God's freeing grace for flawed people

In Paul David Tripp's book, "What did you expect--redeeming the realities of marriage," pages 51-52, he uses the word "stultifying."  While serving at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, I often share with men about the Kingdom of God and God's deeper purposes for their lives.  

He wants to amazingly free them from ongoing sin, patterns that the evil one uses to keep them chained up indefinitely and continually returning to their old ways. He wants to lovingly draw them into a life-changing relationship with Him through Jesus.  He wants them to please Him in everything they do.  

So much gets in the way. 

Stultifying means humiliation, or the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission.  It can be brought about through bullying, intimidation, physical or mental mistreatment or trickery, or by embarrassment if a person is revealed to have committed a socially or legally unacceptable act.

Now, that definition got my attention. Some of the behaviors of inmates lead to stultifying results.  How might this impact oue own marriages, relationships, and ministries?

Here is what Paul David Tripp writes:

"[God's] grace purposes to expose and free you from your bondage to you. His grace is meant to bring you to the end of yourself so that you willing finally begin to place your identity, your meaning and purpose, and your inner sense of well-being in him."

So, he places you in a comprehensive relationship with another flawed person, and he places that relationship right in the middle of a very broken world. To add to this, he designs circumstances for you that you would have never designed for yourself. All this is meant to bring you to the end of yourself, because that is where true righteousness begins.

  

•      He wants you to give up.   
•    He wants you to abandon your dream.     
•  He wants you to face the futility of trying to manipulate the other person into your service.       
•  He knows there is no life to be found in these things.

What does this practically mean?

It means the trouble that you face in your marriage is not an evidence of the failure of grace. No, these troubles are grace. They are tools God uses to pry us out of the stultifying confines of the kingdom of self so that we can be free to luxuriate in the big-sky glories of the kingdom of God.

Paul David Tripp

This means that you and I will never understand our marriages and never be satisfied with them until we understand that marriage is not an end to itself. 

No, the reality is that marriage has been designed by God to be a means to an end. When you make it the end, bad things happen. 

But when you begin to understand that it is a means to an end, then you begin to enjoy and see the value in things that you would not have been able to enjoy before."