… I have been spending a lot of time in my Bible lately. Some good scripture are Matt. 13:43, Matt. 18:21-35, John 12:44:50, 2 Cor. 10:3-5, Heb. 5:7-9. I have been spending a lot more time in prayer lately too. If God sees fit to parole me from here in the future I plan to join a religious order of some type. I’m thinking probably a Monastic community where I could pray and mediate a lot. I don’t know exactly how, but I want God to use me for His kingdom in some capacity. The Holy Spirit fills me in a way that I never [felt] before. I am reminded of what Deacon Sheffer wrote me in our first letter saying: “let us being our journey with the peace of Jesus for it will be in finding Jesus that we find our true self.”
I find that to be very true. In finding Jesus I have found the door to who I am, and my relationship with God and existence. No longer do I have to live in darkness and slavery to sin and hopelessness. With good reason did Christ refer to Himself as the gate in John 10:9 and the light of the world in John 8:12. With good reason have I wrote you previously about how I feel more free now than I ever was before I came to Jesus. I don’t mean my life is easier or less painful, but now I am attached to God and I am not dealing with it by myself. Now my pain has purpose and I have real comfort, real direction, and real hope. Now, it doesn’t mater if I am imprisoned, or any external circumstances that used to determine my ‘happiness.’ No longer do I try to arrange my circumstances to make myself happy. I have real happiness and freedom now. Only in Christ is there any real happiness. Only in God’s love do our lives find real fulfillment. After all we were created to know and love God and in that love to find happiness. Anything that deters or hinders us on our path to God is merely a distraction or a form of blindness …
In Heb. 5:8-9 that I shared previously it speaks of Christ learning obedience from what he suffered and it perfecting Him (in his humanity). I believe that in enduring my sufferings and hardships it only brings me closer to our Lord and that God is molding me. Our savior told us to take up our cross and follow Him in Matt. 16:24-26. True discipleship is following Jesus to the Cross if necessary and that is why I stay out of the evil that goes on in here [the prison]. I follow Christ and as the Apostle Paul says “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” Phill. 3:86 … I have been watching less t.v. lately too. Even [while you are] locked down [here in prison, there] are much better things to do then stare at nonsense all day …
I miss you and love you. Keep faith and hope alive.
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“I went to places spiritually with him [Jeremy] that not everybody gets to go to. I had a front row seat, watching a love relationship with Jesus grow. I witnessed him and the Bishop on their knees in a cell, separated by bars, tears streaming down Jeremy’s face as he received the Sacraments. I was inspired by [Jeremy’s] hunger for Jesus. Inspired also by how his personal experience with Jesus changed him. I bore witness to the reality of the Eucharist being food for his soul. I can attest to a man deemed lost saved by grace, becoming the best version of himself. In the end Jeremy chose to love God, to love himself, and to love humanity with all its failings. He gave up his life revealing the deepest love possible: There is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for another.” Deacon Ed Sheffer, July 6, 2011
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