One more day the sun has risen. I have waked from my sleep. The sun will rise. The day will progress and I will press on. I have been thinking a lot about you guys in prison, what is going on and what your days are like. I began to make friends with each of you, some better and closer than others, but none the less, I still pray for all of you and wonder what your day is like. I’m here to tell you that it is good to feel freedom but life is still here. I have been released from prison and as bad as I wanted for someone to press reset on my life it did not happen that way. The consequences of my actions years ago still haunt me. I wonder sometimes how long I will be punished for my sins by the world. Sometimes it is hard to keep it all in perspective. Fact is I sinned, made poor choices, made my bed and I shall lay in it. My choices years ago may haunt me for the rest of my life. So what is the answer? What should I do? Many times in the past I have said “screw it” and just lived for the moment, seizing all that I could while I had the chance. While that was immediately rewarding the long term looks like a pile of crap. I have some big hurdles to cross. I fight every day with wanting to run, hide, and live the way Cody has always lived. The best word I can come up with to describe me is selfish. Selfishness is sin and sin is wrong. So, back to what should I do? I guess the answer is not sin, no matter what. For a guy like me sometimes that is hard, very hard. The only way I can conceivably work that out in my life so that these consequences begin to go away is to stay close to God, continue doing His work, and drawing close to Him.
Why am I telling all of you this? Because I need your prayer. I need your friendship. It is very obvious that even though I am not in prison and you all are, we need each other. That is the way God designed it – for us to rely on our brothers and sisters to help us through the rough times. Pray for one another, encourage one another, and push each other toward the mark closer each day. Lamentations 3:39-40 says, “Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.” So I encourage each of you to also press on with me and let us encourage each other. 1 Thessalonians 3:12 says, “and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another, and for all so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.”
Prayer
Father God, thank you for my friends. Create in us a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within us. Cast us not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from us. Restore us to the joy of your salvation and uphold us with a willing spirit. In Jesus name, Amen
Thoughts:
Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of us His prisoners, but share in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace which He gave us in Jesus Christ before the ages began.
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