It has been approximately twelve months since this journey began. Seeing God’s hand in the way he has graciously led me into chaplaincy is so exciting, and yet very humbling. For me, it started in the carpark outside my business feeling a real discontent with secular work. I had such a presence of God come over me and a very clear and distinct thought came into my mind. “God, I think I need to be doing something front line?”
That didn’t go away and soon after a very good mate of mine asked me if I thought of being a Prison Chaplain. I thought, no! Yet God had other plans and He continued to prompt me with thoughts and even dreams.
I followed up and applied through Inside Out Chaplaincy, to see where God could use me.
The rest is history, and I can honestly say that I feel born to do this, and I love it! It can only be Gods calling that a reasonably sound minded person would want to go wilfully into a prison. Although the jury is still out on the sound mind thing!
A Scripture that has strongly spoken to me about this ministry is Romans 2:1 “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.” I have had many people ask me, why would you bother with prisoners? My response is that we are all the same, we all suffer from the same disease, sin. Before God, none is righteous. It is only us humans that use the scale to say we are better then others.
My prayer is to finalize our business so that I can serve God in a full time ministry capacity. For now, I have enrolled in Bible college with Queensland Baptists. I also would pray that God would open up opportunities for me to build relationships with prisoners and to be equipped to shrae the great news of our Lord Jesus Christ. God give me the wisdom and discernment as I learn how to do that in prison.