TO MAKE GOD'S GRACE CREDIBLE

 Beloved in the Lord,

During this slower month of July, I try to plan for the next season of the church year. As I planned our 6^th course at the jail, I reached out to the leader of Prison Alpha, Benny Lopez, to check in and get some advice.  Benny and I had a wonderfully edifying discussion of all the Lord is doing through Prison Alpha, (or, Alpha at the jail in our case). Benny told me of a Prison Warden in California who was transformed by the Alpha program at his church, so he brought it to the prison he led. He told a story of rival gang leaders coming together under God, and praying for each other. Men who usually wanted to kill each other, became brothers in Christ. The number of murders and violent acts has gone down significantly at that prison now.

My own experience bringing Alpha to the women in jail has also been miraculous. We worked with a woman from a Muslim background for 2 years, and then baptized her a couple of months ago. Another woman was healed from an infection in her foot. Several others, who are out of jail now, still call me regularly to check in, and tell me, “Alpha changed my life”.

But these experiences go hand and hand with the hard part of evangelism. There was the woman who said she didn’t want to become a Christian because her illegal enterprise was how she supported her family. There are the ones who come once and leave. There are the ones who seem to really need us, but are transferred without warning or cause and we never see them again.

Helping others to know the great love God has for them is amazing, miraculous and beautiful.  It is also heartbreaking, frustrating and hard.

The evangelist Michael Green, who I had the privilege of sitting under in Seminary, recalls how the gospel was spread by the early church:

“They made the grace of God credible by a society of love and mutual care which astonished the pagans and was recognized as something entirely new. It lent persuasiveness to their claim that the New Age had dawned in Christ.”

Beloved, WE do not convert people. The Holy Spirit does that. But we are called to “make the grace of God credible”. We are called to share the hope that is in us. We are called to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. What we do is show, with our actions, in our words and in our choices, that this love we declare is REAL.  The great love of God is real, and it is available to everyone. Even to the prisoner and drug addict. Even to the businessman addicted to pornography. Even to haughty Christians who want to judge others. It is available to all of us.

It is this kind of love that compels us to tell others about Jesus. I pray that each of you knows that deep, abiding love. I encourage you to share it with those you love. Invite them to our next Alpha Course here at Trinity Church, or come yourself-

... that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled 

to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 Ephesians 3.17-18.

In His love,

Tracey+

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name. Amen