Preaching what you practise

Sunday morning in the prison chapel today: one of the inmates preached the sermon.

A drug dealer, he became a Christian about three years ago when, as he said, 'God kept giving me alternatives, every time I had to make choices. And I started listening to him pointing things out to me, inviting me to see things differently.'

He had only ever prayed in police cells when he was arrested: 'Oh God, get me out of this.'

But once out, he would return to the same lifestyle,  which he described as 'a lot of fun - drugs, parties, fornication, money. I knew there was a God, a higher power - we all know it, at some level of ourselves. But he would have to be good, for me to change my life. I wasn't about to give up all that for nothing. It would have to be something better than what I had already.'

He began to give way to the nudge towards better choices. As he stopped selling drugs, he lost his house, and panicked in case his mates saw him getting the bus with his kids instead of driving BMWs.. He worried about how he would feed his family and how his wife would react to the dramatic drop in income.

But he came to know that God was real and that, if he really believed the words he was starting to pray: 'Your kingdom come, your will be done,' he had to let God be king.

'Until then, I was king of my own life. Whenever I said, "Oh my God!" it was me I was talking about. My god was myself. My life was all about me. I was arrogant. But God has been changing me.'

God didn't rescue him from the results of his own choices. He's still a prison inmate. But the men in prison with him were listening this morning as he said, 'We all pray in our cells, whether we admit it or not: we go, "O God, look after my kids, get me parole, do this and this for me .... "

'But if I've just cussed somebody or hit someone who pushed me in the lunch queue, how can I ask God to do stuff for me? I diss God and then I try to say I'm one of his, like he wants me to do what I've just done? I'm not in his kingdom, letting him be king. I'm back being my own god again. I have to forgive, or I block myself up and God can't do nothing for me.

'I have a choice. I can keep living for myself, shutting myself into my own little kingdom. Or I can live in his. You can see what choice I want to keep making, myself.

'I started to see where the real riches are. I was scared I wouldn't be able to take care of my family. But God provides. We have a house again. I'm here in prison. But I have real prosperity: family, love, friendship. And best of all, Jesus Christ. He died to get me out of that worse prison I was in - that prison was me.'