NOT LONG AGO A KENYAN WAS RELEASED from one of our unsavoury Prisons where he had been wrongfully held for EIGHTEEN years.    I have often wondered what he got out of the time spent - if anything - on looking back - if he did!    After all it was like starting a NEW life.   MANY people feel the past is best forgotten, and some, failing to forget it, dwell upon

it with feelings that may often be full of self-pity, even bitterness, because of the way life treated them.  What ARE we to do with the past, especially the unpleasant, painful past that caused us hurt and misery, and perhaps even shame in some way?    DO 'all things work together for our good'?    The Bible says that they DO if God is part of our lives.   CAN the Bad and Sad things work good for us.   CAN our sinful past and even our often painful present be put to good use, capitalised upon and profited from?   YES, I do believe they can.......   But it doesn't work for everyone.      The man in the left hand photo had just been released from prison.    

He does not look at all glad or happy about it, and his image somehow does not encourage one to believe he is any different to the man that went in.         But perhaps he was not there for 18 years.    In fact his hairstyle tells us he was probably IN just for a night!

The man in the NEXT photo, (centre) has family or friends waiting for him as he leaves the Prison, and although you cannot see his face, he gives every sign of being VERY thankful to be out.

THE PRESS REPORTED Richard Wambugu, the man actually released after his 18 year ordeal, as being angry at the injustice of his long confinement, and the lost years of his youth.    He looked for redress, compensation of some kind.     DID the experience help him at all?   Perhaps not.      Unless God was with him in the prison, or unless he found Him afterwards, Richard may merely have let his bitterness destroy him....hard to tell...........He could well have blamed 'fate' and or GOD for letting life treat him so badly.      On the other had he may have been filled with compassion for his fellow inmates so that he may have determined to do something about the awful conditions in Kenya Prisons.

Reading in Isaiah51v1-3 I found these words to very apt and instructive -

'HEARKEN to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord!

Look unto the rock from whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit,

from whence ye are digged.

Look to Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you;

for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.

For the Lord shall comfort Zion; He will comfort all her wast places;

and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord;

joy and gladness shall be found therein, Thanksgiving and the voice of melody.'

ISAIAH was speaking to the People of God, to those who rejoiced in His Name - and He told them to LOOK BACK to their origins (their past).   To look back upon their unbelieving ancestry, their sinful, godless, beginnings.    AND in looking back to see how far they had come as they had trusted in God.  How that God had made the old waste places and wilderness experiences into something beautiful and comforting.   Out of Darkness and Error God brought Joy and Gladness of heart.

THE FIRST SEVENTEEN YEARS of my own life were very much like the journeyings of Israel through the wilderness.   Rejected and given away by my true parents when just a month old; adopted by a childless couple who were unfaithful to each other; then subjected to a series of situations in which I found myself living with my 'separated' (not divorced) adoptive mother and her many lovers, each of whom had little or no interest in me, or in having me around.   I grew up wondering what was wrong with ME;  what had I done to be so unwanted and so rejected?   Why had I to go through so many very many lonely years - what was the reason?    I think that if I had never been found by my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I may NEVER have found out WHY.   More, I may never have been able to come through into a situation where I could even be GLAD for those years.    CHRIST made the difference in MY life.   He brought the answer to all my questions, and revealed the Great Love of God to me.    If I had not been allowed to suffer the little that I did, then I would never have been able to feel compassion for others who had to pass through similar, or even worse tribulation and rejection.   I would never have been able to assist others to count their BLESSINGS and in doing so turn even their sorrows into JOY.   Nothing that has ever happened to me has been a wasteful or useless experience.    Of course I am NOT saying that I enjoyed it all, or that I would even like to have to through it again!   BUT it has all counted and been profitable to and for me.     Without God coming into my life and understanding in Christ I may never have been left unscarred.    It was not until the night I reached out to help two homeless boys and began what became Testimony Faith Homes, that I realised the truth of this fully and completely.     ALL of my life had been just a preparation ..........

YES indeed it can be a blessing to look back...and to remember ......

Deuteronomy 8v2 reports Moses as saying to the Children of Israel -

'...earnestly remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you

in these 40 years in the Wilderness, to humble you, and to prove you,

and to know what was in your mind and heart, 

whether you would keep His Commandments or not,

and He thoroughly humbled, and allowed you to hunger.'

God ALLOWED Israel to hunger, so that they might learn something; something good about God.  That He was MORE than bread, and is more able than bread to keep them alive.

In Mark 5v19 Jesus speaks to the man who had been delivered from the legion of demons that possessed him.    He said -

'..Go home to your own family and relatives and friends,

and bring back word to them of how much the Lord has done for you,

and how He has had sympathy for you and mercy upon you.'

This man, who had been possessed and manipulated by demons most of his life, suddenly had a testimony that rested on his past experience and suffering.   God in Christ had turned defeat into victory.   What the Devil had intended for evil, God had turned inside out and made it achieve GOOD.

In John 9v3 Jesus speaks to the beggar who was born blind.   He then speaks to the crowd that stood idly around and said -

'It was not that this man or his parents sinned,

but he was born blind in order that the workings of God should be manifested

(displayed and illustrated) in and by him.'

This man had been blind from his birth!   Now suddenly God reveals Himself to him, and his blindness is turned to SIGHT, and the contrast with his past is so much more both to himself AND to those who have known and lived with him from his birth.   How can any one of us say that our past life has had no affect upon  the present?

Thus PAUL writes in 2. Corinthians 1v4 about our Father in Heaven - about GOD Himself -

'God, - who comforts (consoles and encourages) us in every trouble

(calamity and affliction), so that we may also be able to comfort

(console and encourage) those who are in any kind of trouble or distress

with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

SO remember to LOOK BACK, back to where you have come from.    Look and be surprised at how God has turned misfortune, sorrow, even pain into profit, using everything to fit you out for His Will and Purpose.      He is truly a WONDERFUL God and Father.

The FOURTH boy that God led to my doorstep in August 1969, and who came to part of our family also found himself in Prison.     He had completed his High School and seemed a promising boy, but after leaving us he got into trouble and was imprisoned for TEN long years.    Shortly after being RELEASED he found employment, and  wrote to tell us of his conversion -

Dear Dad and Mum,

I have always known you both loved me, and that you brought me up

in the knowledge of God.   I would surely have died in sin if you had not done so.

And, if it were not for you and God, and Jesus, I might have died in the Prison.

Because of this I and many others in the Prison

have been Saved and have Accepted Jesus as Personal Saviour.

I am busy now telling others how I have spent ten years in  Prison!

I am also telling them how I found Jesus there.

Thank you for loving me, and for loving God.

Since Jesus came into my life, even immediately as He drew me to Himself,

I have been able to give up the things I used to do and be!

AND YES, if it were not for HIM, I would have died in sin, in the Prison BOUND.

But now I am FREE, out of the Prison, and working.

I am a NEW PERSON

Your son always, - Johanna

He is now married with a child of his own, holding down a job and continuing to witness to the Salvation that came to his life in a very dark place,  lighting up his life for ever.

Have a wonderful Week ahead.     Let HIM turn all your anxieties, worries, heartaches and pain into fuel for a LIGHT FILLED LIFE that will illuminate many.        Do not be pressed DOWN, but be lifted UP by the knowledge of His Love for you, and of His ultimate CARE of you,

Sincerely in the Work of the Kingdom

John and Esther