I’ve loved having the privilege of speaking all over the UK for the past 25 years. In my role here at the Evangelical Alliance, we serve such a huge diversity of churches and whenever I go and visit different places and spaces, it’s wonderful to see this in action. When I used to work at Youth for Christ, one of the real highlights was getting to speak in young offenders’ institutes where you would encounter many young men who were desperately looking for hope.
Though these youth prisons could be intimidating, one of the great advantages of preaching there was that you always got a good crowd, as the lads would get longer out of their cells if they went to chapel. Additionally, if they responded to your message they would get even longer out of their cell whilst they were being prayed with; if you’d gone in thinking that you had lost your evangelistic touch you would leave believing you were the next Billy Graham!
Every time I spoke, every young man would respond. However, it was hard at times to know quite how much impact you were having on their lives. You hoped a real impact was being made, but it was so difficult to know. This is why it was so wonderful to speak at a church not that long ago where a lady came up to me after the service thanking me for my ministry. I naively assumed that she was speaking about my preaching that morning and said that it had been a real pleasure to be with them and a delight to speak. She swiftly interrupted me and said, “Oh no, I’m not thanking you for today’s talk, that was really average. I’m thanking you for 10 years ago when you went into a particular young offenders’ institute to preach and my son, who was an inmate at the time, surrendered his life to Jesus.” She continued and said, “what’s amazing is that that same son is now going into the same young offenders’ institute as part of the chaplaincy team to help other young men encounter Jesus for themselves too.” I was absolutely blown away, as over the years I had learned to accept that the impact I saw in young offenders’ institutions was arguably not entirely accurate. However, to hear of one life turned inside out, upside down and back to front for Jesus was such an encouragement and reminded me again of the life changing impact of the gospel.
Our words have real power, and when we speak up for Jesus the impact can be far beyond anything we would ever imagine. We’re living in a time when so much of our society feels hopeless, yet we carry the true hope of Jesus and have the joy of sharing this with all those around us.
So, let’s raise our voice about the Jesus we love and follow and let’s do all we can to make Him known together. Let’s be Christians who in our day speak out about the hope we have in the Lord, sharing that good news with those around us. Let’s leave the results to the Lord, after all, the fact that a young man’s life in prison was totally turned around was all down to Jesus: I was simply available to speak up for Him in that place.
"Our words have real power, and when we speak up for Jesus the impact can be far beyond anything we would ever imagine."
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