Inner transformation

Bill Crowder described the remarkable ministry of Joanna Flanders-Thomas in the Our Daily Bread devotional for Aug. 8, 2020.

Her extraordinary moving story chronicled the incredible changes God brought to South Africa’s most violent prison. Crowder read her story in the moving book, Vanishing Grace, by award winning author Philip Yancey.

God used Joanna to change hearts and free minds that had been imprisoned long before they were incarcerated. The power of Christ transformed prisoners’ hearts and lives.

Yancey described the changes this way, “Joanna started visiting prisoners daily, bringing them a simple gospel message of forgiveness and reconciliation. She earned their trust, got them to talk about their abusive childhoods and showed them a better way of resolving conflicts.

“The year before her visits began, the prison recorded 279 acts of violence against inmates and guards; the next year there were two.”

Nearly 2,000 years earlier, the Apostle Paul described what the prisoners experienced when he penned these words, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NLT)

The new life Paul described was clearly on display in the once violent South African prison.

The prisoners demonstrated how God could completely alter the prison by changing the prisoners incarcerated there from the inside out.

The power of God’s love and grace to transform lives has been experienced by millions, one life at a time, since Jesus began changing lives.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that his message of forgiveness and hope has been revolutionary. That fact prompted Crowder to write that, “the gospel’s power to transform is the greatest hope-providing force in the universe.”

The reason Paul could so passionately describe how God can make someone a new person, was that God had changed him.

God took the most violent persecutor of the early church and made him the most powerful missionary the church has ever known.

Each person who asks God to forgive them and change their heart can experience the same kind of new beginning.

While the impact God can make in your life may not visibly change the world, it will without question change you.

God changed the South African prison by changing the prisoners’ hearts, and long before that, he changed Paul. What I have written about today means that God can change each of us.

The good news is, if you ask him to forgive you and become the master of your life, he will.

Tim Richards grew up in Fairdealing and previously served as associate pastor of Pilgrim’s Rest Church there. He currently serves as a pastor on the staff of Concord Church in South County St. Louis.