Inmate Testimonies: This site will soon give you help in praying for Brevard County Inmates
Guess what: if you have personal--emotional, physical, or spiritual problems--cheer up! Now you have the potential for an understanding heart. Your problems are both your link to God and to your fellow-man. If your problems are bad enough, you might even learn to understand our friends and enemies in jail.
It's not easy to convert your problems into understanding, but it can be done. It takes vulnerability! Transparency before God and man, which can be painful. That's my purpose in jail and prison ministry. I'm convinced that inmates have a greater potential for understanding and "heart" than most of us because of two reasons: their problems are greater, and they have the time to seek God for answers to their problems. The rest of us are too busy to either comprehend our problems or take the time to find answers to them. Of course I'm not trying to condemn you: just challenge you to make time with God a number one priority before you wake up at the end of your life and discover you missed the entire point of it.
The links on this page are designed to help you pray for inmates. The first one is Twelve Prayer-needs of Inmates. This is an outline organized to correspond to the 12 precious stones on the High Priest's breastplate. These 12 stones represented the 12 tribes of Israel, which the High Priest bore before the Lord in prayer and intercession. His intercession, with its background support from the animal sacrifices and other rituals in the Tabernacle, literally kept the wrath of God from destroying Israel (Num. 18:5).
Not that God wants to destroy people, but that they would not be able to survive in His Presence and the "consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29) of His holiness. Furthermore Satan goes "to and fro" over the earth hoping to destroy or ruin anybody not protected by the Covering God has provided in His Son. In the New Testament the Priesthood was transferred to the whole Body of Christ; we are a royal priesthood, called to prayer and intercession for one another. Amazingly, this activity will make the fire of God's presence a refining fire instead of a consuming fire. It will bring healing in place of judgment. There is much more on this subject, which I will be adding from time to time.
I suggest you print out this list (about 3 pages unless you condense or enlarge it with your word processor) and use it as a guide. You might even hold it to your chest and simply "pray in the Spirit." The Holy Spirit will carry it to the Throne, where the Son will intercede before the Father on behalf of the inmates (Heb. 8:1). Amazing Grace and Mercy!
