Get Out of That Pit: Straight Talk about God’s Deliverance by Beth Moore

Author:Beth Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2011-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Waiting on God for Deliverance

God can deliver the most hardened criminal or the most hopeless addict in one second fl at. With His eyes closed and His hands tied behind His back if He has a mind to. I know people who made themselves at home in a pit a hundred feet deep and a thousand days long and, seemingly without warning, experienced the instantaneous deliverance of God. One moment they were in the throes of habitual sin, and the next moment they were free as birds.

When that happens, I ask things like, “So you’re saying that was it? You never fell back in? The whole nightmare was over? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yep,” they say. That’s what they’re telling me. And I believe them, mainly because I watch them like a hawk. Not because I’m skeptical. Well, sometimes I am. But mostly I watch them because I love a divine spectacle.

Carolina was one of those one-second wonders. Nick-named for his South Carolina roots, he’s been behind the bars of four American prisons in three different states and is currently serving a life sentence in Louisiana’s Angola Prison. Amid thousands of hard-core inmates in what “has long been labeled the bloodiest prison in America,” Carolina had an inordinate taste for violence that once earned him the reputation of one of Angola’s most dangerous prisoners. Get a load of his story.

Five years ago Carolina signed up for a three-day, in-prison ministry retreat. “I only went for the free-world food,” he said. “I was plotting a very violent act and I figured this would be my last free-world food. To me, God was a fairy tale and anybody who believed in Him was a fairy.”

After a day at the retreat he was bored and getting anxious to leave. He became so agitated that the facilitator started to panic. And then suddenly: “With no preliminaries, no prayer, no blinding lights or trumpets, God just took the violence and bitterness right out of my heart,” Carolina said.

“I knew it was gone because I’d lived with it for forty-four years. I thought I’d lost my mind . . . Then I heard Jesus say, ‘I love you.’ It sounded like words from speakers at a concert. In every joint of my body I felt Jesus say, ‘I love you.’ I started crying and I cried for two weeks. I hadn’t cried since I was seven years old.”1

And Jesus had him. Hook, line, and sinker. I have a feeling nobody calls him a fairy though.

Carolina may still be in a cell, but he’s no longer in a pit. Exhilarating, isn’t it? Nothing makes me happier than God showing off like that. I just returned from Anchorage, Alaska, where I spoke to several hundred inmates in a women’s prison just outside the city. The service was voluntary, so only those who wanted to come were there. That’s the way I like it, anyway.

Some of the younger inmates started sobbing the moment I opened my mouth, and they never stopped.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.