From the Frontlines - Working for the Master
By
Craig Meeker
In Matthew 13, Jesus gave a
parable of the sower who went forth to sow seed. Any gardener knows that
seed sowing is essential, if you expect to eventually get a harvest. Fruit
only comes from a seed and then only if it is planted in the ground. In
the parable, Jesus tells us that, spiritually, the seed represents the Word of
God. (See Luke 8:11.)
In the same parable, Jesus
talks about how important the ground is to the development of the seed. It
is our desire, at the Steps to Life Bible Correspondence School, to sow the
seeds of God’s Word in the lives of men and women who are responding to God’s
Spirit and who are seeking a knowledge of God’s will. Hopefully, many of
these will be “good ground” hearers, who will bring
forth an eventual
harvest, “some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Matthew 13:8,
NKJV.
As many of you know, it is
almost impossible to send literature into a prison today, unless you are
connected with some kind of organization or ministry. And since the
prisoners themselves recognize this reality, we at Steps to Life receive many
requests, although never as much as we would like, for the free Bible
Correspondence courses and other Christian materials. We send these to
them at no cost.
We currently offer two
correspondence courses. One is the older Steps to Life course that
consists of 34 lessons; the other is our new Prophecy Seminar, which has 52
lessons. Prisoners comprise 30 to 40 percent of the Bible correspondence
students, in both courses.
We are presently in the
process of revising the older course and are going to put it into a new format
that we hope will be more “user friendly.”
In our endeavors to increase
our student enrollment, we send each student additional enrollment cards and
Prophecy Seminar flyers in hopes that they will give these to fellow inmates or
relatives. I recently received the following note back from one of the
prisoners: “I put up the flyers, hopefully somebody will be
interested. Sometimes I get disappointed at these guys because they don’t
seem interested, but I guess I can’t expect other men here to share my zeal for
the Word of God. Here the Bible is set before them for the free gift of
salvation and life eternal, with God and the people of faith—for some reason
they feel it is not important! Oh well, as for me, I feel like Joshua in
Joshua 24:15, NKJV: ‘Choose for yourselves this day whom you will
serve,…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’”
Another prisoner recently
sent a referral, saying, “Please get my friends started with this marvelous
Bible Prophecy Seminar.”
I would ask you to remember
these dear men and women who are seeking the Lord through the humble agency of
Bible Correspondence, that they may indeed become the “good ground” hearers of
Jesus’ parable and at last be a part of that great “harvest” of the souls that
shall constitute the redeemed.
October 2001 Table of Contents |