Prayer Requests from Jailed Children
This message is scrawled on a prayer request card, sitting in front of me on my desk. Tears come to my eyes as I read it.
I just ask the Lord help me thru this mental storm I’m going thru myself and give me, my mom, my grandma, and my siblings the strength to go through these dark times in life. Hopefully, the Lord can forgive me for my deep, dark, mistakes. And since I am going to leave soon, the Lord give me the strength for what’s to come in the future. -–16-years old[i]
I have a stack of these cards in front of me.
The woman from our church who boldly enters the juvenile detention facility is not what you might expect from someone in this ministry. She is small, and her body is weakened from long bouts with cancer. And yet she regularly enters prison, confronts, prays with, and ministers to some of the roughest young men you can imagine. These young people passed these prayer requests to her, and she gave them to me so that our people could pray for them.
Many of these young people are afraid, sad, and lonely. They do not want to continue on their present path. Some ask for prayer for their drug addicted parents. One 17-year-old (or younger) asks for prayer for his two sons and daughter. Most are worried about the welfare of their mothers and siblings while they are in jail. Few ask for prayer for their fathers because few of them have a father figure in their lives.
Pray I keep doing good till I get out, and stop doing the negative stuff I used to do in the community, so that I can make my loved ones happy, and the people I’m around. -–14 years old
Please pray over my soul for safety, guidance, and protection. –13 years old
What am I supposed to think as I read these prayer request cards? I should think the same as Jesus did when He looked upon the lost multitudes of Israel.
But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:36-37)
These children are not in some institution far away. They are imprisoned four miles from where I sit as I type these words. They are humbled, broken, and full of remorse. They want to change. Not every young man in that detention facility is like that, but the ones who wrote these requests are.
Matthew described the multitudes that Jesus looked upon as weary. There are multitudes around us who are just like this. They are wearied by the weight of sin and the cares of the world. I need to recognize it in the face of the server at the restaurant, co-workers, bank tellers, and even people I meet in my neighborhood. They are broken by addictions, the troubles of their children, broken relationships, and the guilt that accompanies all those life situations. They have been abused and have been abusers.
Satan feeds them more lies every day. He is the charlatan that tells the cancer patient that he has a miracle cure—for a steep price. Satan sells drugs, alcohol, money, sex, sex changes, and confusion. In the end he leaves them in a heap beside the road, in prison, and in mental institutions and he gloats in the success of his evil deeds.
They have no shepherd. There is no one to spiritually guide them through the hazards of this life. Sometimes their shepherds are the ones that will abuse and take advantage of them. Such is the nature of this wicked world in which we live. Jesus saw the same thing two thousand years ago. The shepherds of Israel were hirelings. They were abusers of the sheep.
The harvest is plenteous.
May God open our eyes and send us boldly into the harvest field with the love of God and the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ.
Souls for Jesus is our battle cry.
Find the audio version of this post here: Prayer Requests from Jailed Children
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[i] The boys did not put ages on the cards. We know that they are all between 13 and 17 years old. I guessed at the ages based upon the handwriting and writing style on the card.