By Julie Baker
Working with men and women who have been incarcerated has provided me opportunities to bring encouragement of God’s love, mercy, and grace through the transforming resurrection power of salvation.
During my recent visit to Fiji, I was privileged to work alongside Pastor Gabby Buli at Labasa Men’s Prison. The prison has four cells for women on remand, awaiting sentencing, or held in the Labasa area for family reasons.
One of the women, M, whom I met and worked with during my last two visits to Fiji, was quite discouraged and experienced suicidal thoughts. She was unrepentant and unable to accept that any fault was hers. The first time I met with M, she was open to talking and did so nonstop. She talked about the injustice of her incarceration, the blame she held for her ex-employer, what she believed her rights were, and what she felt God was failing to do for her.
With each visit, we delved a little deeper into her story: her thoughts and beliefs, her needs. I met with her three times, and during those sessions, she came to accept that her perspective on events and her beliefs about herself and God might not align with God’s perspective. She was willing to accept a Bible and to ask God to open her heart and mind to insights from His word.
Three months later, when I returned to Labasa, I was able to revisit M. The transformation was evident from the first encounter. M didn’t talk nonstop! Daily reading of God’s word had brought her to recognise her offences and her need to repent. M has taken responsibility for seeking forgiveness from those she has harmed — God and people alike — and has begun to think about herself and God differently. She talks openly about feeling changed in her thinking and her heart.
M has reconnected with family she had isolated herself from because of the shame of her offending. She is sharing the hope she has found in Christ’s salvation with her two sisters. What she wants others to experience is what she herself has found: not a change pursued to earn acceptance, but one that flows from the forgiveness she has received.
She is slowly changing her beliefs around self-rights, depression, and victim mentality by daily allowing God’s word to answer her questions about who God is, who she is as His child, and how to live this out.
The consequences of M’s past choices haven’t changed, but her daily connection with God’s word has transformed M’s perspective and her life. This is the outworking of the power of salvation — the only lasting means of heart and mind transformation.