Hearing God's Voice

I work with children who are At-Risk. In the course of my daily work, I get bombarded with offers for instant-fixes, cure-alls and self-help miracles that claim to be able to change people within the first five minutes of the program! And, being the trusting soul that I am, I immediately throw them in the trash

I heard a Christian speaker talking about the concept of self-help. He said, Do you know why there are thousands of self-help books? Because none of them work! And I agree. The problems that we deal with are inside of us - how can we fix them when we, ourselves, are broken?

Last year, Northern Lakes Ministries began to investigate a new project: Life Skills. I have little to do with the project, but I was curious. Life Skills claimed that they ran 500 inmates in College Station, Texas, through the program and that, at the end of the program, only one person reoffended. When you consider the fact that the average recidivism rate - the amount of people who go on to commit additional crimes - is 60-70%, this was astounding to me! They ran inmates in Alaska through the program and had a recidivism rate of only 15%. Even more incredible to me was the fact that, on average, half of those who complete the program make a decision for Christ!

In addition to the prison outreach, we received reports of marriages being restored, people with addictions being set free and mending relationships between parents and their children. People I kn ...