Open  Letter  to  an  Inmate

By Patsy Mecado

I want you to realize that God has not given up on you, and He has not forgotten you. Please try and believe that you are not totally lost, anyone who is totally lost is wrong, and is truly not the case with you. The only problem you have is discouragement. (Thank you, Jesus!)

            You are not alone. As you well know, all around you there is defeat. Learn to read your Bible, speak to the Lord in your own words, and pray…even when you don’t want to. As you see Him, He will be your strength.

            The power of prayer is not to be taken lightly. Remember King David (Samuel 1:16), a man filled with sadness and torment, but he trusted God (Psalms). Remember King Hezekiah, who begged God to spare his life (Isaiah 38:1-5), and was granted another fifteen years to live! Remember Hannah, who cried bitterly and prayed for a son, and her prayer was answered (Samuel 1:6-26). Prayer is one of your best weapons…Learn to use it! God loves you, and will never forsake you, come to Him!

Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul. (Psalms 66:16)

            Now let me share with you the testimony of a little girl who got saved at the age of eight years old, and used the power of prayer to save her family. This little girl lived with her mother, her older brother and sister in a household destroyed by drugs, alcohol, crime and violence. For more than twenty years her mother went through men, addiction, and street life, because she was in bondage to the enemy of her soul: Satan.

            A short time after the little girl got saved; she became ill and was in a coma for five days. Then her mother went blind and while the mother was in the hospital, the little girls’ older brother and sister got into many ugly fights at home. The little girl tried to stop these fights, sometimes at the point of a knife. This little girl had not yet learned that there was an enemy out to kill her family! Although her mother was blind for quite awhile, that didn’t stop the men or the alcohol. Christians came to witness to her mother, but she cursed at them and threw them out of the house, while the little girl explained, “Mommy isn’t herself today”.

            Whenever her mother tried to be good, it never lasted and she hit the streets again. Many nights this little girl was left all alone at home while her family was in jail, at bars, and running the streets. Driven by loneliness, rejection and bitterness, her older brother quit attending school. Her brother turned to gangs and drugs, and started getting arrested. Her sister had an abortion at the age of sixteen. Both her brother and sister had sought refuge in the very world they had learned to hate.

            This little girl and her sister used to go downtown on the bus to look for their mother in skid row bars. One night the little girls mother got into a bar fight and came home with her wrist slashed open from a straight razor. The little girl went with her mother to the hospital. A few weeks later, a Christian took the little girl to pick her mother up from jail. Many traumatic experiences like these became the routine for the little girl, but the little girl never complained, never cursed her mother or spoke any unkind words. No matter what horrors the little girl found herself in, she survived, because she trusted in Jesus and asked every Christian she knew to pray for her family.

            Through it all, would you say this little girl had the right to lose hope? …To give up? …To runaway? For FIVE long years she went to church alone, and called Christians she knew to come and pick her up, and left notes all over the house to let her mother know that Jesus loved her. It would take a book to write this child’s’ testimony, but believe me…I know the story is true, because the little girl is my own daughter, Valarie!

            Valarie was attending bible study and met the man God sent me, but at the time I didn’t know it and certainly wasn’t in the mood for a Christian man to be coming around my house of sin! ...But hold on! Valarie’s prayers were answered! I was saved, delivered from sin, and in September, 1981, I married the Christian man Valarie brought home! All of Valarie’s family is saved now because of constant prayer.

Prayer is a powerful weapon! Never put it down!