WorshipSource.com

Where Was I? – The Testimony behind the song Several months ago my sister came from a meeting at her church and told me the testimony given by one of the members.  His name is Dave.  His father is one of the head elders at the church.  When he was a teen, he began rebelling – and progressed in this rebellion until recently, when in his twenties, he was arrested and sent to our county jail.   When you are first incarcerated there, you spend three days in solitary confinement.  By the end of the three days, Dave was on his knees before God in repentance and submission.  He called his dad and said “Don’t try to get me out of here – this is where I belong.  Just send me some underwear and socks and a Bible.”  When he got the Bible he thought, “I need two things – some Christian friends – and a church.”  He took his Bible out into the main room of the jail, and sat there with it, reading.  After a while another man joined him, and the two became friends and started studying together every day.  Other men started coming up to them and asking what they were doing.   One got saved, then another, then another.  People began coming to them asking them to pray for them.   Once, a man came up to them with a Bible and said, “I read it.  What do I do next?”    Dave asked him which part he’d read – and he said, “All of it.”  How long have you been in here?  Three days!   Dave led him in prayer for salvation.  Enough guys started getting saved that they formed their own little group, and began praying together and studying together.  Another day, a man walked into Dave’s cell, pushing a mop bucket.  He told Dave that he’d just read the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet.  (Dave started getting a little nervous here, he said – you just don’t touch another guys’ feet in jail!)  But the man said that he knew he couldn’t wash Dave’s feet, so he wanted to wash his cell, instead.  And he scrubbed the whole thing – walls and floor.   Others started doing the same for each other, as well.   They started a “popcorn prayer” – using an empty popcorn bag, they went around and asked the inmates, saved and unsaved, for their prayer requests.  They wrote them on little slips of paper and put them into the popcorn bag.   They’d pull out a prayer request and pray for it for three days.  Inmates started coming up to them and telling them how God had answered the prayer. The guards started getting a little suspicious of the group and split them up into different wards of the jail.  They were really worried about the ones who were moved, because they were so new in the faith.  But then word came back through the “jail grapevine” – people were getting saved in the new cell block, now! A man came running into Dave’s cell, holding his Bible and saying, “I just read it in here – Jesus healed the blind man!  You have to pray for me.”  He was partially blind in one eye, and the eye was permanently squinted almost closed.  Dave said he was a little nervous about it, but as a step of faith before he prayed, he took out a little mirror and put it on the table between them.  He prayed for the man, and nothing appeared to happen.  As the man turned to leave, Dave suddenly said, “Wait a minute!  You’re not squinting anymore!”  At first the man didn’t believe it, but when he saw it in the mirror, he started getting really excited.  He still couldn’t see well, but the eye was opening up.  And the blue color was coming back in (it had turned black).   He told Dave later that he still couldn’t fully see with it, but that he could see well enough with it to be better able to read the Bible. When the day came for Dave’s release, he was all packed and ready to go.  Then a guard told him it would have to wait for another day.  He knew there had to be some reason for it.   A day or two later when it came time for him again, he decided not to go to breakfast, but just sit in his cell and pray and wait until they released him.  As he sat there, two large men walked into his cell.   They said “We’re not letting you leave here.”  At first Dave wasn’t sure what they were up to – but then both of them said, “You can’t leave until you show us how to get what you have.”   They both got saved. As he stood outside by the gate waiting for his ride, the guard that was standing with him was one of the ones who had mocked him a lot while he was there.     Dave heard a noise and turned around – a whole crowd of the men that he’d prayed with and worked with came out to the yard and started clapping.  Dave turned to the guard and said, “You might get rid of me – but you’ll never get rid of the Spirit of God in here.” All this happened in just a few months.  Recently, right here in our local county jail.  I cried through the entire time my sister told me of Dave’ testimony.  I couldn’t stop.  She invited me to the youth group of which she’s a leader because Dave was going to speak that Friday.  I never do things like this - I almost always say “no” if someone asks me to go someplace different – but I had to say yes.  I went and listened, and cried through the entire testimony again.  In the middle of it, I suddenly got the lines for the song pouring into my head.  I asked for a piece of paper and immediately wrote down the first three lines of each of the first three verses.    All I could think as I was listening to Dave was how those men had all come to the end of themselves, and when they reached the bottom, they let go of everything but doing what God told them to do.  Daily.  Regularly.  Most of them were not from a “religious” background.  They didn’t know how to “act holy”.  They just read the Word, and did what it said.   It was simple – and real.  And where was I?  What was I doing in my regularly daily day for the Lord?  — Jean Singleton