Start to make it your confession; I'm blessed, blessed in the morning, blessed in the evening, blessed every day in my relationship, everything. God blesses me, see? So when you are in the prison, you have to learn to declare and to agree, that God is blessing you; even the bad times will turn around, and turn out for you good. Isn't that an interesting thing to realise? If you want to understand the pain of other people, go through a little yourself; and suddenly it changes your judgements, and your harshness, and you start to feel twinges of compassion. See before that, you just feel: oh yeah, go on, get a life, get a life, get on your feet, stop mucking around. You get a harshness and a judgement, but see, when you go through a few things, then you have a tenderness to say: come on, we know you can do it. Go on, I'll come alongside you and help you. There's a softness comes, so the things that are causing you pain right now, are to soften you up a little, so you'll feel a bit more about other people who are going through hard times. Isn't that right?
Come on, that's a lesson you can learn in prison. God blesses you, see? Here's another thing. Prison is a place where you learn to love the people who are rejecting you. Prison's a place to learn to love the people who reject you. Now how many people have experienced rejection? That'd be everyone here - you've had someone who just spoke against you, rejected you, turned you down, shut you off, cut you off, did some kind of - it just is part of life. Tell someone next to you: it's part of life. Get used to it - it's going to happen, and it'll happen more. See? It's just part of life, just happens. Here's the thing: can you love the person; or do you react against them? My observation is, most people, they don't love the people who reject them. They just get angry inside, and twisted inside, and: you'll get yours, you know? I know what I'll do, I won't talk to you any more. Well that's - big deal, you know? Good on you, if you're going to do that. We've got to learn to love people, and love has to flow out of a heart that's free, that's resolved pain. You've got to learn how to love people.
Well, you know, I love the people I like. That's not love. The Bible says in Luke 6, it says around about 34 or something like that, it says something like this. It said: if you're good to the people who are good to you, where is the evidence of God's grace in your life? Even an unsaved person does that. If you're kind to people who are kind to you, where's God's grace in all of that? No grace for that! Anyone can do that! Unsaved people do that! If you lend to people, hoping to get something back, what's the big deal? There's no grace in any of that. Hey, even unsaved people can do that. But if you can love those who hate you, if you can pray for those who use you, if you can bless those who curse you - oh, now that requires grace, because it goes against what you feel inside.
So prison's the place where you grow in loving people. When you're in prison, and you're in a bit of pain, that's when you choose to forgive, to bless, and to love; and you know what? God is watching that. He's preparing you for your enlargement. So you have to learn to love people, because at the end of the day, Jesus said: all of the whole Bible is summed up in loving God passionately, and loving people. So if you can't love people, you're missing the lesson of the prison, because that's the big lesson God's wanting you to learn - to love people.