October 11, 2000
This evening we had
an awesome
service and the Lord was truly moving.
Some of us were on our faces before the Lord crying rivers of tears and
worshipping Jesus at a level and intensity I have not experienced in a long
time. I believe that in the spiritual
realm a major breakthrough had taken place.
I came out of this service totally
refreshed and very determined to go right back to the front-lines of this
warfare. My heart has been fixed upon
the Lord, my commitment to serve Him renewed.
David Berkowitz
October 12, 2000
In the past several
weeks my
prayer life seems to be growing stronger, and I have been led to make
intercessory prayers for other nations at a level greater than ever before in my
walk with the Lord.
The world is in such upheaval now. Surely
any Christian can feel the “birth
pangs” of the earth. At times I could
almost feel the fear, anguish and pain of many troubled
hearts.
We have such a wonderful, awesome and
“eternal” message of hope to share with others, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
How we need to share the story of our Savior
and the story of redemption more than ever before.
David Berkowitz
October 13, 2000
Mike T., a young
man in his 20’s
from Carbondale, Illinois,
wrote to tell me how my testimony
has been an encouragement to him and how that he had been delivered from his
drug addiction. He told me that he has
been “drug free” for almost three years because of what Christ had done in his
life.
My testimony had nothing to do with his
salvation. He was already a Christian
when he came across my testimony and wanted to write to encourage
me.
When I wrote back to Mike to thank him, I
exhorted this young man to continue to follow Christ no matter what. I know how
strong the pull of the world is on
Christians, and Satan waits around every corner, so to speak, with a new
temptation.
I also told Mike that America’s
prisons are filled with men and women who have been overtaken in their
addictions, and who seem unable, this far, to break free from their
addictions.
I likewise told him that I can see the
destruction that alcohol and other drugs have on people because a majority of
the men in prison are in for drug related crimes and for being vilest while
under the influence of booze.
Fortunately for him, Mike was set free
from his addiction without having to come to prison. He told me that he found
his way into a
“spiritual treatment program,” something like Teen Challenge.
He is so fortunate not to have experienced
imprisonment!
David Berkowitz
October 21, 2000
“And Jesus went about
all the cities and
villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
“But when he saw
the multitudes, he was moved
with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as
sheep having no shepherd.
“Then he said to
his disciples, “The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few’ Pray ye therefore the Lord of the
harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest."
Matthew 9:35-38
I thank the Lord for all He has been doing
in the prisons. I thank Him also for
Christians who’ve been faithful and willing to answer the Lord’s call. For
when Jesus was walking on this earth, He
went everywhere touching hurting lives with the love of God. His heart was moved
with compassion when
Jesus saw the scattered multitudes…a multitude of people with a multitude of
problems!
And in this passage the Lord said
something which touched me deeply. He
looked at His disciples and said that they were to pray for more workers
for the harvest field. To me this
was amazing because, as the Lord,
He could have done it all Himself. He
could have called battalions of angels to come forth, appear on the scene, and
then go out into the world to carry on all these works of
compassion.
Instead He looked upon his human disciples
(like He is looking upon us today) and told them to do the work of reaching out
to hurting humanity, and to pray for still more workers to come along. How humbling
this is to realize that God has
chosen weak man with all man’s sins and failings to carry out such awesome
tasks.
David Berkowitz
October 22, 2000
Yesterday’s Saturday evening service was
awesome! I received a wonderful filling
of the Holy Spirit. The Lord really
moved in our midst, and it was one of the most anointed services we’ve had in a
long time.
The message was about Paul and his
apostleship and how the Lord used him to evangelize the Gentiles. Anyhow, at
the end of the service the
minister from New
Jersey was told by the Lord to call some of us up front
to the altar to receive prophetic words.
I was the first one they were led to call,
and of course I had no idea what would be spoken over me. The message from the
Lord was that I was to
start writing, and that the Lord was from this moment going to begin opening
many “great doors” for me to share my testimony via writing.
Terrific!
I was jumping up and down in my spirit.
This was a very happy moment for me after such a long journey through the
wilderness of disappointment and discouragement.
The minister asked me to lift my hands in
the air. She then anointed my hands with
oil and told me to “start writing.” She
said that the testimony was to go “throughout the world.”
Well North Pole here I come! Ha! I
left the chapel so energized. I still
feel wound-up and I could hardly sleep last night. Now I know how Elijah the
prophet felt when
he ran from Beersheba to Mount Horeb in forty days on only one meal (1 Kings
19:7,8).
David Berkowitz
November 1, 2000
Today’s message
for me comes
from Psalm 66:18. “If I regard iniquity
in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”
This one verse from Psalm 66 sure is
powerful. The Lord cut me deep with this
one today. The Bible says that God’s
word is like a “two-edged sword”.
Iniquity and a personal relationship with
the Lord just do not go together. Sin
and salvation do not mix. It’s like oil
and water. It has to be one or the
other. At least these are some of the
insights God gave me as I pondered this message while in my
cell.
And this verse alone was enough to bring
me to my knees crying out for forgiveness, repenting, and allowing the Lord to
cleanse and renew me.
Many times we do not need to hear a long
sermon to bring conviction. Today it
just took one verse from the Bible. It
was all the Lord needed.
In the gospel accounts of the Life of
Jesus, I can see that He was able to completely communicate what He needed to
say with just a few words or only one sentence.
This is a good lesson for me.
David Berkowitz
November 6, 2000
Today I received
a letter from a
Christian in Minnesota who had this to
say:
“I
cannot express what a
blessing receiving your last letter was to me.
On the day you wrote (October 25th) I went into the hospital
for surgery… I received your letter
while still in the hospital. I was so
miserable there and your letter brought me great comfort.
“I
had prayed the night
before that God would send me comfort and He did, as He always does, in His own
special way.
“I thank God that He has
servants like you, who are being led daily by Him to minister to the
hurting.”
MC
Well what can I say except “Thank you,
Lord Jesus!” This is what He has called
me to do, and this is just about what He has me to do every day. It is all God,
and He gets all the
glory.
David Berkowitz
November 21, 2000
Today I received
a letter from a
friend who is going through a tough time of discouragement. In my response back
to him I said that we
have to keep trusting in Christ and allow Him to sustain us through difficult
times. I told him that we “cannot go it
alone”.
This world is too cold and cruel and the
devil is too demented and evil for a Christian to make it without Jesus being
first in his or her life.
And right now I am watching our first real
snow fall as I am typing this journal entry.
Here in the foothills of the Catskill
Mountains winter often comes early and uninvited.
Also, I was encouraged to see that ABC-TV
just had a short special about Wicca and Witchcraft in America. It was aired a short time ago during the 6PM
“Prime Time” news.
While much of it was sympathetic and
neutral (unfortunately), thankfully there was one minister who, when interviewed
for his 30 second slot, stated that “all witchcraft” is inherently evil.
That all of it ultimately leads to deeper
forms of spiritual bondage, and sometimes to outright
Satanism.
I was glad to see that the minister was
allowed to speak clearly and intelligibly, and that no one tried to make him
look “crazy,” as the media often tries
to do with sincere Christian ministers.
I can only say “Amen” to all of
this!
David Berkowitz
November 23, 2000
Today being “Thanksgiving”, I
was able to spend all of the morning in my cell reading my Bible and
praying. It was good to be off from my
job assignment and to have some quiet time with the Lord.
Earlier this afternoon I wrote to Don
Dickerman, a dear brother in Christ who lives in Texas.
The Lord had me share this with him:
“Don, America is entering a dark
period, and in the midst of the trials, storms and ‘downturns’ that are ahead,
many foundations will be shaken and many will be yanked away from their
complacent lifestyles..
“Be ready to be used by the Holy
Spirit to minister to all the lost and hurting, both those in and out of
prison.”
The Lord also gave me a Scripture passage
for Don, and could not this message be for all the body of Christ? Surely I believe
so. 1 Thessalonians
5:1-10.
David Berkowitz
December 6, 2000
The time seems to
be passing so
quickly. In less than a month 2000 will
be history. I pray for this nation and
for our churches. Perhaps the Lord will
give us a little more time to repent and to turn away from the sins that
displease Him.
Lately I have been doing okay in some
areas but in others I have been struggling.
I have strong faith, so this is not the issue. It is just that for now
God’s hand of
chastening is resting upon my life.
In His word it says that when we as true
Christians are bearing fruit, He will “prune” us so that we can bear even more
fruit. Pruning is painful! And God
is talking about developing the
“fruits of the Spirit” in our lives (John 15:1-15).
You see, the Lord wants to make us sweeter
so that our lives can be a blessing to others.
A fruit tree grows its fruit for others to enjoy; it doesn’t grow fruit
for itself. These ‘fruits of the
Spirit’, then, are for others to taste the goodness of God through our
lives.
So at this time I have been in great
internal pain. Jesus is now doing and
inside job on me. And while this might
be painful, in the end it will make me into a better Christian, more holy, more
yielded to Him, and more loving.
David Berkowitz
December 10, 2000
“SOMETHING
MORE DEADLY THAN
CANCER”
The time is passing so quickly. It’s
hard to believe this year is almost
over. Last year at this time many were
worrying about “Y2K”. But Y2K was never
the problem. Rather the problem was and
still is “sin”!
It is sin that is killing our nation,
wrecking havoc in the Church, and hurting and destroying our families and even
our very lives.
This is what the Lord was showing me today
and what I am
putting down in my personal journal.
Today God sent me to Isaiah chapters 58 and 59. The Lord really opened
up these passages to
me this morning.
It’s time to scream “Sin”! It’s
time to cry out that there is sin being
practiced among God’s people, and these sins will eventually ruin us. However,
there is still time for each person
to repent and to turn away from their sins and to get closer to the
Lord.
And I too need to turn away from sin. For
it is sure going to kill me if I keep
doing the things I’ve been doing. But
God is merciful. He wants us to be holy
and obedient, and to be spiritually prosperous.
He wants our lives to be as a “well watered garden” full of joy, peace,
and hope.
Yet as is often the case, our sins are
standing in the way of our spiritual progress.
They are quenching the Holy Spirit in us, are separating us from having a
good relationship with Jesus Christ.
And, as I said, these sins (whatever they are) will eventually damage
each of us and will cause the church to be robbed of her power and sacred
anointing. Her light of hope will be
weakened unless we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, stop practicing
sin.
Sin always kills!
Psalm 66:18
1 John 1:9
David Berkowitz
December 14, 2000
God sure has a sense of
humor! Only the Lord can put a former Ku
Klux Klan leader and a Jewish guy like me together as brothers in
Christ.
Earlier last year I began to receive mail from
a man, Roger, from Alabama.
He loves the Lord and was happy to share his testimony with
me.
Roger was an influential person within the
ranks of the Klan. But then God got hold
of him and turned his life around. Today
he, along with his wife, Jill, attends many “all black” and mixed churches where
they invite him to share his story.
God completely changed his heart and today
Roger has nothing but love for blacks, Jews, and everyone else. It has been a
joy to get his letters which
are always so full of energy and encouragement.
Several weeks ago Roger asked for my
prayers because presently active members in the Klan have been threatening him
as well as his family. Right now a large
church in New York
City is praying for him.
He also likes to share my testimony in the
churches. His wife, who ministers at a
local youth shelter, also shares my testimony with the
teenagers.
It’s the same old story all across
America, even in rural
Alabama: teens
caught up in dugs, gangs, depression, struggling with peer pressure, feelings of
hopelessness, broken and dysfunctional homes, and their parents who are
struggling with their own problems.
And it is the same old problem:
“Sin”! There’s sin in the cities, and
there’s sin in the suburbs. Sin is
wherever people are because it is in our hearts and is a part of our fallen
nature. Only through Jesus the Messiah
can sin be taken away.
David Berkowitz
December 17, 2000
A friend from Minnesota
wrote a letter
recently asking me what to tell a young woman whom he’s been ministering
to. This woman is a schoolteacher who
lives in Togo, West Africa. Her
family has begun to persecute her and show hatred towards her for giving her
life to Christ. She comes from a family
of witches and, according to my friend, both of her parents and her sister are
high ranking village witches.
He is in contact with this “sister” via
e-mail. After some prayer the Lord gave
me Matthew 5:43-46 and Mathew 10:34-36.
I told Mark that he needs to tell her to pray for those family member,
that they get saved and delivered.
Prayer changes things and God can soften any heart.
The above passages from the Gospel of
Matthew deal with being hated, even by family members, for following Jesus. The
Lord says we are to love our “enemies”,
to do good to them and to lift up each one in prayer.
He will
e-mail all this back to her. And I know that this dear sister in Christ
will overcome because “Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the
world.” (1 John 4:4).
David Berkowitz
December 19, 2000
“But God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise…
and the lowly things of the world,
and the things which are despised…”
1
Corinthians
1:27,28
I am so thankful and happy that the
Messiah has chosen me to be one of His witness and a minister of His grace. If
it were up to mankind, I would not be
chosen. Instead I would be rejected and
thrown into the deepest, hottest hell.
But God who delights in showing mercy has
come to earth to save sinners. The
central themes of the Holy Bible are that man is a sinner and is in rebellion
towards God. But that the Lord loves
people so much that He came to earth to die for our sins and pay the penalty for
our wicked deeds, so that we might be forgiven and restored to fellowship with
Him.
Wherever there is hatred, Jesus comes to
bring love. Wherever there is racism,
Christ comes to bring brotherhood.
Wherever there is pain the Lord comes to bring healing. And wherever there
are sinners, Jesus Christ
comes and offers His forgiveness.
No sin is to great, no deed is so wicked
that it cannot be washed away by the blood of the Savior. No life is so hopeless
that he or she cannot
be given a new start.
David Berkowitz
Another year is almost here and
the Lord has brought me safely through.
I have no complaints. He has been
more than faithful.
God has been blessing the services and
Bible studies at the prison I am in. I
have a born again chaplain who loves the Lord.
Earlier today, in addition to our morning
worship service, we had a special baptismal service in the afternoon. All the
new Christians were baptized, and
each got the chance to share his testimony with everyone else just before he
would be immersed in the water.
I had tears in my eyes as I listened to
each young brother give God the glory.
Each man was thankful for what God is going to do with each man in the
future as they stay faithful to Him.
During the baptismal service I had my
hands full because I was one of the volunteer “mop men”. We have
a full size tank and there was water
all over the place. I had to help mop
the chapel as well as the corridors leading to the men’s room where each inmate
had to go to change his clothes.
Then to top it off, the siphon pump which
was supposed to pump all the water out of the tank and into a utility sink quite
a distance away decided to break down.
It would not pump the water back out of the tank. So me and the chaplain
plus a few other
inmates had to get buckets and empty it a bucket at a time.
It took several hours and it was a lot of
work but it was fun. I had a good time
praising God, working, and fellowshipping with the brethren. We also sang many
songs
together.
David Berkowitz
December 26, 2000
As this year closes
out I have
been spending time thanking the Lord and meditating upon all the good things God
has done for me this year. There were
many trials of my faith, but there were
also many victories.
There were also some personal losses of
several dear friends, Christians who were a blessing to me and who shared some
of their loves with me. They prayed for
me often, helped with the ministry, and gave my spirit a lot of encouragement
when I was at my low points.
This year my brothers Pat Cicala and Dick
Williams went home to be with the Lord, as well as my dear sister in Christ,
Angela Hewitt.
I am so grateful to each of them and so
thankful for their love. I am a better
man and a better Christian because of these three, and I look forward to the day
when we will all meet again around the throne of glory.
While the passing of our friends and
family may be painful for us, I know that our loss is heaven’s gain. They’ve
already received big
homecomings. The Lord was right there
behind the veil to greet each one as they stepped into eternity. For Pat, Dick,
and Angela,
their trials,
troubles and struggles are all over.
I cannot wait for the day that I too will
be able to see my Messiah face to face, to look into Jesus’ eyes and tell Him
that I love Him, and to thank Him personally for all He has done for
me.
I also want to give my Savior a big
hug. He is truly King of Kings, and Lord
of Lords. Not many people are so
privileged to hug a king. But Jesus is a
King who will gladly receive hugs.
Psalm 116:15
David Berkowitz
December 31, 2000
There is one particular
inmate
whom the Lord has put in my heart to encourage and help. His name is Michael. He has no one. Long ago abandoned by
his family, Michael is
doing a lengthy sentence for setting fire to a youth detention center which
caused the death of another young resident.
Michael has been a wanderer on this earth
since his youth. Presently he is
assigned to the Intermediate Care Program Unit because of his emotional problems
and his anger. But the Lord said to
befriend him and he really is a nice person.
He’s not a Christian (yet) but I
feel he’s getting there. I’ve been
working one-on-one with Michael for more than a year.
This morning he was in church which is the
best place for him. We sat together as
we always do when he comes. Thus far he
only comes on Sunday, but this is a start.
And today he actually behaved himself.
Sometimes he acts up in church and makes noises. “Lord, give me
patience!”
This past Friday, however, I found Michael
in the recreation yard. It was bitterly
cold and we had to keep moving to stay warm. At this time he was in one of his
moods and he lashed out at me again and again.
What anger! He’s really hurting
inside.
I spent the afternoon talking to him about
Jesus Christ. Yet in spite of the abuses
I sometimes take, it will be worth it in the end to one day see Michael
surrender to Christ and be saved from his sins and delivered from his
demons. Man truly is a sinner, but
Christ is a savior.
Amen!
And this will be my last journal entry
for the year!
David Berkowitz