Un Mensaje de Esperanza para Ayudarte a Superar el Mundo de la Prisión - Jorge Riano

🎵 this little conversation with you or with those who are with you today. I would like to be able to bring a note of hope. The situation in which you find yourself together with those around you is very uncomfortable. We were not born in a prison, we were born in something very different, in the family environment, so that you can adapt to a situation of confinement, of extreme limitation, of isolation with the people you love. And from good to bad, to find yourself in a situation with strange people that the rest of society wants to keep away from because they are afraid or want to keep them under control. It is a very different world from the one God planned for each of human beings. That is why I want to appeal to the Scriptures to give you some advice and see how, in the midst of this new reality, you can develop hope. The only hope that human beings see is from a short vision, with which we can understand what is going to happen to us in the future. But God has a much longer vision, and from that vision we can hold on so as not to succumb, not to be depressed, not to enter into a continuous sadness, not to lose the meaning of life, the meaning of why we are here. In fact, we should not lose the possibility of rebuilding the relationships that we may have left behind. That is why I want to read this passage for you and comment on it briefly, in an applied way, so that it may be useful not only to you, but also to those who are around you. The Scriptures say, and do not adapt to this world, but transform yourselves through your mind, so that you may verify what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. The way in which you can get out of this situation is that you find a way to behave in a way that the rest of society approves and celebrates. While society or the people who are guarding you believe or suspect that your conduct is neither good, nor pleasant to God, nor productive, they will extend your stay in that place. So that we can develop a mentality in that time, in this time that you are there, of how to change that mentality, how to change things, so that others can see in a spontaneous way and be convinced that your conduct is very different from the one that brought you to that place. Let's look at two key points. The first is, do not adapt to this world. Well, your world has been reduced to prison. So, applying the advice, it would be, do not adapt to prison. What does that mean? Well, it means that when you get there, you find a dynamic of interrelation between people completely different from the one you knew. In fact, the people who are there may have been wrong as seriously as you or much more. In that sense, your world changes. You are not going to find the people you meet outside. You are not going to find people

with whom you have family or friendship relations. They are completely strange and, many times, difficult to adapt to the outside world. So, how not to adapt? Well, first you have to understand that in prison there are rules to follow established by the people who guard them, but there are also certain unwritten rules of conduct among prisoners. So, that means that your world is a mixture of two types of rules. is different, but that those outside are waiting for you to be above those rules, that your behavior surpasses the mentality or the world of the people who have seriously been wronged in this world, and of the strict and narrow rules and control that prison establishes. In other words, your world is those two realities, but really the solution for you to get out of there is not found in those behaviors and in those rules. That's where I'm going to ask you to give God a chance, to try to establish a relationship with God. This way, neither prison nor the other prisoners will forbid you to do so. In fact, I'm talking to you today because the prison wants us to do it, because they want your behavior to be much better. Everyone wants it. So, don't conform to what prison expects of you and what the other prisoners expect of you. On the contrary, start thinking about what someone superior expects of you, someone who loves you, someone who has sacrificed for you, someone who has sought people, someone who has put in their hearts the interest that they are here talking to you from a distance, that they leave their time, their family, their world, and come to this place so that they think of you and bring you advice that inspires you and makes you fly above the reality of the world to which you are now belonging. Well, if you make that decision, if you make the decision to live a life far above the standard that the world in which you are living is asking of you, if you decide not to adapt to that world in which you are living, well, you are ready to go to the other side of this coin that appears here in this advice. That is, transform yourself through the renewal of your understanding. That means that you have to renew your mind. You have to renew your mind, but the mind is full of our previous experiences. All the pain, all the wounds, all the failure, all the frustration, all the sadness, all the broken dreams, all the life cut short is there in the mind.

And the big question, when one feels alone, with so much, possibly having a lot of time to be alone and reflect, our reflection will always go to what the mind has already lived. In other words, to the past. I'm going to tell you something, what can you go to change in the past? Sometimes we try to find the way that no one has found, to see how to change, how not to have done what has already been done, how not to have said, how not to have thought, how not to have acted. Let me tell you, in the transformation of your understanding, you need to understand that you will never go back to the past. The past is untouchable, the past is sealed, it is under lock and key, it is in an extremely safe place, without access, you will have no access in any way. So all the time you invest in seeing how to go in your mind to that place to change things, it is impossible. From there, that story is not going to come out. So, when we talk about transforming our understanding, it cannot be linked in any way to the past. That is why Jesus Christ comes and proposes to us as tools to live faith, hope, and love. These are three things that are not going to be sought in the past, they are going to be sought in the future. And the future, unlike the past, is totally open. The future is not that it is open. It is that God invites us, God is there, God is waiting for us there, God is continually pointing to us so that we can move forward. Now, I recognize that there must be a great dilemma in thinking about the future, because some may have an extremely limited future, either because of a great long sentence to live in that place, or it is very short and can end soon, even with the loss of life, if you have the death penalty. Or it may be very short, but you feel that there are factors that can lengthen it, being there. So, I understand, I understand that looking at the future in the world in which you develop can fill you with fear and terror, it can terrify you. So, when I suspect that the future can be bad, or it is not good, or it is not what I expect,

it is better not to think about it, it is better not to bring it to mind either. But notice what trap, what trap we put on ourselves. We want to go where we can't, and we are afraid to look where we can go. We are caught in the middle of that conflict, and God is coming, God is coming. It is not your mother or your father, or a friend who can have super valuable advice and love you very much. No, no, no, no, no. God is coming, the one who has lived through the centuries of the centuries, and He is coming to drag you through all this, all this hard, difficult and tricky way of thinking, He is coming to give you a way out. I took it. I was also trapped. We are all trapped. There are those who are trapped today with the news of a cancer, with a life expectancy of three months. They will live less than you. You will be able to visit family, children, friends in six months, nine months, a year, and maybe you will leave in several years. Well, there are people in this world who only have three months left. After three months there will be no children, no mother, nothing, zero, it's over. There are others who are trapped and waiting for deportation to separate, not less than seven years from their family, that are left here in the United States. There are people who are living in situations that are much more difficult to find hope, than maybe the one you have. So you are not in the worst of positions. Get your act together. Start working for that future. Don't be afraid of it. You have tried to evade fear of many dangerous and difficult things. You cannot see the future as something dangerous.

Do you know why? Because there is God, who created you and loves you, who sent His Son so that He would still give His life for you and for me. So it was hard for me, that's why I know how hard it can be for you, but I finally took the step. I decided to be a person of the future, not of the past. I decided to change guilt, anger, resentment, anger. I decided to change frustration, sadness, depression, which is the only result of feeding on the past, by faith, expectation, sleep, vision, imagination, listening to God, hope. I decided to change my tools to live. I decided to fill a toolbox with things that would help me to what? To bring something of the future. Yes, as if it were a bank that lends you money and then you have to pay it. But do you have that money in advance to do things that change your future today? Yes. God. God offers us strength and He offers us hope. Everything comes from there, from the future, where it is not. Where it cannot be taken from here. But from there I grab myself to see something different from what I see in my environment. Something that I cannot achieve with my own eyes, but God... He tells me that by faith I can visualize it. How do I visualize it? I get into the Scriptures to listen to his promises, because in those promises he draws that reality of the future. I need that future because I have nowhere else to get strength from, so I nail my nails there and try to grab myself to drive myself into today, into the difficulty of today. What is hope?

Hope is also to draw strength from the bench of the future. I have nothing to draw strength from, to lean on, to move forward, so I'm going to get them out of where I haven't lived them, and there I draw strength. That hope allows me to move forward today without seeing a way out. But I don't stop. And in that achievement of hope and faith, I find myself on a much more excellent path, the path of love. When I decide to walk the path of love, I free myself from guilt, sadness, fear, suspicion of the other. I put my feet on a path where my heart rests, where it shares, where my heart opens space not only for me, but for others too. And obviously I will find others who live in their own prisons, but I will invite them because the experience of having left my prison, the experience of having left my confinement towards a reality full of freedom and opportunities, I would underestimate it if I did not use it as a platform to help others also find their freedom. And as I collaborate with the freedom of others and begin to relate to free people, live in the world they live in, wow, God is waiting for me there. The one who knows how to love. Reflect on these words, someone who was a slave tells you. He bet on God and fell into a land of freedom, not because he had changed his circumstances. I was the one who changed. May these words serve you. May these words help you see a light in a dark tunnel. May these words awaken in your heart what awakens faith and hope, the desire to look to the future, the desire to walk in the uncertain, but with the safest of beings. Christ Jesus, may God bless you.