Mary Kay Beard grew up on a farm in Alabama. She learned to shoot a gun while rabbit hunting with her brothers. But as she got older, she took a greater interest in firearms, becoming an expert in everything from a .22 to a .357 Magnum.
As a young woman, she married a man that she met on a blind date, only to discover months later that he had a secret life; he was an expert safecracker. He taught Mary Kay everything he knew. Soon, the newspapers were referring to the shotgun-wielding Mary Kay as the “Bonnie Parker of Alabama” for a string of robberies that landed her on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Arrested in June of 1972, at age 27, she quickly collected 11 federal indictments and 35 charges against her.
She was convicted of grand larceny and armed robbery. She would spend a total of six Christmases behind bars.
Mary Kay came to terms with Christ through volunteers who visited her in prison and a Gideon’s Bible in her cell.
God’s Word changed her heart. God used His Word to begin an amazing transformation of a broken, bitter criminal into a beautiful woman of faith and service.
God used His Word to change Mary Kay Beard into a woman of God. She would go on to found Angel Tree, a powerful ministry of Prison Fellowship – used to bring love and hope to children of the incarcerated.
Mary Kay Beard was sitting in an Alabama prison cell. She pulled out the Gideon Bible she had at first shoved away. As she thumbed through the pages, her eyes fell upon these two seemingly obscure verses hidden in the book of Ezekiel:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees
and be careful to keep my laws.
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Like Mary Kay, we, too, need God to soften our stony hearts…make us tender to Him….and then move us to embrace the working of His Spirit. We need Him to give us both the “want to” and the “ability to” follow Him and to live by the truth of His Word.
As we immerse ourselves in the Word of God, you and I will be changed from the inside out. It’s an inside job and according to Mary Kay Beard, every bank robber knows that’s the best kind!
The woman of God is transformed by the Word of God.
He did it for Mary Kay Beard and He can do it for you and me, too.
Are you ready to be transformed? Would you pray that you are – that He would give you the desire – the “want to” — to be transformed by His Word?
If you are ready to embrace all He has for you — ready to ask the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and begin/continue/jumpstart your transformation, I want to invite you to join us in the weeks ahead as we journey through the Gospel of John. Each week I’ll make a blog post from my teaching the previous Thursday at First Baptist Church in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. (If you are local, come on and join us in person!)
Otherwise, you can read along with us, or go deeper by downloading the daily study from Joy of Living here:
http://joyofliving.org/product/gospel-of-john-adult-study-english/
I’ll also be posting the link to the weekly teaching lecture on the FBC site. Here’s the introduction:
http://fbcsiloam.podbean.com/e/the-gospel-of-john-introduction-1441423049/
