A Journey with The Holy Spirit

By Frederick Prince and The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit was infused into my Soul and yours when we were Baptised.

The question raised in A Journey with The Holy Spirit is, why is

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick A Prince
• Release date: Jun 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087969756

Frederick Prince

Frederick Prince was born in California and raised in Massachusetts. Fred was a business major at Stonehill College and was intrigued by the philosophy and theology courses he was required to take. Fred owned his own business for 36 years and in retirement, at the urging of the Holy Spirit, took up writing about his relationship with God. Fred's books reflect his life, and how it has been impacted by his being a husband, father, business owner, and his twenty-three years of experiences working with the inmates at the Cumberland County Jail, all of which led to his growing relationship with God. His books are filled with stories of interactions Fred has had with the many people he came in contact with.

Book preview

A Journey with

The Holy Spirit

A Journey with

The Holy Spirit

Inspired by The Holy Spirit

Recorded by Frederick A. Prince

A Journey with The Holy Spirit

ISBN Print: 9781484914571

ISBN Ebook: 9781630070977

Library of Congress Number: 2021905718

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Frederick Prince

All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition are copyright © 1989, 1993 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Scripture quotations from the New American Bible, Revised Edition are copyright © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission.

If any copyright materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Frederick Prince in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Email: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

Foreword

Rebellion

Early years — Stonehill College — U.S. Navy

Accommodation

Gail and our family

Closed, Gone Fishing

My god (yes, small g) fired me!

Acceptance

We start our own company

Pineland Christmas party

The Rosary

Did you read my book?  No, but I read a lot of Tom Clancy!

Progress Sharing Company

How much time is God’s?

Help, Lord, I don’t have a program!

Honduras

Choice

Where do I find the Holy Spirit?

Good morning, how are you today?

Cumberland County Jail revisited

I will walk in the Presence of the Lord in the land of the living

Retirement

Relationship

Thank you, Father.

Bad luck or ‘Thank you, Father’? You decide

Conclusion

My promise to you

Appendix

Holy Spirit or Spirit

Fruit or Fruit of the Spirit

Acknowledgements

Other books inspired by the Holy Spirit

Foreword

Fifteen years ago, I joined a bible-study program at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine.

I met Bill Cook in the church choir.  Bill also volunteered for the past three years in a Bible Study program at the Cumberland County Jail. 

Bill tried very hard for three years to recruited me to join him in the Bible study program at the jail. 

I finally agreed to go with Bill into the jail.

I went in and loved the ministry. Over the past fifteen years, we (Holy Spirit whom I didn’t know at the time) and I have developed a line of questioning that encourages the inmates we meet to believe maybe there is a God, and maybe there is a reason why they should learn about God today, and continue that process for the rest of their lives.

The jail pod where I work is called seventy-two, and there are twenty-four cells in the pod. New prisoners who are admitted into the jail spend seventy-two hours being evaluated before they are released into the general jail population. Each man is confined to his cell, except for meals, showers, and brief periods of exercise.

My sessions are open to all the inmates in the pod, except those who are on personal watch, dangerous, sick, or exhibiting behavioral problems. Five to ten men usually show up.

I introduce myself, and then start asking the first of a series of questions.

Do you believe in God?

This question should be easy. For most of the men, it is. Occasionally I get a man who says no and maybe one man who isn’t sure. If he says no or isn’t sure, I ask him what he does believe in. Often this is the first time anyone has challenged his position.  I explain that in the next hour we will challenge all the men on many fronts.

We intend to show them there is a better life, but before they can choose it, they have to know about it.

Do you believe in satan?

This is also an easy question, but I get many answers. Some say yes, some say no. Some aren’t sure. Some have said they don’t believe in God but do believe in satan. I find this answer most interesting, for what they are telling me is they believe in the bad but not the good.

This question is also interesting because in Maine, I have discovered, we don’t talk much about satan. Not talking about satan, I believe, is good for satan, and bad for God. It’s also bad for the individual.

Next question: Do you believe in good luck and bad luck?

Again, some say yes, some say no, others aren’t sure. I don’t know is an easy way to kill an hour without having to think.

These guys are in for a surprise.

Next question: If you believe in bad luck, who wins when something bad happens?

They have never thought about this. I suggest satan wins.

If satan is the cause, and he is when something bad happens, he wins when he isn’t blamed for it.

Who puts the thought into a man’s mind to rob a store?

satan!

Who puts the thought into a man’s mind to hit his wife?

satan!

Who puts the thought into a man’s mind to get high on drugs or booze?

satan!

satan wants anything that tears you away from God. satan is the father of lies. The lie is that what you are about to do will benefit you, but of course it doesn’t.

Question: Let’s say, for example, I placed a bag over the head of one of the men in the room. Next, I, or someone else in the room, hits that person. We know two things. One, he doesn’t know who hit him; and two, he can’t defend himself.

He could say having the bag over his head was bad luck.

But by not identifying satan with something bad that has just happened to him, he likewise has a bag over his head, because he can't identify the reason why he is in jail, and therefore he has no defense.

If I take the bag off his head, then he can defend himself and he knows who will try to hit him, and where the blow will land.

This is what we will try to accomplish during the next hour, making the prisoners aware of God and satan in their lives, and encouraging them to take the bags off their heads, so they can defend themselves against satan’s attacks, and grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit.

By talking with them about satan being in their lives, my hope is they will start to realize they are in jail because they have listened to satan. 

If, however, they continue to tell me they are in jail because of bad luck, they have lost, and my hope is they will start realizing why they’ve lost.

If they tell me they are in jail because satan deceived them, and that getting drunk, for example, didn’t bring the joy they thought it would, now they have identified the source of their problem, and can start to defend against it.

satan encouraged the prisoner to do what he did to be put in jail.

The men are starting to think.

Question: If something good happens and you say it’s good luck, who wins and who loses?

God loses!

satan wins, because God doesn’t get credit for the good that has happened in their life.

You lose because you haven’t seen God’s active role in your life.

And you lose in two other ways:

You lose the Joy of knowing you are not alone.

You lose the Joy of knowing that God only wants what brings more Love, Joy, and Peace into your life.

One week, a prisoner named Pete told me he was in jail for robbing a grocery store to feed his family. When I heard this, I was stunned. He further told me that when he was in his early teens, his mother and father threw him, his brother and sister out into the street.

Pete is now married and has two children.

He then told me that if he had waited three more hours, his grandmother was going to give him money to buy the food for his family.

Lastly, he related that it was because of bad luck that he was in jail.

I am sure there were two voices in Pete’s mind.

satan said to him: Rob the store. Your grandmother won’t show up. She doesn’t love you. Rob the store now before it’s too late.

God, the Holy Spirit, said to him: Wait! Your grandmother will show up. She loves you.

satan said to Pete’s grandmother: He’s a worthless bum. Don’t waste your money.

God, the Holy Spirit, said to her: You love him. Help him out.

Pete listened to satan.

The grandmother listened to the Holy Spirit, and she showed up.

Realizing who is talking to us makes it easier to see who is trying to steer us on the right course.

This all happened in the past few months.

How I arrived at this line of questioning is what this book is all about. I should start then, at the beginning of my life, my journey, so you will better understand how I arrived at where I am now.

I have broken the book into the four periods of my relationship with God.

Rebellion - I wanted to do it on my own.

Accommodation - God was in Heaven, I was here on Earth, and I would gain access to Heaven through my good works.

Acceptance - I learned and believe that I am justified to the Father because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Choice - I choose to do the will of the Father by listening to the whisper of the Holy Spirit, and growing in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit. Love, Joy, and Peace are benefits I can and do enjoy now.

Rebellion

Early years — Stonehill College — U.S. Navy

Dad was a Baptist. Mom was a Roman Catholic. Before they could get married, the parish priest told them they had to stay apart for a year, which they did. After the year’s wait, they were married. They celebrated fifty-four years as husband and wife, before Dad died at age eighty-one.

I was born in 1940 in Ross, California. Dad owned and worked at a new private school for boys. He taught, coached, and did a lot of the other work around the school to keep it going.

When World War II began, all of the teachers were drafted into the Army. Dad sold the school and headed back to Massachusetts, where he found a job at Rivers School.

Mom was a stay-at-home mom. Our house was filled with Love, Joy, and Peace, which I took for granted at the time.

Upon reflection, I always felt that when I walked through the back door, I was safe from the problems of the world.

In my junior year of high school at Rivers, I told Dad that I didn’t think I needed to attend any more religious-education classes. I knew enough! Dad asked for my driver’s license. He said he was going to tear it up.

You heard me wrong, I said. I love religious education!

That, of course, was a lie. The fact was, I loved to drive, and I wasn’t going to give that up because I wanted to skip religious-education classes. I continued to attend, but I never paid attention.

Years later, I came to respect Dad for his position. When he and Mom were married, he made a vow that he would raise his children Catholic. That was his promise to God, and he wouldn’t break it.

As a senior, I applied to seven colleges. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house and stop going to Mass. Six turned me down. Only Stonehill College, a new, small Catholic college in the town of Easton, Mass., accepted me.

What bad luck, I thought at the time.

My freshman year, Dad sent me twenty dollars a week, ten dollars for food, and ten dollars for spending money. I spent most of it on beer. I lost thirty pounds and drove the porcelain bus most weekends. I remember getting angry at God because I could only drink four beers before getting sick.

Thirty years later, I went to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting with a friend to help him celebrate fifteen years of sobriety. I left thanking God I was sick every weekend for a year and a half at college.

Stonehill didn’t have dorms my freshman year, and we lived in an apartment off campus. My sophomore year, Stonehill converted a cow barn into a men’s dorm. Father Hogan was the priest in charge. My only interaction with priests prior to this had been with our parish priests, whom I didn’t really get to know.

Father Hogan was full of Joy. I was drawn to him because of his Joy. Father Hogan, of course, said daily Mass. He would walk into our room at five a.m., drag me out of bed and say, "I need an