Tag: faith

Honoring Joe’s Legacy

by crossroadsministriesmass, posted in Uncategorized

Six years ago today, my husband, Joe Harris, went home to be with the Lord.  As I remember him today, I do so by honoring his life and legacy. I can honestly say, “To this day, God has not used anyone to convict me of my lack of love for the souls of men, as he did through Joe Harris.”  Joe lived and breathed evangelism and passionately engaged everyone he met in a conversation about their need to get right with God.    Joe frequently shared about a dream he had when he was a kid that haunted him for many years.  He dreamed that he was a nobody, and everything went wrong for him in life, but then suddenly he became a somebody, so after he came to know the Lord, he was on a mission to let everyone know about the God that changed his life from a hard-core violent drunk to a beloved man of God.

Joe began drinking at 10-years-old, even drinking rubbing alcohol.  His life was hard, growing up very poor, being sexually assaulted as a child, spending time in prison and attempting suicide five times before Mike Pruitt lead him to the Lord in 1975 by telling him that Jesus loved him, and he could be somebody.  Mike arranged for Joe to go into the Teen Challenge program in Washington, DC.  God used that program to transform Joe into a man that loved the Lord and passionately cared for the souls of man. 

As I remember him today, I do so with a heart of gratitude for his life and ministry.  Through Joe’s unique anointing and the ministries of Crossroads’, he was instrumental in seeing a troubled community completely transformed by the power of God, churches come together beyond denominational walls to minister side by side for the sake of saving the lost, and hurting men, women and children’s lives touched and changed forever by the one that transforms nobodies into somebodies.  

While I am not as gifted an evangelist as Joe, my heart yearns to see people come to know the love of God in Christ Jesus, particularly “the least of these.” As I struggle to carry on Joe’s legacy through the ministry of Crossroads, I ask for your prayers. May the Lord help me honor Joe by doing everything in my power to see souls saved and nobodies come to know that they are somebodies in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

40 Years & Remembering Priscilla

by crossroadsministriesmass, posted in Christian, homeless

Wow! Crossroads is entering its 40th year of ministry. To God be the glory! Great things he has done. 

Priscilla Stratton

As we prepare to celebrate 40 years of ministry through Crossroads, we must pause to remember those that were so instrumental in nurturing this God ordained ministry to the homeless, the marginalized and those battling life controlling addictions while in its formative years One of those people was Priscilla Stratton. We met Priscilla and her family mid January 1984 when we (my late husband, Joe Harris and myself) first visited Massachusetts. We arrived there on January 11, 1984, to spend prayerful time with Rev. Sam Perry, our dear friend and my spiritual father. While visiting with Sam, he introduced us to several of his Christian friends, including Priscilla and her family. Upon meeting Priscilla, there was an undeniable bond in the Spirit noted and the Lord’s Spirit knit our hearts together in His love. 

Even though Priscilla had been abandoned by her husband years before and had been struggling to raise their five children alone, she loved the Lord with everything in her, clung to him, trusted him wholeheartedly to care for her family and faithfully served Him. While she had very little money, she had a heart of gold. As a little Greek momma, struggling financially to put food on the table for her own family, she was generous and hospitable, sometimes possibly to a fault. Priscilla discerned the call of God upon our lives to launch Crossroads in Massachusetts, so she invited our family (Joe, Michael and I) to move in with her and her family until we were able to get Crossroads established. Who does that? Who as a financially overburdened single mother invites a young Black family she had just met to come and live in her home with her family? Even though she only knew us by the witness of the Spirit of the Living God, Priscilla trusted the God she loved and served, and to our surprise and amazement, she opened her heart to us and freely opened her home to us, as well. 

And without faith it is impossible to please Him,
for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists,
and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.
Hebrews 11:6

We cannot thank God enough for Priscilla Stratton. She was an amazing mother, oozing out her mother’s love in everything she did and everything she said. She raised her children to serve the Lord, encouraging, exhorting and supporting them as they blessed the local body of Christ through their anointed music ministry. She mothered Joe, Michael and I, as well, welcoming us as a part of her dearly loved family. I remain so very grateful to have been a beneficiary of her love.  God used his love flowing though her mightily to heal the many torn down and broken places inside of me that desperately needed the love of a godly mother. 

Priscilla left us in 2009 to be with our Lord, and is now lovingly serving him in Glory. While we miss her dearly, her legacy remains through her children, grandchildren and all that were the benefactors of her momma’s love. Crossroads Ministries, Inc. shares in being a part of her godly legacy, as it was at Priscilla’s home in 1984, 40 years ago, that this ministry was birthed. Even though God had given Joe and I the vision for Crossroads prior to our stepping out in faith, leaving our home state of Maryland, moving to unfamiliar Massachusetts to live with virtual strangers, it wasn’t until we did those things that God breathed on that vision and gave it life.