Messages by Starr Daily

Starr Daily was a safecracker and jailbreaker who spent fourteen years in American prisons before becoming a Christian writer, healing minister, and frequent speaker at Camps Farthest Out. He had lived much of his early life in crime, but in November 1926, while confined in a prison punishment cell, he had an encounter with Jesus Christ that completely changed the direction of his life.

A New Name and Four Old Fears

He was born William Owen Friesland around 1892. His mother died of childbed fever within days of his birth. The name Starr Daily came much later, while he was in prison. An older convict whom Daily considered one of the finest Christians he had ever known told him that he had made such a mess of his old name that he needed a new one. He chose Starr Daily, explaining that a daily star shines both day and night.

Daily traced much of his early trouble to a hellfire sermon he heard as a child. It left him with four great fears—hell, death, being locked in, and sin—and for many years his life seemed to confirm all four. By the time he was ten, he said, he was already “steeped in crime.” One of his earliest memories of hatred came from a humiliating experience at school. After he stumbled while reciting “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” he looked to his teacher for comfort and saw her trying not to laugh. He later said that was the first time he could remember hating anyone.

His Father’s Hands Through the Bars

In 1924 he entered the prison where he would serve his final sentence as a habitual criminal and three-time loser. Through all those years, his father continued to visit him. He would reach his hands through the bars and pray for his son. He prayed for twenty-five years without seeing the answer, and he died before his son was transformed. It was years afterward before Daily could speak about those hands through the bars without becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

The Presence That Walked Into the Dungeon

The turning point came in November 1926. Daily was in the prison dungeon because he had refused to crawl to the bars and confess. Then, while he was alone in the cell, he experienced what he described as the presence of Jesus Christ. “This presence walked into the dungeon,” he later recalled, “and came up very close to me and stood just above me. Never uttered a single word, but just stood looking down.”

He never claimed that Jesus spoke to him. Instead, he said he understood without words the secret of human life and the universe: the love of Christ. The change was so complete that he described it as a resurrection rather than merely a conversion. “The spirit quickened. The conscience resensitized. Life pumped into that dead soul. It wasn’t a healing, it was a resurrection.”

Daily still had to learn how to live out that experience. Other prisoners turned against him when they heard about his conversion, and he came to understand that becoming a Christian meant learning to love even those who opposed him. He eventually came to see hatred as something that destroys the person who carries it, while love restores the person who gives it. “I know that when I gave up hate, that’s all I had to do,” he said. “If anything has come to me in the form of a blessing or a grace, it is because I gave up the will to hate.”

The Chaplain Who Prayed Me Well

His physical condition was also desperate. He was suffering from cirrhosis, damaged kidneys, a failing heart, asthma, and perforated ulcers. He asked a chaplain whom many of the prisoners mocked to pray for him. The chaplain was moved to tears because, as he put it, Daily was the only man who had ever shown enough faith and confidence in him to ask him to pray.

The chaplain and Daily’s cellmate agreed together in prayer, claiming Christ’s promise concerning agreement in prayer in Matthew 18. They prayed specifically for each of the diseased organs. Within six months, Daily said, those organs had been made new, and they remained healthy for the rest of his life. He later referred to the chaplain as “the chaplain who prayed me well.”

A Weed in the Garden of God

His newfound faith was tested repeatedly while he was still in prison. One of the men who had become his enemy was a former minister who had become an atheist and forger and had helped incite attacks against Daily. Eventually that man was admitted to the prison hospital, where Daily was serving as a night nurse.

Instead of seeking revenge, Daily prayed for him. The man was healed of his physical illness and transformed spiritually. He spent the remainder of his sentence leading younger prisoners to Christ. Daily later described him as “a weed in the garden of God.”

Another prisoner, a young man suffering from tuberculosis, died after hemorrhaging over Daily. Immediately afterward, Daily went to the bedside of another dying prisoner who had been mocking him. With blood still on his white shirt, he told the man that he could be released, redeemed, and saved through Jesus Christ. These experiences became the foundation of Daily’s ministry. He did not spend the rest of his life preaching about the horrors of prison. Instead, he preached about love, forgiveness, healing, and the power of Christ to transform a human life.

Written on an Orange Crate

His first major book, Love Can Open Prison Doors, was written in about eight days, reportedly on an orange crate beneath a fig tree. It first appeared in a Unity magazine and was published as a book by Melrose Press in 1934. His autobiography, Release, was published by Harper in 1942. Norman Renshaw later read its prologue at a Camps Farthest Out gathering, including Daily’s statement that he saw Christ as the Savior of mankind both individually and collectively, because genuine salvation could come only through the law of love.

In 1948, Daily published Recovery, which focused not on his own story but on the healing ministry of Roland J. Brown, the Baptist pastor of Parkside Baptist Church in Chicago. Daily had spent time with Brown and his family, and he helped preserve the story of Brown’s developing ministry of healing.

Witnesses, Not Lawyers

Daily also became a regular speaker at Camps Farthest Out. From about 1940 into his later years, he traveled extensively to camps and meetings, driving from California to Iowa, Nebraska, Boston, and many other places. He continued returning to the prison ministry as a visitor as well, telling campers, “We’re here as witnesses, not as lawyers.”

At the heart of his teaching was the promise of Jesus in John 14:20–21. Christ promised that He would manifest Himself to His followers and make His dwelling with them. Daily insisted that these promises were not reserved for a few unusual Christians. “Those great scriptures in John 14, 20 … 21, can be fulfilled in any life.”

He learned much about surrender from Glenn Clark and developed what he called the “law of exchange.” When a person releases fear to Christ, faith takes its place. When resentment is surrendered, love takes its place. The Christian life, as Daily understood it, was not primarily a matter of trying harder but of giving Christ the things that had controlled the old life and receiving His life in return.

Daily also spoke often about humility and humiliation. The humiliations of his own life had brought him to a place where he could no longer depend on his old pride, and he came to see that experience as part of God’s work in him. He rejected condemnation as a means of ministry and insisted that Christians were called to restore rather than condemn.

The man who had once believed that prison was the end of everything eventually married Marie, something he had once considered impossible for a man like himself. Tommy Tyson later said that Marie had paid a price so that others could receive the fruit of Daily’s ministry.

Starr Daily spent the rest of his life pointing people back to the same truth that had transformed him in a prison dungeon: love changes lives. His own life was the evidence he returned to again and again. A man who had been consumed by crime, hatred, fear, and imprisonment had been changed through an encounter with Christ, and he spent the remainder of his life telling others that the same Christ could live and work in them.