There is an inmate in the jail that I’ve known for a long time, he’s a fellow that once worked in a church—he was even in preparation to become a missionary in Africa. But then tragedy struck. He had trouble with his fiancé, and he was thrown off course by some disastrous interactions between the two of them, which led him to arriving at jail, a few years ago, which is when I started to get to know him.
So, I saw this inmate a few months ago. He was doing well, spiritually. But then I did not see him for a few weeks. He had gone to another location to get some assistance with his situation, I don’t know many details. But then today I was in the medical wing of the jail and there he was, in the padded cell, a special room made for inmates who need self-protection when there’s a suicide risk. I cannot express to you how powerful that room has been in the past! And of how many stories of Jesus coming to people, people finding salvation in Him in that room—people who it seemed would never turn to Christ: someone who could never be converted, an impossibility that they would ever love Jesus. But that is what the LORD does; in that padded room, He brings His Spirit. He puts a person in that room, and then He puts his infinite Spirit into the deepest part of their being, and makes Himself one with them (atonement, see Hebrews 2:11).
So, I saw this inmate again this past week. It been a few weeks since I’ve seen him, I had heard he was slipping downward, so I didn’t know what to expect. I walked up to him, and he said, in the soundest of mindset, from within the padded cell. When I saw him, he said:
“Brother Jeff, I love you man! I’m happy to see you, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.“
And after about four seconds of wonderful hellos, of two friends who have not seen each other in a while, this inmate immediately went into the most sober, confident, deep, erudite, well-thought-out, and soulful theological analysis on many profound and difficult questions about the Bible. It’s as if this was all he was thinking about there in that room; and as if it was on the front of his mind, like all he wanted to do was talk deep, right there in that state and in that situation! He cut right into it:
“Chaplain Jeff, I was thinkin… And I think that LORD was so different in the book of Leviticus than He is today is because people didn’t have the Cross yet; they didn’t get to have Jesus’s Spirit in them like so many of us do today,. And GOD had to have real tough rules for them or else they would just fall away and sin and destroy themselves.“
I looked at him, speechless for five seconds. And here is what is amazing: I had never heard it proposed in just that way, why the book of Leviticus was written how it was, but I had literally been thinking about that very same line of reasoning about Leviticus in my mind (my wife and I were in the book of Leviticus in our daily morning Scripture study together) for about three weeks. Then I said:
“Brother, you haven’t changed it all!”
This inmate was always like this: bringing up the most profound theological matters, and having astoundingly sharp analysis of them. But in this case, he was doing it from the padded cell. That is amazing to me because one would think his mind would be lost, gone, destroyed, being in that supposedly rock-bottom situation–but no not at all! This brother was meditating on GOD, and finding tremendous breakthrough, to where it was all he wanted to talk to me about with me, from that padded room.
We talked for a while. He had many other points of similar depth and precision. I said to him:
“I’m so glad to talk to you. It’s so refreshing to hear a young man like you with such passion, such beautiful words, such bold philosophical analysis and deep Bible contemplation. You don’t have to worry about what men think of you. You can be bold. Galatians 1:10 tells us that we only have to worry about what the LORD thinks, so you just keep on this path of Power (YHWH).”
Then I went and talked to the other inmates in the medical wing. When I was leaving, I walked up to his window and put my hand on the window and said,
“You my dawg!”
And he said:
“I love you chaplain Jeff.”
