A very young inmate, who’s been in the high security wing of the jail for about six months, suddenly was very down this week. He had typically been full of faith and love for Jesus, but this week when I saw him, he said “Chapel and Jeff, I’m not gonna lie, I’m losing my faith and I’m really struggling. It’s like every day gets worse and worse, no breaks.”
I said :
“Thank you so much for sharing this with me. Are you praying about this?”
He responded:
“Not yet; I’m waiting for the right words, and then I’ll talk to GOD.”
“You will never be able to calculate what words to use; you have to work from the heart, not the mind,“ I said with a big smile on my face.
“GOD doesn’t want you to rehearse and practice what you’re gonna say; he wants the real you-He already knows the real you,” I continued.
He and I proceeded to talk about prayer, faith and miracles for the next half hour. Went through all sorts of verses.
I was so happy the LORD brought me there. These are actually concepts and verses that I talked about with this inmate months earlier, but in his sadness and being down, apparently he lost sight of them. I said:
“Just be the real you, GOD accepts you as you are, see Romans, 15:7. There’s nothing you can do to turn GOD, who is infinite unconditional love, away from you! GOD is always looking at you! You can feel Him looking at you if you think about it. It’s the most wonderful feeling, and you have to look right back at and talk to Him and say Jesus,
‘I love You, and thank You so much for looking at me, for knowing Your humble servant!’”
We talked for a long time. Multiple times he started crying during our talk, the kind of tears where you just can’t help it. You just lose control. At one point, I said to him:
“Brother, you are only 18 years old, and you’re in quite a spot. You are missing your family, you’ve missed some funerals in your family get-togethers–you’re 19 years old dealing with all this. This is very heavy for someone your age, brother! You really need GOD‘s help. You really really need Him today–now.“
So I went home, and I was still thinking about this conversation. I prayed a few more times for this 18-year-old brother in Christ, and for that part of the jail through the night. The next day I had to go back to that same cell block because I was going to bring them some puzzles and some things for the guys to do. The LORD placed in me a strong feeling, very tangible within me, that He was going to answer the prayers I had with the inmate.
The inmate and I were talking, the day before, about feeling GOD with us (Ps 16:11), and about feeling GOD during prayer. The inmate and I were talking about the verses in Scripture which state that prayer always gets, answered, such as this famous one:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Matthew 7:7).
The LORD filled me with an awareness, an assurance, that this young inmate’s prayers would be answered. But I had forgotten about all of this when I walked up to his cell-block the next day, since I was just rapt in all the busyness of the day at that point. But I remembered right when I saw this inmate, and right when he started to say:
“Chaplain Jeff! I did what you said! I prayed like, and I just told GOD everything I feel, I looked right to Him, I could feel Him. And Chap, right when you left yesterday, I mean right as soon as you turned the corner, the nurse was there to see me, they said my name out loud–nobody ever comes to see me in so long other than you Chap. She said she had my medication. I knew that was a sign! And then, after that I went and prayed, did that prayer you and I were talking about, I said amen. Like I mean, the second you I said ‘amen’, I got a call, my mom called, I was in a big fight with her–but everything was OK! And I knew that was a sign! And then I went back into my room again. and then chap, again, today we’re just talking about you, we did a prayer and the second we said ‘amen,’ you walk around the corner, with games and puzzles and some good books for us! Another sign!!”
