There’s an inmate that’s been in the jail for a few months, who when I first talked to him, he seemed to have some really strange ideas. It was as if he was inventing his own religion, based on the Old Testament, but with no ideas that really came out of any verses or passages. This is significant because he was telling the other men on his cell-block things that sounded convincing about GOD and the Bible, such as this:
“Jesus is not actually God; he was just an enlightened man.”
“The Old Testament is correct, but the New Testament has errors.”
“Worshipping Jesus is to worship an idol, since Jesus is not God.”
Some of the men in jail are very fresh believers in Jesus, so they can easily be led to believe things that are not in the Scripture, or wrong things said about Scripture, which was what was happening on this cellblock.
But over the last number of weeks, myself and a few other KJM pastors started to learn that this inmate was a fierce hater of Jesus–something he later told us he was keeping secret. For example, when I prayed for him, when I said the name “Jesus” in the prayer, this man said that he rebuked that Name in his mind when I said it during the prayer.
Last week Friday, a thought came over me (the LORD put an idea in my mind) for a different way to interact with the inmate. So I texted Evan, one of our KJM pastors who also has been talking to the inmate, about this idea. I texted Evan and said that I felt like Jesus is doing something. Here is a picture of the text:
It was one of those moments where words (in this case, a text) blurted out of me, where I had nothing to do with it being uttered out from within me.
And wow did I not have any idea of how real the text was, and how GOD was starting to do His work.
To be honest, this inmate’s talk was tricky and destructive, hidden behind a veneer of false sophistication. This was to such a degree that I’d been thinking of him as one of the most difficult inmates I’d talked to in my ten years of jail ministry.
So I went into the jail and I went right to that cellblock. I spent some time there but the inmate was not around. Then I learned that he was sleeping down at the end of the cellblock in his bed. I said deep within myself:
“LORD, what’s going on?”
But then he woke up and walked over to where I could see him, and where I was talking to some of the other men–and then suddenly he was right in front of me. I was happy to see him, and I think he could sense that in my usual friendly, “hello.”
I began the new way of conversing with the inmate, but even before that, it seemed something was different—one of those times where you could not see anything, but nevertheless things could be sensed as being different–better. Things are different now, something’s coming, I felt to myself—that is, GOD put that realization in me.
We talked for a while, he said a few strange things, but not nearly as aggressive as usual. Then we were alone suddenly—the other men stepped down to the end of the catwalk for a moment, and when the inmate noticed that, as if he was waiting for a moment to speak alone with me, he leaned up to the bars and said to me quietly, and in a completely different and warm and needy way:
“Look Chaplain, something happened… I’ve been thinking about it for a month… Remember when I was down on the other end of the wing, when I was in discipline, and I wasn’t able to talk to get a tablet to talk to my family till I was off that rock [i.e., cellblock]? I was telling you about that, Chap, and I’ll be honest, Jeff, I was going crazy—about to lose my mind! But then you prayed, Chap Jeff, for me to get back to a block where I could get a tablet to talk to my family. And then you left Chap, and then two hours later… Well, the guards came and got me, moved me to this block, and I was able to talk to my family that night, Chap.”
I had completely forgot that prayer a month earlier! But when he mentioned it, it jogged my memory, and I responded to him:
“Yah, I remember brother. We prayed… Yah, that’s why I prayed for you—Jesus prompted me to. It was a good prayer! I was feelin it!
He continued:
“I know! I need you to pray again for me. Now I knew something was going on! I denied it for a month, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I rebuked the name of Jesus during the prayer, while you said that name; I was cursing you and that name when you said it. But then the prayer—well, it seemed to be answered, I guess. I am having a hard time not seeing that now.”
There’s no way this guy would want me to pray for him just a week earlier, that would’ve been comical in his mind say, I believe. I’ve never heard an inmate say anything like that in ten years of jail ministry—I’ve never heard them say they were actually cursing me or rebuking the name of Jesus, specifically the name, and while I was praying for him. Wow. That’s quite anti-Jesus (antichrist) thinking. I felt a total rush of that Jesus-peace overtaking me.
While I was standing there in amazement, he however quickly moved to the next topic, when he said:
“But I need you to pray for me again, I need to do anything I can to get out of here to get back to my family. And if I can get on trustee, that’ll knock some of my time off. I am going to go crazy if I can’t see my fiancé and our kids soon. I am going crazy Chaplain Jeff, I gotta get out of here.”
And then he switched topics slightly, in a comment that was astonishingly like the last KJM E-blast (#141), where the atheist said if I prayed for there to be extra food on their trays that night, he’d believe in Jesus, and it was answered. Here is what this inmate said:
“Look Chap Jeff, I’ll believe in Jesus if you pray for me to get to trustee and I get some time knocked off my time and it gets answered.”
As with the last E-blast, I did not like that idea at first, but I instantly agreed to pray the prayer, given how it went last time with the food-trays prayer miracle. So, I prayed the prayer, but I was not feeling it. I was feeling like GOD was holding back my faith so the prayer would not get answered (see Mark 11:24). But I was so incredibly eager for the prayer to be answered that I ignored that feeling, and I kept praying through the weekend:
“LORD, I so badly want him to see the miracle of the answered prayer. Please GOD! Please answer it, to increase his faith [see John 2:23].”
I was so eager for the inmate to see another answered prayer that I was not noticing that it seemed GOD was not in favor of this prayer. I prayed multiple times through the weekend, but it seems as if GOD was holding His hand up to me, saying He did not want that prayer.
So, I went back to see the inmate this past Monday. When I saw the inmate, I said:
“You’re still here… We need to pray again… But I was not feeling it brother, not sure why, I am so sorry for my weak faith.”
Then some other inmates said he could not go to trustee for a few reasons, which he did not know when we prayed days earlier. I had the faulty idea in my mind that, as the inmate said, he needed to see more from the LORD to believe. But I had the realization that GOD had already done the work with the first answered prayer, which I confess I missed. Here is a picture of an email I sent to Evan describing what happened in the second conversation:
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