There is an amazing inmate in the A North wing of the jail, who has been in the jail for about a year. I talk to him weekly, I don’t know what he’s in for, but he just received a very long sentence in prison, so it must have been something quite significant. The man is about my age, and when this man got into the jail, I believe he was into some pretty wicked sin—but wow what a turnaround has happened in this inmate’s life since arriving at jail! GOD really has done something extraordinary with this man. He has fully reunited with his family, including his young daughter, so he can be a dad again. He has forgiven everyone, and asked everyone he can reach to forgive him. When he entered jail, he hardly talked to his daughter (she is almost a teenager), but his relationship with her has been so repaired that they now talk a lot, and she has told him that she wants to be like him, so she prays in the presence of Jesus, reads the Bible daily, and spreads love to others, just like her dad now does.
This inmate literally spends his days walking around the cell praying, or sitting and reading Scripture and intense theology books such as Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, The Cloud of Unknowing (Medieval classic devotional of apophatic theology by an unknown author), among others. He is so astounded by the change that has happened in his soul, the joy that he has consequently received, and how it has all happened while he is in jail, and not even where he can direclty take care of his daughter since he’s not in her physical proximity. This man cries tears of elation every time I talk to him, simply overflowing by the feeling he has in his soul of the glory of GOD, that he now feels all the time. He said to me a few weeks back:
“I was so scared when I got here, to the jail, but now I don’t want to leave. I want to just stay and live right in this moment, in this cell. I live with Jesus here in my cell with the other men.”
Then he pointed to his bed, a bottom bunk right behind him in the cell, and said:
“This is my tomb, my place of total joy. I have never been so free as I am while praying and being with GOD in that dumpy little bed.”
He erupted in laughter as he said that, while continuing to point at his bunk 5 feet behind and to the right of him. These jolly laughter outbursts have become common with him.
His bed has a sheet over his bottom bunk, forming a makeshift wall, so that the man feels alone in his place of prayer.
He continued in his line of thought, saying:
“And Chaplain Jeff, I think I have been seeing GOD, in visions and dreams.”
He has been telling me about dreams about GOD that he’s been having, some of which I have found incredibly profound and significant, and which even seemed to be theological teachings that have clarified for me some theological truths that I had been studying. It was like the LORD put those dreams in front of me, to help me deepen my theological understanding. I consequently have shared these dreams with many of the other inmates in the jail since that time.
“I have been telling some of the other imates about your dreams about GOD,” I told him. “You are doing ministry to much of the jail by that, from right here in this cell, and without even leaving it,” I continued.
And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
your young men shall see visions (Joel 2:28).
But the theological dream-revelations of this inmate are not what I want to take the time to discuss in this post. Rather, something further happened to this inmate last week…
This past week I was talking to this inmate and he was telling me about how he was feeling very close to the LORD one night when he was up very late, in the middle of the night, when he was sitting at the table in the middle of the cell reading the Bible while the other men slept. But then, out of his peripheral vision, he suddenly saw a new person in the cell, just for a few seconds; it was a man who was walking past. The inmate started crying as he talked. Then he said to me:
“Chaplain Jeff, I have not told anybody about this yet, because nobody will believe it, but I know it was Jesus! I just know it!”
The man was crying somewhat uncontrollably, and having trouble talking through the tears of ecstasy, as he was going back and forth from looking at the floor to looking up toward the jail ceiling–toward the sky, that is–while he talked.
He continued:
“I just know it was Him, Chaplain Jeff! I just know it was Jesus! I can’t explain it. I can feel it! It’s like that knowledge was just put into me. I just so know it! I knew I could tell you, but it was so incredible, to see him here, with all of us. When I turned to look at him, my eyes were drawn to his feet, he had sandals on—that’s what I saw: sandals.”
Now interestingly, and amazingly, I often have things in my mind I want to talk about with the inmates I see on a given day, just topics on my mind that I want to share with them, and that day I had something very specific I wanted to discuss and go through with some of the inmates I had been talking too. It all started from two days earlier, when an inmate in Pod3 said something amazing to me. To get an idea of what I am talking about here, consider the following, which is something I contantly say to the inmates:
“You have to feel GOD in your soul, that’s your confirmation, that’s direct proof, and it is more proof than anything a man can say to you against the Bible, and against your Creator GOD (Christ). No information is as solid as that feeling in your soul, of Christ (GOD).”
So, a different inmate, in Pod3, that I said that to two days earlier, said something remarkable to me, and right at the time I also was thinking about what he was about to say to me. It was sort of like one of those moments when you think of somethng right before somebody says it to you. And what this other inmate said was:
“Just because you feel GOD, does not mean it’s real, that it’s correct. Sometimes we have feelings about things that are not real. And I have felt wrong things before about something.”
I was blown away, because, as I just said, this same idea just came to my mind a day or two before this second inmate in pod3 said that. But here’s the thing… I was really troubled by this realization (that we could feel the presence of GOD but the presence could be mistakenly perceived within) once this second inmate in pod3 said that to me, and I had worked out a solution from Scripture to this supposed problem the day before. Here is the account of what I said to the first inmate discussed above, the one who saw Jesus walking in his cell. I said to him, in response to him disclosing to me that he saw Jesus walking in the cell near him, late at night a few days earlier, and it turned out to be exactly what he needed to hear:
“Brother, I have to tell you something… You can’t question that this vision was real. I mean, I can see that you are not questioning it, but you have to know in your heart that it can only be real, wherein you can tell others, since you are commanded to tell others of the works of the LORD [I mentioned Psalm 105:1 to him]. But check this out… The devil is the cause of all trickiness and fakery, see 1 Thessalonians 2:9-10. Therefore, GOD cannot be trickly or fake at all. He creates our minds (Luke 11:39-40), and since He can never be tricky or fake, He can never trick us or put a fake experience of Himself in our minds. So, every experience you have of Him–feeling Him in your soul, or seeing Him walking through your cell–can only be Him, can only be real, or He would be tricking you, which He cannot do. So, unless you fully trust that experience, and any other experience you have of Him, you have to fully believe in that experience, or you are not believing in the Bible. It is perfect and simple logic.”
So, what the other inmate in pod3 said to me prompted me to get this response ready for the inmate who had the vision of Jesus. The LORD prepared all of this.
I am still processing this astonishing string of events. Praise Jesus!
-Lead Chaplain Jeff Grupp
