The Zoom screen opens up, and there’s Ricco, an inmate at the Wright County Jail I meet with once a week. “How did things go for you this past week?” I ask him.

“Not good, Pat, not good. I let myself be overcome with all my problems (Ricco is facing up to 28 years in prison). I was filled up with Ricco. I focused on a court hearing last week and it overwhelmed me. I needed deliverance real bad. Then I realigned my focus from my problem to God, and it became so small it almost disappeared. I need to be constantly realigning my focus from my problems to God. When I do that, I’m at peace, When I don’t do that I’m anxious.”

How about you? Do you focus on your problems or on God? The problem becomes a mole hill when you look at the Mountain first.

Monday afternoons are my chaplain times at the Wright County Jail. I had been at the jail on Sunday for a Gideon Bible study. That Sunday (two days ago) only four inmates signed up. One of them was Corey. He was somewhat knowledgeable about the Bible, but I had a feeling that he wasn’t saved (only God knows for sure). I asked him after the study if he wanted to find out what it meant to be born-again. He said yes.

I was excited to lead Him to Christ the next day when we met. I know that only the Holy Spirit can save someone. I can’t; I’m only the vehicle God uses. But…I have a presentation with drawings that are very effective in showing what it means to be born-again and a method of using the ABCs of salvation that often lead a person to the point of choosing to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. (Chest puffing up a little bit with how brilliant my method is, even while admitting it’s all from God, of course.)

When Corey appeared on the Zoom screen and we said our hellos, I had another person to see after him so was prepared to get right to the matter of salvation. However, he was excited to tell me what happened to him that very morning. The Lord woke him up at 4:33 a.m. (the time burned into his mind), and he couldn’t get back to sleep. He got on his knees and read from his Bible and prayed. At 5:37 a.m. (also burned into his memory), he looked up to heaven and surrendered his heart to Jesus, accepting Him as his Lord and Savior, and asking Him to take over his life. He told me that he felt a great sense of peace and calm and a dissatisfaction with the way he had been leading his life and a resolve to be a new person in Christ.

Corey had been born-again from the natural world into the spiritual world and was alive in Christ. He was not the same person at all that had been in the Bible study the day before. And I had nothing to do with it. I sensed a smile on God’s face and heard these words in my heart – “Lest you think you have anything to do with salvation!” Praise God that He engineered events that got Corey saved and reinforced in me that it’s always the power of the Holy Spirit that brings about salvation. It has nothing to do with me. It’s not that I didn’t know that and this was a great revelation. It wasn’t. But it was a reminder in real time of His sovereignty and my servanthood.    

The difference between the inmates I chaplain and us is that our sins dirty our souls and theirs put them in jail. This blog is from Ricco, a believer in the Wright County Jail whom I have come to know and love.

“You ask me how I can be a believer and get myself in so much trouble that I’ll be in prison for a long time. This is what I learned from that day when it all went bad.

“I already knew that week by week focusing on God wasn’t good enough. By that, I mean going to church on Sundays and then living with distractions for six days. So I focused on God day by day, but that left spaces in my life when I did stupid things with friends. One day at the wrong place at the wrong time, I did something so bad that the police led me off in handcuffs and here I am.

“Now I know it’s not day by day but moment by moment I need to focus on Jesus. I am an empty vessel that needs to be filled by the Holy Spirit every minute of every day. When I’m filled with Him, I’m safe. When I’m filled with Ricco, I’m not. It’s that simple. I need to be constantly realigning my focus; I need to be constantly aware of what He desires of me. ‘What do you want of me in this situation, Lord? How can I serve You here?’

“There is a greater yes that overwhelms the no’s of life. If I focus on Jesus, the Greater Yes, I have the abundant life. I get Him and everything that comes with Him until my vessel overflows with God’s grace. If I don’t keep that focus, trouble can creep in, and here I am.”

There but for the grace of God go I.

Danny is a real person I met in the Wright County Jail on two different occasions. The first time around, he was indicted on a bogus charge of rape by his girlfriend who wanted to get even with him for calling the cops after she hit him repeatedly while high and distraught. We prayed and prayed. He admitted he had put himself in that situation and repented of his going-his-own-way behavior that led up to the false accusation. He accepted he might end up in prison and reached some degree of peace about it. Then she recanted and he went free but still on probation for other crimes. One stipulation was that he not drink any alcohol.

He told me he wanted me to chaplain him when he got out and vowed that he was going to live a Christ-centered life from then on. I never heard from him nor saw him until he showed up in jail again for an domestic altercation with his dad’s girlfriend after much alcohol had passed the lips of all three of them. He avoided me at first but then asked to meet with me again. More repentance, more going to follow Jesus every step of the way, a commitment to let Jesus plow up the weed-filled garden of his soul and plant new seeds of life and peace and joy. He cried when he made his promises – not to me but to God. I felt he meant it this time, and I encouraged him to lean on me as a mentor and chaplain to him. I gave him a reading list of books of the Bible to study and make part of his life. This time, I felt he was going to change his life around.

But he didn’t. When he got out of jail, I never heard from him again. You see, life got in his way, and his own way got in God’s way. That’s the way it is with many of the men I work with in the jail. Not ever person I work with is a success story. But lest you wonder why I keep dealing with spiritual failures, there ARE success stories that encourage me and keep me in the hunt. Brian, for example is a wonderful success story, a man of 51 who became saved in prison (Danny and others were already saved but slid back down into the mud) and became as new as new can be. I’ll tell about this great success story of God’s in my next blog.

There was no doubt about his resolve, but the garden of his soul didn’t have the composition to carry it out. For too many years, it had been nurtured by himself, the world, and the evil one. As such, it was filled with poor soil, stunted plants, and an abundance of weeds.

What Danny needed to do was plow the whole thing up, take out the poor soil, bring in some new fertile soil, and start all over again. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the right tools, or any tools at all for that matter. Only God had the right equipment, and He was willing to do the job, but He was waiting for an invitation, and that Danny was reluctant to offer.

To be continued.

Holy Spirit, Guardian of my soul,
My Counselor, Teacher, Pray-er, all
Today You turned the dark to light,
Now guide the world of my dreams tonight.

William Blake was a marvelous poet and artist of the latter 18th and early 19th centuries. He also was one who kept his mind focused always on the ways of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is one of his most famous poems.

The Lamb

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

Tony, an inmate in the Wright County Jail, asked me if I knew what it was like to be homeless. Could I personalize it? I’ve been away from home and lonely before, I’ve had times when money was tight, and I’ve been hungry before. But I’ve not been homeless.

Before you start thinking, “Why doesn’t Tony just get a job?” let me tell you that he has a mental disorder that makes it hard for him to hold a job. His work history looks like a checkerboard with very small squares. I want to know about homelessness, but it’s too late in my life to experience it first hand. I’ll be meeting with Tony today via Zoom, and I’m going to ask him to describe homelessness to me, so I can experience it vicariously. I need to also tell you that Tony is a born-again Christian who knows the Bible well and who can pray up a storm. Aha, I can see you thinking again, “If this guy is a Christian, why doesn’t he let God take care of him?” I’ve found there aren’t a lot of simple answers to the lives of the incarcerated people I meet with in jails. It’s complicated. It’s very complicated.

Stay tuned – and pray for Tony to find a place in life where he can lead a meaningful life.

This is a poem written by an inmate I’ve been visiting in jail. It will give you a glimpse of how men and women end up in jail and then turn to Jesus.

Dangerous shortcuts I’ve taken all my life,
They led me down lonely roads, ending with lots of strife.
This is the enemy’s strongest tool,
It all started when I started skipping school,
With the thought all I’m trying to do is make a little money
To buy some new sneaks and clothes to impress the honeys
Which led me to getting behind on my grades.
Once I was behind, it was the end of that page.
I was slow on my reading and smoking lots of weed;
Kids in class giggling made me not want to read.
I finally decided school was not for me,
Thinking I could make more money on the streets to support my family,
But little did I know by making that decision,
In five more years I’d be sitting in prison.
Fifty-one months was my first bit,
I was a grown man but still feeling like a kid,
So I grew up fast in a cage with grown men,
Perfecting my bad habits thinking next time I’ll win.
That’s just another trick in Satan’s arsenal,
Trying to perfect my bad habits for tomorrow.
I’ve done two more stretches in between then and now,
Which had me digging in the Word asking the Lord how,
How did I make such a mess of my life,
And He said, “Listening to the wrong people and staying up all night,
You were raised in the Word, yet you didn’t want to listen.
I tried to save you from all those lonely years in prison,
But never mind that , you’re on the right track now,
Keep digging in my Word and let Me lead you now.
No more dangerous shortcuts; you must be obedient.
You have to live your life for Me now because that’s why you were sent.”
Ricco Tyson

If you want to watch one of Billy Graham’s early sermons, when he still had the thick Southern drawl of a North Carolina preacher boy, click on the link below. If you want to know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you’ll have direct evidence of it within a half hour.

The Second Coming of Christ – Billy Graham – YouTube