Friday, June 8th, 2018
I visited a new inmate yesterday. His name is Jeremy, and his story is all too familiar.
“I started using drugs at the age of 14. I accepted Christ in 1997 in an Assemblies of God church and was clean of drugs at the age of 20, and that lasted for six years. Then the weeds (referring to the Parable of the Sower) choked my spiritual life and I went back to using pot, pain killers, meth, and then opiates. I dealt drugs to fuel my heroin habit until I was busted last year and was facing a sentence of 65 months. The judge gave me 12 months instead, and my time will be up in August. My wife of seven years has not talked to me for the past six months, but she’s now willing to drop her ‘No Contact Order’ and hopefully we’ll be on a path of reconciliation.”
“So what will be different for you when you get out in August?” I asked Jeremy.
“I’m a student of the Bible now. Instead of asking what Jeremy wants to do, I ask the question, ‘What does Scripture say?'”
Jeremy says he reads the Bible now to understand more and more about God so he can love Him more and more. However great that is, I have a niggling feeling that Jeremy needs something greater than more knowledge. He needs more surrender. I will be meeting with him again next week. Pray that the Holy Spirit leads me in the words to use to bring this to his attention without being critical of him, which would put him on the defensive. I believe God has led me to mentor Jeremy because he has honored God with his devotion to His Word. It was not my choice to mentor him, but the Holy Spirit gave me that direction in the Gideon Bible Study last Sunday. Praise God