#205 Example of faith in prison (retro)

Example of faith in prison

I think this is my third blog today…I must really be on a roll!!!

Part of that is based I guess on some emails I got from new readers, and a few older ones who felt they wanted to support my writing a little bit. Every time I get good news like that, it inspires me to write a bit more, and I am very grateful for those individuals.

I am still offering the free prison encouragement certificates, but time is running out on those. I want to be sending them by February 2nd at the latest so you can sent them to your loved one in prison before Valentine’s Day. So email me at derf4000 (at) embarqmail (dot) com to ask how.

One of the emails I got today was from a very loyal reader, and I was emailing her about faith, and one thing I mentioned was that if you keep asking, then it is not faith.

“Well now, I don’t know about that”.

I do. Think about it, if you ask somebody for something, and they said they would do what you asked, what’s the point of asking again? Once you get the answer, there is no need to ask again, otherwise it is not in faith.

“But what if you don’t have the answer”?

Then you’re asking in repetition based on your belief that the person didn’t hear you. Just because you didn’t get ‘THE ANSWER” does not mean you didn’t get what you asked for.

And what I mean by that is proof.

We all want to be able to request something, and have physical proof that what we required about is a guarantee, and shall be done. But if we can’t see it, hear it or put our hands on it, we worry that maybe that promise or request won’t be honored.

Case in point: Pasquotank Correctional.

When I was in prison, this was one of the first prisons I went to, and later on I went from medium security to minimum security. In the time I was in minimum custody there, I had made some friends on the small camp, and a few of them were taking GED classes, and actually had just recently obtained their GED. I actually used to be a GED instructor right out of college (decent pay) and I was actually a GED instructor’s assistant while at Pasquotank, so I knew pretty much a lot about it.

Two of my friends were concerned because they according to the NCDOC policy, if an inmate completes his GED, he is given merit time AND top priority for request of transfer. The guys had recently completed their GED, but were still on the camp. After a few days, the guys started getting frustrated because they thought they were supposed to get a transfer off the camp, but were still there at Pasquotank. They started to wonder if the prison will honor what they said they would do.

Being one of their friends, and also knowing a bit about the GED, they talked to me about it, and you could tell they were getting frustrated. They wanted off that camp, and they wanted it soon. I talked to them and told them to give it some time, because the paperwork had to clear through the DOC office before they could grant the request of a transfer, and even then, you still had to wait until there was availability. This is not something that happens in one day.


(note to anyone reading this, requests for transfers are NOT so easily done)

I talked to the guys saying “you know you’re not gonna get a transfer the day after you get your GED, it takes time”. But when two days turn into a week, or longer, I could understand why the guys were concerned.

What we’re talking about here is carnal faith in one party (the prison) honoring the idea that if an inmate completes his GED while in prison, he will get top priority in a transfer to a camp of his choice. In this case, the inmates lost faith that the prison was going to do what they promised they would do.

After awhile I started to wonder myself, and I knew those guys were getting very restless. So I wrote a letter to several prison officials reminding them of their “promise” to inmates who were trying to better themselves by obtaining that GED. I wanted to make sure that they understood that if the idea of prison is also to rehabilitate, then what is the point of doing so when the prison does not honor their word of reward to those inmates.

I sent the letters off, and actually got some responses from some officials, and they reassured me that they would honor their part of the agreement. I showed it to those guys and they were quite relieved. They had physical proof that the prison was going to honor their word, and with that, some faith was restored.

Now, that didn’t mean they stayed in that faith, because they were still anxious to get that transfer, and each day they didn’t get it, it ate at them a little more. But you see what was happening here. The promise of the transfer was never ignored by the prison, it was the faith of the inmates that was in question. Not only was there a policy agreement for inmates if they complete their GED, but I also had proof in a personal letter. Yet the inmates were still nervous that maybe the prison might not do what they promised.

Well, eventually they did get their transfer, and were happy campers because Pasquotank Correctional minimum custody was pretty hard to leave, it was very hard for inmates to get a transfer out because so few inmates wanted to be sent there. Ironic, because I ended up getting shipped out months later in retaliation, although I never once during my entire incarceration made a request for a transfer.

What was kinda funny about the whole situation was that every time I talked to one of those guys, he was always wondering IF he was gonna get that transfer he was promised. Every day it was kinda the same thing, and he was always talking to me about it. I can imagine he was bugging other guys about it too, but I could tell he really wanted off that camp.

The best thing I could do was to reassure him that he would get that transfer, to just be patient. I had to do that for two reasons; one, to keep him encouraged, and two, to keep ME encouraged. Heck, if you continue to hear bad reports day after day, you start to believe them and forget the promise.

Faith works that way folks, and it works whether you are in prison or not. In my example, those guys had to believe that they were going to get what they requested, which was a transfer. Their faith was in whether the prison system would honor it or not. But those guys were not patient, and in being impatient, it ate up their faith and left them with the very opposite…fear. Fear that they would never get that transfer.

And I can understand that since we are dealing with human beings. Many times we are told something by somebody and they are not able (or not willing) to honor what they say. For that reason, faith in another person is always fickle, because often times the ability of a man or woman can easily be compromised by life itself.

Example two: A few months ago I had a very nice reader who actually owned her own business, and wanted to send me $300 to help with my writing. Well, you can imagine how excited I was in that. From the day she said she would send it, I was already making plans. Oh, how nice it would be to have some extra money to do some things.

After awhile though, I had not received anything from her. I did not want to ask her about it because it was her money; if she choose not to send me anything, then that was completely up to her, and I must honor that. But at the same time, she said she would, and that promise was what I put faith in. After a couple of weeks I had pretty much written it off, until she emailed me and told me that some things came up, and she apologized for not sending me anything. She did make up for it by sending me a little some thing later, to which was still greatly appreciated.

The example I shared is a reason why faith in people is NOT the same as faith in God. Inmate or free citizen, our faith in others is still limited on what they can do, or allowed to do. Even my free prison encouragement certificates could be seen the same way. I might promise 25 people a free prison encouragement certificate, but what if something happened on my end that took top priority? What if I got sick, or had family issues or something major? What if my computer broke down, and I was unable to print those certificates? A number of things COULD happen that could prevent me from honoring my word to those people. Now, I am not chalking this up to the “you just never know” category, because I am having faith that God will allow me to do this good deed for anyone who asks for it.

And there is where faith in God comes.

My faith in God while in prison was often times asking in prayer over and over again, to make sure that He heard me. But this isn’t faith. If you asked me for a prison encouragement certificate, and I said “yes”, why would you email me the next day and ask me again? You KNOW I am gonna send you one, because I said I would, unless something comes up that could prevent that from happening. But if you email me day after day, asking if you can have one, you are showing that you don’t have faith that I would send you one.

Well, how do you think God feels?

I spent a lot of time writing scriptures in my journals, and meditating on them. I wrote down many prayers, and believed that God would not only hear, but answer them. And one booklet I had while in prison taught me that once you ask for something, stop asking for it again and again. If you REALLY believe it is done, then why ask for it. Why ask for something you already have? By faith you move forward, and believe that it will be done.

When I got sent to Guilford Correctional on a trumphed up charge, I had my back against the wall. It wasn’t the first time I was kicked of a prison, being sent to another, but it was the first time I was thrown in seg cells because of it. I knew beyond any measure that I was completely innocent of all charges, but with the warden, his lieutenant and a case manager signing against me, it looked bad.

In my cell, I prayed for deliverance, and mind you, I don’t have a halo around my head, I am just me. I prayed for deliverance because if I lost this hearing, I would be demoted and lose gain time, all based on a lie by the warden of Sanford Correctional and his “cronies”.

The moment I finished my prayer, I was determined to stay in faith, to believe that not only did God hear me, but that I had the answer…not GETTING, but HAD the answer. Understand this folks, faith isn’t wondering IF you were heard, but KNOWING that you were heard.

I was confident that I was going to beat those charges and began preparing my defense in that single cell. I was confident that I was going to beat those charges…but get this…I was confident because of my preparations…

Did you get what I said?

I said I was confident in MYSELF, even though I prayed to God. Sure, I believed God would help me, but I also felt I could beat these charges by planning my defense. I had faith in God, no doubt, but I also had faith in ME. That could have been a problem.

Without realizing it, I was placing faith in a carnal thing…ME, instead of God, whom I prayed to. I asked HIM for help, and I think when I did that, I got His attention. But maybe I was trying to have a “backup plan”, just in case. As they say, “you just never know”.

“That’s right, because that is in the Bible”.

Uh…yeah. But did you know that it is for those who don’t believe in God?

“That’s not true!”

Well sure, take a look. The scripture many people bank the “just never know” believe on is from I Corinthians 2nd chapter, 9th verse. In case you don’t have a Bible near you, here is what it says:

I Cor 2:9 “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him”

I was in a discussion about this with another man, and how that single scripture seems to support the idea that even if you pray in faith, “you just never know”.

But that’s not true at all.

Read the entire chapter of I Corinthians and you will get a perfect idea of who that scripture is talking about…because it is not talking about the believer of God or the person who puts his faith in Him.

In this chapter, Paul is talking about different forms of wisdom, and he is telling us that he did not speak to us in the wisdom of man, but in demonstration of the Spirit (verse 4). He then tells us that we should not have faith in the wisdom of MAN, but in the power of God (verse 5)….

Follow me here folks, this ties in to the prayer I had while in Gulford…

In the next verse, Paul identifies three forms of wisdom, and says that they (believers) speak the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of the world, or the princes of the world (verse 6), which are worthless. He is talking about the wisdom of God, which is a mystery to those that don’t know God.

I mean, think about it, I myself am a mystery to somebody who happens to stumble across my blog and read one blog, and has no idea what I am about. But if that same person read my blogs, emailed me to ask questions and things like that, then I become less and less a mystery, because you would have gotten to know me more. Same with God if we seek Him.

So verse 8 says that this wisdom of God is a mystery to the princes of the world, because if they had this wisdom of God, they would never had crucified Jesus because they would have known what God knew.

THIS folks, is what that verse of “eye hath not seen” is about, it is about those who do not have the wisdom of God. It is not about “you just never know”. And yet it goes further…

The very next verse that so many people tie the mystery and unknowns of God to, verse 9, the next verse says that God has revealed those same mysteries to us by His Spirit. In a modern kinda way, the Spirit that God gives to us is like a heavenly google. It has access to all info about God and searches the deep things of Him. (verse 10).

Paul mentions that even though the things of God knows no man, the Spirit inside of a believer does have such access (verse 11), and Paul makes it clear that we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God, so that we might know the things He has freely given to us. (verse 12).

You see how all this ties up and has to do with faith? Heck, even the last verse of the chapter clarifies this. Verse 16 says, “for who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ”

Where then is the mystery of what God wants to do for you if you have the Spirit and mind of Christ? This goes not just for a goodie-goodie who has never been involved in any legal problems, but even for a felon or ex felon, if they are willing to believe.

When I was in that cell, I had faith that God would deliver me, but my problem was that I was banking on my own intelligence…or man’s wisdom. I spent hours in my cell practicing my debate, using court cases, the NCDOC policy and everything I could remember. I felt like Perry Mason in a prison cell. I was confident that I was gonna win this.

On the day of my trial, it was me and several other guys that had individual cases, and as we sat outside in the hall, the sergeant had the nerve to tell us that we are ALL likely going to lose, and the best bet would be to just admit guilt so that the sentence or punishment could be lower than if you argued the case. I didn’t appreciate this man attacking my faith, but I kept it inside…I had prepared for my day in “court” and I was confident I was gonna win.

When it was my turn, I was nervous, but that was not new. In high school and college I did a lot of acting, so I know what it’s like to be in front of people. I went in that hearing prepared to defend my case….and won my case saying only the very MINIMAL I wanted to say.

I almost said nothing, and I was almost shocked. The case against me was strong because I mean, who is gonna take the word of an inmate over the warden of Sanford, plus a case manager, and two lieutenants? I believed I had to go in “guns a-blazing” to defend myself, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to say very much at all.

And it was during that time that one of the judges of the hearing told me a comment I still to this day to not believe at all…that there are no such things as friendships in prison. I was so close to debating that with him, but something inside of me said, “let it go, you’ve won”.

For a moment, pride was fighting against me. That judge was wrong to say that, but he had awarded me a complete victory. But I had much to say, and was so prepared to say them, yet my victory came on minimal effort. I wanted to at least argue the “no friendships” thing, but the inside of me was stronger and encouraged me to just be still and rejoice when I got back to the cell.

When I got back, I fell on my knees, thanking God for delivering me, even though I didn’t get to make my points to my defense. It was then that I realized something…this was the way it HAD to be, if God was going to get glory from it. I mean, after all, I did pray for HIS help, not my own. If I had spoken as I would have wanted, using man’s wisdom, I might have gloried in myself because I “saved myself”. Or, it could have been taken the wrong way, and I could have been seen as guilty on those false charges.

What I got out of my prayer was God’s grace and favor, and it was strong enough to keep my mouth shut and let God answer my prayer, instead of me trying to do it for myself. I understand that now, because I had faith in God, and the wisdom that prevented me from trying to do it on my own.

I learned a lesson there about faith, one of many that slowly got me to see that God really wants to help us, but we have to allow Him to help, and also we have to believe that He WILL help us. This goes back to the idea of asking. Inmates can get prayers answered too, and I am a witness of that. God does not do background checks or check your credit history or rewinds the “life tape” to see if you deserve it or not. He’s looking for faith, and if you have it, free or not, God can answer. That’s not a mystery to one who believes.

Anyway, I must really be inspired today, I think I have written about 25 pages for you guys today. I really hope it can help, and I would love to write more, either about prison issues or faith in prison, let me know. Email me at derf4000 (at) embarqmail (dot) com to ask about supporting my blogs or to ask about prison issues or my prison books.