They Are Here To Stay

 

Joel 2: 29-31…

“And also on My menservants and on My maidservants, I will pour out MY Spirit in those days.  And I will show wonders in the Heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.  The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.”

 

These scriptures emphasize that the Spirit of the Lord will be poured out on all flesh meaning no one is excluded from God’s Grace and His Power.  This includes servants, both male and female (female, especially), who were previously considered less privileged. 

                                                                          

Breaking Barriers

 

Prior to Joel and his statements in Chapter Two, prophetic gifts and Divine Revelation was limited to specific individuals like priests and prophets. 

Joel 2:29 promises a time when all barriers to receiving the Spirit’s empowerment are removed. 

 

The pouring out of God’s Spirit signifies a time of abundant grace and spiritual renewal, transforming individuals and communities. 

Specifically, for those who read this in 2025. 

 

I have already seen His Glory fall in prisons I preach in.  I have seen His Creative Miracles and many Salvations in the last 40 years.  The best is yet to come in the days we are in today. 

In fact, today, June 13, 2025, Israel has launched an attack on Iran. 

This is not to fear over, but to realize that prophetically, this must happen. 

I will let you figure this out on your own. 

 

The end is not as near as you might be hoping.  Meaning, do not just root for the Rapture of the Church, but get busy doing what you and I are supposed to be doing in the work of the ministry that He has entrusted us to. 

Amen. 

 

Barriers in the Spirit realm are breaking all around the world.  America is primed, ripe and ready for a full onslaught of His Spirit and His Power to save and revive this once God-fearing nation. 

We are on the cusp of true revival. 

                                     

Hope and Salvation

 

The promise of the Spirit is interwoven with a call to repentance and salvation, offering hope to all who turn to God. 

Not just any repentance. 

We should never try and conjure up the Spirit, based on the past revivals seen in America and around the world. 

God is doing a new thing. 

Repentance without tears is not repentance.  Only regret. 

 

Feeling sorry for being caught in our sin is not repentance.  It is when we are sorry, deeply regretful and in despair, for doing whatever we did to get caught that counts. 

A Godly sorrow leading to repentance unto Salvation in Christ. 

Paul made this clear. 

2nd Corinthians 7:10. 

 

Find a kneeling bench and plenty of tissue to wipe your tears.  America should get ready for His Outpouring. 

Your tears. 

Not of God’s tears, but of His Mercy on a sinful nation. 

It is the turning to God that matters. 

Repent alone.  Then repent publicly. 

Do both if you want to see His Presence in your life. 

 

Joel follows up with the detailing of God’s judgment and this need for repentance.  It offers a message of Hope and Restoration, contrasting the previous warnings. 

 

What about these Maidservants? 

 

Let us go back in time to the past. 

The Bible.

 

Tabitha also known as Dorcas, was a devoted disciple and charitable woman who lived in Joppa.  She was known for her good works, and her acts of mercy, particularly serving the widows and poor by making garments for them.  Tabitha’s story is found in the Book of Acts, where, when she dies, and is later raised from the dead by the Apostle Peter, brought revival to the area. 

{Acts 9: 36-42).

 

Mary Magdalene, a devoted follower of Jesus who witnessed His crucifixion and burial and was the first person to see the Resurrected Christ.  Her experience solidified her as a key figure in the early Christian movement. 

 

The woman at the well. Esther, Deborah, Hanna, and beyond. 

 

Catherine Booth and Eliza Shirley both became revivalists by providing hope and a sense of belonging to the slums. 

The people who lived in this horrible condition found Christ and a community because of the sacrifice of these two women. 

Catherine was the co-founder of the Salvation Army.  She died from breast cancer in 1890 in Essex, United Kingdom, and was known as the MOTHER of the Salvation Army.  She was also a missionary and a writer. 

Eliza Shirley, also a Salvation Army worker, was known for feeding, clothing, comforting and caring for the homeless.  She did it in the name of Jesus. 

She walked with the homeless and the addicted.  She felt their pain.  She fed and she let her light in Christ show through to those no one wanted. 

 

Modern times:

Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal evangelist. 

Jessie Penn-Lewis was a key figure in the Welsh and Keswick revivals advocating for women’s public ministry. 

Lucy Farrow arrived at the Azusa Street Revival, where she taught Glossolalia, (speaking in tongues).

Amy Carmichael was a missionary to India, rescuing children from ritual prostitution.   

The list goes on. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Corrie Ten Boom, Rosa Parks. 

 

“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

While throughout history, Maidservants have often been overlooked, The Most High has a radically different view of their importance. They are catalysts and timebombs, igniting the Gospel Message of Jesus Christ.

God lit their fuse for revival even while their calling and the Power of God, that was being birthed in them, was being put aside by those who did not understand God’s Providence.  

Women of God are not to be silent and ignored.  

“Though I have given you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, no longer will your teachers (Teacher) be hidden from you or put on a shelf any longer; but your eyes will see your teachers, and your ears will hear a voice behind you saying: This is the way, walk in it. Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.”  

Isaiah 30: 20-21

 

The women of God who HE raises up are not bookends on a shelf.  

They were not secondary. 

They were out front. 

Pioneers of the Gospel in their own right, given this Mandate by the Most High. 

 

The world, along with the media, have tried to portray women as cookie-cutter house maids, not Maidservants.  

 

Just remember the cooking commercials of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  

In the kitchen, cooking meals with Betty Crocker. 

Aprons cinched up tight, hair in a hairnet.

Making babies, so diaper commercials in the 1960’s could promote their products.  

But visually abused and made to look like servants of men, not servants of God. 

In the scenes in such shows like “Perry Mason,” they were cast as alcoholics and blackmailers. 

Not evangelists. 

Depicted on television as submissive, weak, “do as I say,” from the man, kind of women. 

Seen and not heard. 

 

Times have changed since Deborah in the Bible. 

Even more so since Mary at the tomb of Jesus the Christ. 

 

God uses women of God to lead everyone to Christ who they encounter. 

It is His Nature. 

He is the One who is not sexist. 

Mankind has been that way. 

Not our Creator. 

 

The Most High promotes women in ministry at times for a specific purpose. 

He promotes, not a man. 

Because He is not a man that He could lie. 

God is not a womanizer. 

 

So, please hear the heartbeat of the maidservants all around you. 

 

You may be alone right now, but if you love Jesus, then you are His Maidservant. 

Not a house cleaner with an ACME brand vacuum. 
Not a toilet bowl cleaner without gloves and without “Ty-D- Bol.” 

Not a house dweller but a homemaker. 

A true HOMEMAKER in the Kingdom of God. 

 

Without these Maidservants, men would be back in a garden, looking for a large fig leaf to cover their nakedness. 

Pride made them leave the Garden of Eden. 

Sin was the culprit. 

Their rebellion, Adam and the Snake’s rebellion, not Eve’s. 

 

Had the man protected and guided and guarded the woman from the snake, we would be preaching a different Gospel.  

Or perhaps NO Gospel. 

 

Men, wake up. 

The women of God are here.  Here to stay. 

Get used to it, World. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Time is Running Out

Tick Tock,

The pendulum swings.

No church doors open,

No church bells ring.

We gather and hoard,

In chasing our dreams,

Our storehouse is full,

But our hearts still scream.

 

“I wanted to, Lord. I was gonna get saved. I was waiting for Time to see a Banner yet waved.”

 

I’ve run out of time, and now it seems late.

My Eternity spoiled,

I’ve birthed my own fate.

 

Heaven or Hell doth my choices reveal;

As in Revelation 6,

The opened 4th Seal.

 

Do not be deceived,

God is not mocked.

We reap what we sow,

In our Ticks and our Tocks.

 

He has gone to prepare a mansion for you

His Promise to those whom His Blood He did lose.

Ready or not,

Here I come,

For the lives in this room,

Who know they’re undone.

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Lying to Yourself

“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire?”

 
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist and short story writer, was a journalist who was regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature.  Many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.   

One of his quotes says, “The man who lies to himself and then listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.  And having no respect, he ceases to love.” 

 

Compare this to the Bible, and you will find 1st John 2: 4-6:  

“He who says I know Him (Jesus) and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.  But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him.  By this we know that we are in Him.  He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.”

 

In other words, if we know Christ and are saved from our sins, then we strive to follow Him in all manners of behavior in this life.  

We are not perfect, but we strive for His Will and His obedience in our lives through His Holy Word. 

 

Dostoevsky was correct in that lying to oneself causes a man to not respect himself, and he can’t love. 

 Lying.  

This is a paradox for some folks. 

 

I mentioned this in a sermon I did years ago.  

I named it, “Unmasking the Lone Ranger.”  

Coming out from our hiding behind our lies etc.  Taking off our masks of insecurity and pride, and then letting Jesus define who we really are in Him. 

 

I quoted this in the sermon, “Since when did lies become color coded?  It's a white lie, a green lie, and red lie.  A lie is a lie.  If it is not the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, it is a lie.  Who wants to lie to himself, or herself, and walk away feeling remorse about their lies, which leads to guilt and shame?  If we lie during tax time, there is a federal prison I have been in.  PREACHING,” I said quickly. 

 

Many do.  It has become a way of life for some.  It was for me in my early years. 

 

I lied to myself back at twelve years old, when Mom abused me and my sister.  I would say to myself, “Well, it is not that bad.”  

 

Really?  It was bad.  It was really bad. 

 

I lied to myself when my mother died from cancer in 1971; I was fifteen years old.  

I said, “I hate her for the things she did to me and my sister.  But I love her too.”  

I lied to myself in trying to justify her behavior and that I had a love/hate relationship with a dying mother.  This is why I got on drugs, to cover up my pain in my broken heart.  

I lied to myself that I will never be an addict, and this drug and alcohol use is only for a little while.  

 

Ha. Boy was I wrong. 

 

Well, the little while turned into 7 years of putting a needle in my veins, almost daily, using Meth and other drugs.  

It ended only when I went to prison.  

Prison.   

 

Wow.  

Prison was not a lie.  

It was the truth I had to deal with.  

Maximum- Security Prison.  

A home for the insane criminal.  

Myself, along with 2,300 other young men.  We were all between the ages of 18-22.  

Horrible lie I bought back in 1974, thinking, “I can quit doing drugs anytime I want to.”   

You did not get sent to the Ferguson Unit Prison I was in unless there was violence attached to your felony conviction.  

Reality?

We were all full of demons and hatred for society and any authority.

Fact. 

 

Lie, upon lie, upon lie.  

“Round and round we go, when it stops, nobody knows.” 

 

Well, God knows the end of your rope you hang on to.  

He knows every thought you and I have, before we even think of any one of them.  

Can’t fool a God like that.  

 

Certainly, we would not want to lie about anything we do, knowing He hears everything and knows every thought in advance. 

 

There is a psychological insight, though I would rather just quote scripture.  

It is this. 

A man who lies to himself eventually loses the ability to distinguish the truth.  

Any truth.  

This reinforces the notion that one’s actions of self-deception shape their reality.  This psychological insight is really saying,

“Once a liar, always a liar.  Once an addict, always an addict.  Once a convict?”

 Well, you see my point.

 

Until Jesus Christ is revealed to any person who is a habitual liar, or thief, or addict, nothing changes.  It only grows worse. 

 

Another case in point. 

My Uncle.  

He was the epitome of a liar. 

 

He had a wife, two children at home, and two girlfriends on the side. 

I watched him drive his 1974 Lincoln Continental as I sat in the passenger seat up front. 

He would chew his nails constantly, and I could see his gears turning in his head. 

 

I was out on the $250,000.00 bond for attempted murder and had to be with him 24/7.  That was part of my bond, and the legal rules attached to me being out of jail for a season before my indictment for the felonies I committed. 

 

I saw what I saw, and did not breathe a word to my dear Aunt, his wife.

 

His gears in his mind that were turning were attached to “How can I lie, and cover this lie, and do this lie, to protect my womanizing and lusts.  How can I move this stolen car around Dallas, Texas (during this era I was with him) successfully and not get caught.”

 

It went much deeper than stolen cars.  I am not at liberty to go into detail but let me just say I was “involved.” 

 

I still had issues with addictions.  I could not do the Meth I liked daily as I was facing court.  

I did, however, drink beer frequently with my uncle, and he and I frequented some real “dives” called bars.  

Sorted places with a “front” for my uncle and his illegal activities. 

 

Going from one of his girlfriend's houses to another, then back home to his wife.  

I look back on this life he lived, and that I was a small part of it, and realize I could have died doing what he was doing.  

Only by God’s grace I survived these trips around the Dallas area, and Las Vegas. 

 

I lied to myself, thinking I could face court with a clean record of being sober. 

I lied to myself when my uncle and my lawyer convinced me that I needed probation rather than the prescribed 25 years- to- life sentence facing me at this time.  

I lied, and lied, thinking probation was not doable.  

 

Fact is, it was not.  

This was not a lie at all.  

I was telling myself I could not do probation as an addict and an attempted murderer.  

I could not even shoot my pistol straight enough to kill my best friend.  I failed at that too.  

I was not in my right mind, but I also knew that I did not care if my friend lived or died.  

 

Life and death meant nothing to me, a chief sinner that I was back then. 

 

I knew, and only God knew back then, that I would never complete my two-year probation.  

And the Lord Jesus knew that I would destroy the probated sentence with another attempted murder.  

This time on a Police Officer. 

 

See, lies never end when you and I are liars.  

 

Oh, they can dissipate a bit.  They can go from a full blown “red” lie to a green one and then down to a white one.  

Color blind sinners that we are.   

 

If we are liars, and the truth is not in us before we knew Christ, then how can we possibly lie once we become a Christian?  

 

We do.  

I have for various fearful reasons during my growing period in Jesus.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.  

All means all.  

 

Why does mankind lie, Christian or not? 

 

It is simple.  

We justify the truth.  

We slide on the slippery slope of this justification.  1st John 2.  

Remember? 

“And the truth is not in us.”

 

“Jesus is the Truth.  He is also the Way, and the Life.

No man comes to the Father except by Him.”  

John 14:6

 

My uncle. 

He would stop at a pay phone or at the bar behind the counter where the bartender hid the landline.  (No cell phones back then). 

I could hear him calling my aunt, his wife.  

“Honey, I will be late again because I must go to the drug store and reset the school supply aisle tonight.  Nephew Joe is going to help me.” 

 

Yes.  He was a salesman for a company in Dallas.  

He was good at it.  

 

The problem was, it was his front for all his illegal activities, including being a Man-whore, cheating on his wife.  

He was not just cheating on one woman, his beloved wife.  He was cheating on each of the two girlfriends.

 I would hear him say, “I only love you.”  

 

Lie again, Uncle.  

Keep it up. 

 

Well, before I went to prison, his marriage failed.  

I wonder why.

 

Lies compounded. 

Fingernails chewed up all the way down past the cuticle.  He had to have surgery later when they found a small puss- filled pocket of fingernails in his stomach lining.  

Human fingernails do not digest. 

Sorry, you just lost your appetite.

 

It is called sin.  

Rebellion.  

Ignoring the God who loves us.  

Running from all our problems, rather than facing them head on in repentance.  

 

Christians know better.  

I know better.  

We all know better, because the Holy Ghost is like a “HOUNDDOG” from Heaven, sniffing us out and following our tracks and our track record in our walk with Him.  

 

He is always waiting for us to repent.  Always.  

 

If we have breath in our lungs.

 

He never gives up on us.  Never. 

 

Do we lie to ourselves?     

 

“Infidelity, (in my uncle’s case), does not exist in believing, nor in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.  

It is impossible to calculate moral mischief that mental lying has produced upon society.  

(Quote by Thomas Paine). 

Proverbs 12: 22-23…

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are His delight.  A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims foolishness.”

 

I mastered foolishness, and so did my uncle.  

He did get saved on his death bed.  

He really did, and it was truly a transformation.  

He could have gotten saved early on and lived a healthy Christian life.  He made Heaven his home but wasted years like I did.  

His former wife and children are Christians too, and the forgiveness in this family ran deep and wide as the Lord healed all that former pain. 

 

Lying to yourself.  

If you lie to others, you start by lying to yourself.

You say, “It is not really a lie, just a mistruth.”

 

In Christ, we can come under conviction and clean up our act.  

We can live clean in an unclean world.  

At least we can have integrity and let our life without lies be our barometer in how we deal with the world. 

 

The world does not care if you lie.  

 

You should care about telling the truth to the world around you.  They may not like your truthful attitude.  

What matters is that Jesus smiles down at us and says, “Well done.  Keep going.” 

 

1st Timothy 1: 9-11, includes liars among those who will be punished in the lake of fire. 

Proverbs 13:5 says that the righteous hate lying. 

 

Question?  Do we hate lying, or do we practice it? 

 

That is a life-long challenge to be a Christian and mean it.  Daily.   

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”  

There is a fire for those who do not love Jesus Christ.  

More than pants will burn.  

 

Be aware and be saved.  

Today is the day of Salvation in Jesus.   

 

“Let us not grow weary in doing well, for we will reap in due season, if we faint not.”

Galatians 6:9.

 

Do not give up, Christian.  

Do not quit, no matter what you believe yet.  

Jesus loves the sinner but hates the sin.

 

Lying lips get chapped with guilt.  

Lying wears us down.  Truth sets us free.   

 

“Loose lips sink ships.” 

Idiom. 

Better yet, “A gossiper goes around telling secrets, but those who are trustworthy can keep a confidence.”  

Gossip is poison.  Lying will kill you.  

The antidote is? 

“It is the truth we know and understand, that will set us free.”

  John 8:32

 

Are you and I trustworthy?  

Ask Jesus.

He will tell you the truth.

 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Prison Ministry Do’s and Don’ts

There was a time back in 1999 through 2004 when I was on staff at a large church in Portland, Oregon.  My two sons were born in 2000 and 2001, so towards the last year of my time in this church, they were still very young. 

 

I had already learned the do’s and don'ts regarding how to teach the volunteers who helped me with this church’s prison ministry. 

Understanding that not all men or women are called into this challenging ministry, I went through many people who tried to find their place. 

Once they found out that they were not doing what God really called them to, they left with no bad feelings or regrets. 

 

I learned later that it takes a person to know from the Holy Ghost that they belong in this ministry.  It also taught me to discern their hearts better as to the good intentions of each heart that signed up to go with me. 

 

I said all of that to make a valid point. 

There are rules in prison.  I ought to know.  I lived in a maximum-security prison in Texas in 1976. 

I knew then, and know now, all the ins and outs of convict mentality. 

 

I put each potential volunteer through rigorous training to teach them more about what NOT to do in a prison setting during the Gospel presentation, than what TO do. 

 

The State of Oregon, back then, had their own rules and regulations for volunteers, and I maintained my clearance badge for over 33 years, without any major issues. 

I knew what not to do, but anyone who has not lived in prison needs to learn from me, and the State about the rules. 

I won’t go in to them, because my real point to this is a spiritual one. 

 

I had 25 volunteers going into 5 prisons on a weekly and semi-monthly basis all over the Salem and Portland area during my tenure.  Men in men's prisons and women in women's prisons. 

For obvious reasons.  Gender does make a difference. 

I was responsible for all the volunteers and many souls were saved. The teaching of God’s Word was going forth regularly to feed the sheep, and to win the lost. 

 

I took a trip with my mother-in-law, my wife, and my two sons in 2003 to Baker City, Oregon.  The Powder River Minimum Security Prison was a drug and alcohol treatment center.  Men there are finishing their sentences, and for some who had done long periods of time prior to entering here, were glad to finally be getting closer to leaving. 

 

My wife’s mother stayed with my two sons in a hotel, while my wife and I did the ministry in the prison one evening. 

 

There are so many do’s and don'ts in prison.

One mistake could cost you the ability to return as a volunteer. 

The scripture says, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others.  Keep yourself pure.”  1st Timothy 5:22. 

This scripture has more to do with the volunteers I was responsible for than for myself and my wife. 

This Word of God emphasizes the importance of careful consideration when appointing individuals to leadership roles within the church. 

It cautions against hasty appointments. 

My wife and I entered the prison and are in the chapel now. She is in the front row in front of me as I am behind the pulpit.  Two officers are nearby watching everyone, primarily the men in custody. 

 

There are three DO and DO NOT topics I have never preached on in prisons all over America and overseas. 

One: Money. 

The men in prison do not need teaching on how to handle finances in prison.  They may trade a bar of soap, or a commissary item to a fellow inmate, but they are not trading stocks in the stock market.  It may even be their dessert item they have to give up in paying a debt they owe to an enemy. 

It is not a mutual fund.  You get my drift? 

Two:  The Baptism of the Holy Spirit according to The Book of Acts Chapter Two. 

This is real for me and others. 

Yes, it is relevant to every believer, but this topic is controversial in churches on the outside of prison.  No need to bring any confusion to anyone behind bars.  I do not touch that during my mandate to win the lost. 

Let’s get them saved first and allow God to work out His will for them.

 

Three:  Racism. 

This is where this story begins, back before I left Portland to eventually enter this prison. 

The Lord Jesus told me to preach on racism AND find the audio tape of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. 

Wow. 

I found the speech and had it put on a cassette tape. 

(Still had these in 2003).

I began my message with 15 seconds of this Historic Speech.  I had it programed to only play the following part.   

 

 

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.  Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked insufficient funds.” 

(This next portion was prior to the first part, in the actual speech because I switched it for a point in my sermon. It is in reference to the metaphor of our Nation’s Capital to cash a check regarding civil rights).  

 

“This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

 

I turned off the tape player I had brought in.   

I watched as the black inmates, white inmates, Hispanic inmates, and all the other races in this chapel began to manifest in anger.  They did not lash out at anyone, but their body language and the squirming in their seats was apparent. 

No one walked out.  They were all frozen in their seats as my wife stared at me like: “What is next?” 

The officers nearby were at heightened alert.  This, too, I knew by their body language. 

I preached my message that I knew the Lord wanted me to, though it was a taboo thing to do, knowing it was one of the three NEVER to preach on. 

 

The altar invitation brought all 52 men forward by the Power of the Holy Ghost! The altar was packed with every, single man on their knees in front of me. 

I got on my knees too, and as I prayed the prayer of Salvation for all the men, I was literally crawling on my knees around the men, laying hands on them and praying for each individual man.  My wife was in tears along with every man in there as the Glory of God fell like a fog in this chapel that evening. 

 

God was not done yet. 

The officers allowed the men to walk into another room next to the chapel for more shoulder room.  This room is twice as big as the altar area. 

The officers can see the men through the windows which are part of this larger room.  The guards looked on in amazement at what God did next. 

 

All 52 men had their hands in the air, stretched towards Heaven as I began to walk by them from one end of the wall to the other end.  All the men were standing shoulder to shoulder as I passed by. 

 

I never was able to touch them to pray for them by the “laying on of hands.” 

 

God did the laying on of HIS hands to each man. 

 

Every man began, one by one, speaking in another language as God gave them the utterance. 

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost fell on every, single man there. 

 

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were gathered.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  ALL of them were filled (all 52 in this prison) with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Acts 2: 1-4

POWERFUL MOMENT. 

 

Every man, after receiving this miracle, fell to their knees worshipping the Lord Jesus in their new Heavenly language.   

 

The officers were perplexed but allowed this to go on, until it was time for me to leave.  I left the men in that extra room, worshipping and praising in tongues, as my wife and I departed the prison. 

 

I have never seen this before this evening. 

 It certainly had nothing to do with me, or the message God gave me. 

 

It had to do with the Lord and His timing for this prison, and the men in that chapel. 

 

I left with renewed hope that even when I would normally never preach on any of those before-mentioned topics, if the Holy Ghost says to, I will. 

 

Obedience is better than sacrifice. 

 

I know, after almost 40 years of prison ministry, the things to do, and not to do regarding policy and procedure in prison.   

 

“The safety and security of the prison and the men who live here is number one priority.” 

 

This is taken from the handbook for volunteers in training in Oregon. 

 

When the Lord Jesus has a plan, and we are His vessels to deliver the message or the sermon in a particular place. The quicker we decrease, the quicker He can increase His power and anointing; this is paramount to His Will being accomplished. 

I didn’t know what the Lord was up to with the Martin Luther King speech that day. 

I just obeyed, and He did the rest. 

 

To Him be all the Honor and Glory for His Marvelous Works. 

 

I did not know exactly what to do that evening except deliver what He said to deliver. 

I try not to ignore His leading, yet at times over all these years, I am sure I have missed His leading.  We all have. 

It is more about what NOT to do, than TO DO that matters. 

 

Mistakes happen in this walk with the Lord Jesus.  We all fall short at times.  We get up, and move forward, not backward, the best we know how, in accordance to His Word. 

By faith. 

Faith in His leading. 

 

Isaiah1: 19-20…

 “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Harsh?   

In context, these passages present a conditional promise of either blessing or judgment, based on the people’s response to God’s call to repentance. 

It follows a series of accusations detailing their wickedness and rejection of God. 

These verses offer a choice: if the people are willing and obedient they will “eat the good of the land,” but if they refuse and rebel, they will be “devoured by the sword.”

 

At Powder River Prison, those 52 men were rebellious and were being devoured by doing time for their crimes. 

That evening, they repented, and were ALL baptized in the Holy Ghost, and are now eating the fruit; the GOOD fruit of the land. 

 

Do’s and Don’ts? 

I would rather know what NOT to do, and NOT do that as much as possible. 

And as far as what TO DO? 

Well, on that evening I tried to be obedient. 

My flesh said, “If you play that twenty seconds of THAT speech, there will be a riot.  Don’t do that, Joe.” 

No riots happened.  

Hopefully none in your life too. 

Let us all be led by His Spirit.  

Let us do the do’s, and don’t do the don’ts.  

Better yet, just DO the best you can every day.  

 

The Do’s and Don’ts will work themselves out, in time. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Doors, Gates, and Walls

The Doors

Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.  I am the door.  If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”  John 10: 7-10. 

 

This may seem to most Christians (Christ followers) a simple, yet spoken, scripture that is used over and over in sermons and in Bible studies.  

Yes, we should memorize and keep this Word in our hearts.  

When needed, we can draw from our spiritual well and apply this to our lives when it seems many “doors” have shut, that we hoped would open. 

 

I have knocked on Jesus’s Door many times to find His Will for my life.  

Mainly through prayer and trying to understand and discern my requests to Him.  

I want to, and try to, be led by the Spirit so I do not satisfy the desires of the flesh.  Galatians 5: 16-17. 

 

Case in point.  

In 1991, while living in Portland, Oregon, I was working full time as a baker for a well-known wholesale store.  At this time in my life, I was living in my car, a 1978 Datsun B210 Hatchback. 

I lived in this car for many reasons.  

First and foremost, I was serving Jesus with all my heart, and I had to decide to stay in an unhealthy environment or live in my small hotel called a Datsun.  

I chose the car.  

It was more like a motel rather than a hotel.  No room service or housekeeping provided. 

I slept at night either by the dumpster by a real motel, or at the truck stop.  

Sometimes, when I felt brave, I would sleep at night at the Interstate 5 Southbound Rest Area, next to the 18-wheelers.  The sound of the purring diesel engines idling all night long helped me to fall to sleep.  

Hard to do in November in Oregon when it is cold outside. 

My pillow was my spare tire with a towel over it.  

I stretched out my 6 foot 2-inch frame as best as I could.  Mostly I lay in the fetal position for comfort's sake. 

 

Morning arrived. 

I gathered myself up and went to the truck stop pretending to be a truck driver, so I could take a shower.  It worked and I did not feel weird because I was pretending to be a driver of an 18-wheeler.  I had a four-wheel, rear wheel drive Datsun.  Hardly qualified for a real truck. 

 

I walked up to the counter where you check in.  I put my briefcase on the counter.  They asked me who I worked for, and I declared, “Costco Wholesale.” 

This was the truth.  

The issue of walking through this door was out of desperation and need, rather than a professional declaration of who I worked for.  I did not lie.  They never asked me for credentials, or where my truck was parked, or any identification proving I had a CDL commercial license. 

I gave them the small fee required to wait my turn.  

After a few minutes, they called my name, and I took my shower and headed to work.  It was a very long shower for obvious reasons.  

I also did my laundry at the same truck stop so I always had clean clothes.  

Christians living in a car should stay clean.  I tried. 

Not once was I turned away.  

This had to be God and HIS door of opportunity to, at least, look like I was not homeless.  I was not without a home as long and my Datsun ran. 

 

The spiritual DOOR in the above scripture, for me, daily, meant a symbolic door, but also a real door of opportunity to survive my current life working full time. 

 

Symbolic how? 

It was my access or entrance to God and His ability to restore my life.  Jesus, believing in Him and accepting Him as my Savior and Lord caused me to enter a relationship which I had done in 1977 in prison in Texas. 

By entering in the Door of Salvation back then, it did not protect me from trials in life.  

It did offer some peace amid the storm that I was going through in my Datsun motel.  

I was embarrassed to live like this.  

I felt shame in my bad decisions that led me to this point in my Christian life.  

I was guilty as charged, yet forgiven, by Jesus through His grace and repentance.  

I was living out my consequences from my sin, which is now under His Blood through forgiveness.

 I was a forgiven, hard worker, living in my car, and happy to have a Datsun to dwell in.  

My attitude was good.  

I was healthy and still working hard daily trying to believe in restoration.  

My faith was weak, but my attitude was strong. 

 

The day came as I walked through God’s door, after several months of survival mode, when He (Jesus) made a way for me to have a bigger car to live in.  

It was better than trading my Datsun for a motorcycle.  

Could not find a big enough umbrella to hide under in the monsoons of Portland in November.  

I traded up to a 1972 Plymouth Fury with lots of leg room for sleeping.  

I was in an upgrade from Motel 6 to Holiday Inn in my mind.  

Hurrah! 

It got terrible gas mileage with a 383 cubic inch Magnum engine.  

Not quite like the little Datsun, but I could outrun, if necessary, anyone behind me tailgating me. 

 

God was teaching me a lesson in my self-inflicted wounds from my sin.  

Simply put: Trust Me? 

 

I trusted Him in my wages from Costco being garnished weekly.  

I trusted Him with the loss of over half of my income being taken to paid debts I owed.   

I had to trust Him when I did not have enough for food or gas.  

I had to fully, 100% at times trust and rely on His supernatural provision and good health. 

 

This door I speak about is spiritual because I could just knock and keep on knocking on His door through repentance and humility. 

I could keep pounding away with my fist of frustration on His Door made from mercy and grace and be a disgusting, disobedient son to a Heavenly Father. 

I gently knocked and kept on knocking until the door opened.  

It is paramount in our prayer time when we knock to realize when the door is open or shut.  

No hinges to break on Jesus and His Door.  

It takes time to discern the truth.  

I have preached for years about this, “You and I will never hear His Yes answer to our prayer, until we obey His No answer that He has said to us over and over.  Fact of life.”  

It is good to be sheep to a Good Shepherd and walk through His Door of forgiveness. 

Now moving on to gates. 

The Gates

Psalm 100: 4-5, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.  Be thankful to Him and bless His name.  For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His Truth endures to all generations.” 

 

Boy, do I have a lot to be thankful for.  

 

Number One, not being lethally injected by the State of Texas back in 1976 for Murder One.  

Had either of my two victims died, I would be gone.  The death penalty was reinstated in Texas in 1976.  Lethal Injection was then used, after the pause on putting convicted murderers to death.  

The electric chair, named “OLD SPARKY” was done away with in 1964. 

 

I dodged a lethal bullet only by God and His grace for me back then. 

Instead of a gate leading to hell, I entered a gate called Salvation in Christ in 1977 while still in prison.  

Thank God for the GATE of mercy and grace. 

 

In the Bible, besides being part of a city’s protection against invaders, city gates were places of central activity in Biblical times.  

It was at the city gates that important business transactions were made, court was convened, and public announcements were heralded. 

 

“Sitting at the gate” was found in Proverbs 1, as wisdom is personified:

“At the head of the noisy streets when she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech.”

(Verse 21)

To spread her words to the maximum number of people, Wisdom took to the gates.” 

 

This verse highlights that wisdom is readily available and accessible to everyone, even those who are not actively seeking it.  

It’s a call to attention, like a public speaker, reminding people that the path to wisdom is open to all.  

An open gate. 

 

Living in my car, back then in Portland, required my faith to believe in an open door and an open gate in that city, to help me get on my feet spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.  

I needed a gate to swing wide open for me (and my Plymouth) to drive through and find peace and solace.   

God did it for me, over and over, and rescued me and gave me an apartment later.  

I still worked for Costco during this time of believing for an open gate; not a swing gate in a saloon, or a revolving gate in a spiritual airport, going in and going out.  

My destination in this spiritual airport with its revolving door going nowhere, had no final descent, and no landing strip to land on.  

It was nonexistent for me then. 

 

I did not run from God but ran to Him with all my heart back then, and today currently, I continue to walk by faith and run in freedom to serve Him in whatever gate He opens for me.  

I run, and do not hide in shame any longer. 

 I needed stability in my spiritual life back then, and I found it when Jesus opened His Gates.  I did not have much discernment back then in the 1990s, when His gates opened wide for me.  

I just knew that any gate that did not look like a physical prison that I had become accustomed to back in my real prison days in 1976, had to be better than picking cotton with chains between my legs.

 

I lived in my past a lot in this era, not healed from my history of insanity yet.  But my day of freedom was coming. 

 

My inmate number assigned to me in 1976 was #262066 standing for: the 262,066 “thousandth” number of inmates sentenced to a Texas prison, back when they started keeping statistics for this very reason.  

Started at zero in 1849 (record keeping), until the day I was given that number; keeping track of how many men entered prison in Texas, is in the archives of Texas Penitentiary records.

120 years of keeping records, Texas lost many of these numbers over time.  

The point I am making is called GROWTH and building more prisons to house criminals.  

Not only in Texas, but all over America.  We are still the most incarcerated nation in the world. 

Today, in 2025, the number has escalated to a 7-digit number, signifying not thousands of inmates, but millions.  

 

“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”

Romans 5:20

I got out of prison through a huge gate in 1977.

I have been back preaching in the very prison I was released from.  

I have been preaching at Ferguson Unit for over 20 years now. 

 

From a gate of sorrow when I entered, to a gate of freedom inside my heart, God redeemed me through His Gates of my Thanksgiving towards Him, and Him alone does the Glory go to. 

 

I saved the best for last.  

 

Walls

Walls can be seen as a source of imprisonment and division.  

They are often referred to as things we need to break down and overcome. 

In Old Testament times, the city walls represented not only the strength of the people within that city, but also the strength of the God they served. 

 

An Eternal Wall is best described as a metaphor of security and safety.  

Isaiah 26: 1-3, “In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks.”

(A defensive wall built to withstand the enemies who attacked). 

 

A wall of fortification was built around my heart in the spiritual realm.  

I was worn out from abuse, addiction, incarceration, insanity, mental ward incarceration, and finally prison.  

Maximum- Security Prison. 

My wall was strong, impenetrable and tall as it was deep.  It ran, in length, from East to West, with no end in my spirit and soul. 

 

I built it out of fear.  

I forged it brick by brick, and link by link in the chain of despair and loneliness.  

My walls and bars around my heart had no key to unlock the lock and sever the bars with a hacksaw.  

I needed an atomic bomb, in my mind back then, to even make a dent in my wall of insecurity. 

I wanted to be healed from inside my heart, but I did not know how, when and where.  

 

I got tired of trying to figure it out.  

 

I did not hear God and His Voice back in the 1990s, yet I wanted to, and I desired deeply to be set free. 

“Those who call upon the name of the Lord (Jesus, Yashua, Most High God, Emmanuel, the Soon Coming King, and the Redeemer, (just a few of His Names) will be SAVED.”

 

 Another name for saved is RESCUED. 

I needed rescuing from my past.  

I loved Jesus back then and still do today.  

I needed freedom.  

I had memories of past times, dates, and events in my memory banks from a broken heart, and damaged soul.  

Some people journal them or put them down in a diary, but I only left them inside my memory, without a pen and paper. 

 

Suddenly, without any warning or insight from me or from the Lord Jesus, He showed up.  

HE showed up for me.

It was in a cemetery.  A GRAVEYARD.  

Once a hole in the ground, six feet deep holding the bones of my mom and dad. 

My graveyard of memories.  

Not “garden of memories” that some funeral home/cemetery companies use to make us feel better about our loved one who died.  (Ridiculous to me). 

 

Garden?  

How about the Garden of Gethsemane? 

Remember that one in the Bible? 

Where Jesus had to decide (being God and man at the same time) was HE going to drink from the cup of suffering or stay with a dry mouth of selfishness. 

 

He drank until He eventually bled on a Cross.  

He died.  

It was not a garden of memories, though as believers in Christ, we should remember how He did die for us.  

Individually and for all mankind.  

 

He knows you by your NAME.  

First, middle and last name.  

For me, He knew me and you before the matrix of our mother’s womb, and He called us to be His servant. 

 

I had to and needed to let the walls down.  

I had to let my insecurities be revealed out in the open.  

I had to decrease so He could increase.  

He can’t increase in a vessel with walls.  

The spiritual walls we build, brick by brick, allow no room for Christ the Savior.  

HE wants to heal us.  

He desires to set us free from addictions.   

The problem is simple.  We love our sin so much that we say (without saying verbally) NAH!!!  I love my sin more than I love the one and only ONE who can deliver and heal and forgive my sin.  

Truth is?  

Whatever we do in secret, He allows it to come out in the open.  We should be embarrassed and filled with remorse.  

Are we really?  

Do we hate our sin, or put up with our sin?  

Do we take His grace for granted each time we say to our wife or husband, “I’m sorry, forgive me.”  

What we are really saying is, “Hurry up, Honey, forgive me and shed a tear or two for me, so I can hurry up and go back and sin some more.”  

OUCH.

It is the truth you and I understand and hear from the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost alone, that will set us free. 

I ought to know.  

My thought life before Christ was demon- possessed. 

I reaped a bunch of sorrow for my sins of attrition.  

Attrition, really?  Really?  

What in the world does that mean? 

Glad you asked, I will be glad to explain.  

You got time?  

Or is Columbo or American Idol too important right now? 

Attrition: a military strategy focused on wearing down the enemy by causing a continuous loss of soldiers and military equipment.  Body by dead body.  Gun without ammunition, etc. 

The goal is to eventually weaken the enemy forces to the point of collapse, and success often relies on having more resources than the opponent. 

 

OKAY?  

Do you get it yet? 

How do you and I wear down Satan, the enemy of our soul?

Prayer.  

Yes.  Resist the devil and he will flee.  I get that. 

What about our flesh?

“The lusts of our flesh, and the lust of our eyes and the boastful pride of life?  It is not of the Father but of this world.”

1st John 2: 16

 

Can’t blame our addictions on the devil, now, can we? 

So, in closing, if the walls around your wicked heart that Jeremiah speaks of are real, what will you do with your walls today?

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  

Jeremiah 17:9

 

What are you and I to do with our heart that loves Jesus?  

We really do love Him, but our flesh rules our lives? 

 

Repent.  

Once you truly turn away, 180 degrees (not halfway), and you are sorry for what you did to get caught, not sorry you got caught, then there is hope for you and me. 

 

Doors, gates, and walls. 

 

Let Jesus open your heart’s door.  

Enter His love and mercy through His gates of repentance.  

When we do, the walls go tumbling down. Like Jerico.  

You will overcome.  

Healing of the broken heart is not up to you, but up to Jesus.  

Your role, if any, is to be willing to open all the doors to your heart.  

Even the ones you locked on purpose way back when.  

 

He has the key.  You have one too.

He is the only one with the right Key.  

It is like a safety deposit box in the bank.  

You have a key, and the bank has one just like it.  It takes two keys to open the secrets and valuables in the bank.  

 

It will not open without both keys.  

You and Jesus, working together to rid the box of junk.  

Your heart, and His power. 

 “He that overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.”

Revelation 21:7.

 

 Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

“That Could Have Been You”

I am sure many people can say without any doubt that, “God protected me from that car wreck.”  

Or “If it had not been for the Lord Jesus intervening on my behalf, I would not be around to tell this story.” 

For me, this story is true, and names have been changed to protect those who are in this event. 

It was the year 2010.  I was traveling to Rosharon, Texas for a two-day preaching event.  Named the C.T. Terrell Unit of the Texas Prison System was again for me, a reminder of my past time in prison in 1976.  

The memories of my prison experience, good and bad, before and after my Salvation, are still clear today.  Though it has been 47 years since my sentence, there are times when the memories are very clear.  

Today is going to be one of those “vivid memory experiences” for me, personally. 

I conducted the first of two meetings at this prison in the gymnasium which holds more men than the chapel during this time.  The men there are packing the gym out, and it was a full house. 

I preached my message and told some of my story regarding how I was saved in the Ferguson Unit, Texas in 1976. 

Keeping in mind the fact I spoke about my past, I was about to encounter a truth.  

 A living truth. 

It was customary for the ministry to bring in some type of toiletry item to give to all the men there who attended church this day.  The State of Texas allowed me to bring hundreds of bottles of shampoo on this occasion.  

Other times it is toothpaste or a bar of soap. 

As the prisoners left the gym, in single-file formation, they passed by the table where I had the bottles of shampoo.  Some stop briefly and talk and then move on. 

Today is different because the officers in charge were in no hurry to get the men back to their housing units.  

Former name for a prison cell. 

One man, who was my age, stopped and began this supernatural moment. 

He stated, “You were at Ferguson, right?”  

Of course, I said yes, and I had just shared that in my testimony he had just heard.  

(“What about it?” I thought in my mind).

He continued, “Yea, you were at Ferguson, and you lived in 9-20-B, correct?” 

My heart sank, because he must have known me back in 1976 to know my exact cell number and bunk assignment.  A is for top bunk, and B is for the bottom.  I lived on the bottom bunk in Cell Block 9; 20th cell on the third floor (tier) exactly as he said. 

I am shaking in my shoes, thinking I must owe this man a sandwich or something from back in 1976 when he was my neighbor on the block, prior to segregation. 

It was not only my neighbor, but he told me that he was my next-door neighbor.  

“Wow.  Now what?”

He said, “Man, that day you came back from that so-called church inside that prison, all I could hear from your cell that day was Jesus, Jesus, and more Jesus.  I was sharpening my home-made knife for you Joe.  I was going to kill you.” 

I am trying to determine what is going to happen, as I am reaching to hand him a bottle of shampoo. The fact he never stabbed me back then, was a miracle, because I remember that they segregated the races, just after he said that to me on the day of my Salvation in Jesus.  

I was white, he was black.  

Segregation was happening, to try and slow down the killings between the different races of men in the Ferguson Unit in 1977. 

 

He asked me, “When did you get out, Joe?” 

I told him 1977, and then he continued to tell me that he got out of Ferguson in 1988, eleven years after I did.  

He said, “I loved Jesus before I got out of prison, just like you Joe.  I really had a relationship with the Lord, but when I got out, I went back to the old life, and now I am back.” 

He said, with tears in his brown eyes, “I am doing a life sentence, without the possibility of parole.  Keep doing what you do Joe; you are as radical now as you were back in 1977.  Don’t stop telling us about Jesus, okay?”   

Wow.  

With tears in my eyes now, I am thinking, I have never come across an inmate in the Texas prison system in all these years of ministry, who has remembered me.  

Who would and could remember me way back then when I was just twenty-one years old?  

It had been over three decades since I was in Ferguson, and I did not remember that man back then.  

But he remembered me. 

He had to move on away from me at this moment as the Boss Man was directing everyone to keep moving down that yellow line, painted on the floor, near the perimeter of the hallway, next to the red-brick wall. 

He slowly walked away from me, without the shampoo.  

I watched him walk, with a stroll that said to me, “I wish I would have served Jesus back then.”  

A regret-filled walk down a hallway that he would never, ever forget.  He would live out his days in this unit, never having a second chance at freedom.   

I heard the voice of the Lord in my heart as he was almost out of my sight that day.  He walked away and left an imprint on my heart.  

The Lord said to me, “Joseph, that could have been you.  You could be doing a life sentence without parole.  But by MY grace, you did not have to be like him. That could have been you.” 

The Holy Spirit continued to minister to me about not taking HIS grace for granted.  

I wasn’t, but this day taught me a valuable lesson.  My lesson is that I want to be a better person, not taking anything for granted.  

Especially His grace for my life. 

As I look into my own mirror of life today, some fifteen years after visiting this prison in Rosharon, Texas.  I am older now, and I remember all the events that could have caused me to be on Death Row in Texas.  

At the very least, had the two men, in separated crimes I committed; one was my best friend, and the other was a Police Officer.  

Had either one of them died, this story would have never been written.  But by God’s mercy and grace, I am not in prison any longer.  I will never take His grace for granted.  

Never.  

Are you listening to the Holy Spirit right now? 

1st Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, (mirror) darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”   

“Are you known by Jesus?”  

Better yet, do you know Him? 

My question to you today is this.

Who are you, really? “

When you look into a mirror at home, what do you see?  

Beyond the physical face, what do you see in your heart of hearts?  

Do you see a failure?  

Do you perceive a broken heart that has never been healed?  

Has any of your dreams of a better life seem farfetched or unobtainable? 

Stop for a moment and pray.  

Think back to how the Lord Jesus has rescued you from an eternity without Him.  

If you have received Him as your Savior, you will be in Heaven.   

He saved you.  

He has written your name in the Lamb’s Bood of Life.

Revelation 13:8, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, (the beast) whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb (Jesus) slain from the foundation of the world.” 

 

It is not someone else I am talking about now.

 God is talking to you personally in this story of mine.  

A real-life story of one man in a prison, who was reunited with another man.  

Both love the Lord Jesus.  

One is free on the outside.  The other is free (in Jesus) on the inside.  

Two different dwelling places on earth. 

I will never forget God’s words to me that day.  “That could have been you.” 

So, in closing, I have a thought.  

What about you?

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Restoration Prison Ministry: June 2025 Newsletter

June 5, 2025

Dear Faithful Servants,                                                                                                        

 

I waited until I returned from the Northwest to update you on God’s Wonder-working Power. 

Love-Hope-Restoration-Healing and Forgiveness

 I entitled this story of the things God did on this trip.  Jesus did the above five things in multiple souls in the Northwest.  

I will take you on a day-by-day track of how the Lord worked His Wonder-working Power. 

The first night, after my flight arrived on Wednesday, May 28th, I preached in the church that my wife and I and several other couples pioneered back in 2007. 

The theme of LifeHouse Church back then, though the name is a little different now, uses the above reference to God and His ability and power to make change in lives of people who are undone.  

It is His love, hope, restoration, healing and forgiveness that the Lord did back in 2007, that exists today. 

 

The first night in this church, beyond the souls saved and the backsliders returning home to Jesus, a miracle happened.  

A bonified, true deliverance. 

 

The Pastor of this church has a son-in-law who is married to his oldest daughter.  This young 25-year-old man’s father, throughout his entire life, would never go to church.  His mom is saved, and his father never came with his family.  

He is a good dad but not saved. 

While in his office near the church, this young man called his father, like he has for years, and asked again while I was in his office studying for my sermon. 

His dad said no. 

During the worship service later, his mom is there, along with around twenty-five other folks. 

 

During the last song, his father walked in and sat in the back of the church. 

Miracle Number One. 

The son is amazed he showed up and, it just so happens that my message this night is called “Like Father, like Son.” 

Coincidence?  

No, of course not. 

I preached the message the Lord had given me and did the altar invitation this way. 

“If you have never received Jesus into your heart, and you sense the Holy Spirit tugging at your heart, you come first.” 
Several men and women came first.  

Then I spoke again, “If you are here and you have known Jesus at one time, and you have allowed something to come in between you and the Lord, or you need to affirm, again, your Salvation, you come now.” 

Several folks came for that. 

Then I said, “And if you are a dad, any kind of dad, whether you feel you are a good dad, or a stepfather, or a dad who feels you are a bad dad, you come.  It would be my honor to pray for you, Sir.  Please do not let pride, or fear, or anything else stand in the way of me praying for you.”  

 

All the men who are dads, came.   

 

Suddenly, I looked and saw this young man I spoke of, standing at the altar with his estranged Daddy. 

(Remember, he has never been in a church in his life). 

When I said the sinner's prayer for those getting saved, the father prayed out loud.  

Not in a whisper, but out loud with tears streaming down his face.  

Not only him, but his 25-year-old son, now holding hands with his father who is being born again.  

Wow.  

Only Jesus could do this.  

Restoration, Healing, and Forgiveness.  

Three of the above words which this church was founded on.  

 

Only Jesus and His mercy can make this happen.  

“Like Father, like Son” is a reality for one young man and his father.  

Now the father can walk in the footsteps of his Christian son, and side by side they can live in peace, instead of sorrow.  

The young son and his mother, have witnessed with their own eyes, filled with tears, the power of God, healing a family, one soul at a time.  

Love and Hope was poured out on this family, finishing the words that this church stands for, all in one evening in a church in Vancouver, Washington. 

 

Truly, Lifehouse Fellowship, proved that in Jesus Christ, there is Life, in the House of God. 

Santiam Prison-Salem, Oregon

I preached a message about “Identity Theft of the Soul” which refers to how life and its trials, tend to strip away our identity in Christ at times.  

It also means for the prisoners who do not know Jesus as Savior; that their true identities are not the men in this prison chapel who came to prison, but the men who Jesus can heal and save, who will each have a new identity.  

A new creation in Christ.  A new man.  A new identity. 

 

Several men came to the service, approximately 40 men of all ages.  

Ten souls came forward to be saved, and I prayed for one man, in particular.  I had another fellow volunteer and his wife with me, who I have ministered with for over 23 years.  He and his wife were the ones who the Lord had me turn over the prison ministry to in 2007 when I left to live in Texas.   

 

Both of us laid hands on him, and I spoke these specific words to him from the Holy Ghost.  

“It is time, Young Man, for you to take off the spiritual boxing gloves you wear and stop beating the daylights out of yourself.  You have been struggling and feeling full of guilt, shame, and condemnation because of your time in prison.  Tonight is the night you allow the Holy Ghost to untie those gloves and discard them forever.” 

 

He wept and wept, and put his face on my left shoulder, until my shirt was soaked with tears of deliverance.  

Once he was done weeping, we prayed for him, and he left that chapel a new man.  

He was already a Christian, but now he has the true joy of the Lord Jesus, by letting go of his past, and seeking the Lord for his future.  

Only Jesus can orchestrate these Divine Appointments. 

 

Oregon State Correctional Institution-Salem, Oregon

 

I arrived at this prison with the same couple I was with last night.  They will be with me the entire 1,400 miles that we will travel all over Oregon and Idaho. 

This prison is already experiencing revival, before I arrived.  

I have been preaching in this prison, along with all the Oregon prisons for almost 38 years now.  

It is like coming home in a way for me. 

My message this night was called “Our Domino Effect.”  

Based on our decisions in life, I used the domino as a picture of dominoes falling on to one another, and then another falls, and so on.  

Lined up for as far as the eye can see; they all fall until they all stop.  

You know the picture.

 I said, “A good decision, causes the dominoes to fall, and the results are positive for you, and those around you.  If they fall because of a bad decision, then the opposite happens.  Chaos, heartache, and full-blown, catastrophic results.  Once they start falling and toppling onto each other, we cannot stop them, until they finish their movement. The problem is, they do not hurt us alone.  They damage those around us, even the ones we love.”

 

When I gave the altar invitation, 50 men came forward out of 80 men, and received God’s mercy, grace and salvation.  

In the middle of the prayer for Salvation, the Lord said to me in my spirit: “Hepatitis C.” 

I knew what that meant.  

I finished my prayer, and the church applauded Jesus for saving souls this evening.  

Then, I called out and said, “There are three men here with the disease of Hepatitis C.”  

A liver disease that can be fatal.   

I had this same disease from age 21 until 36, when the Lord Jesus healed me.  I was so sick that the whites of my eyes were a shade of yellow.  

A failing liver from all the drug addiction I did to my body in the 1970’s.  

God healed me then, and I obeyed His Voice. 

 

There was a ten second pause in the crowd, then the first man raised his hand.  

Then twenty seconds later, the second. 

Now, I am waiting for the third, and finally the third hand went up.

 I asked these men to come forward to receive prayer for God to do a miracle.  

He is in the miracle business. 

I prayed for all three, and as we were leaving, a man, who I have known in prison for over thirty years, a believer in Jesus since I met him, said to me, “Joe, the last man who raised his hand is a Christian hater.  He goes around this prison tearing up all brochures, tracks, or any literature about Christ, and throws them in the trash.  He has also stolen men’s Bibles belonging to Christians in here and tore them up as well.  He is a true Christ-hater, Joe.” 

This man who was a non-believer, must have wanted desperately to be healed of this death sentence he had with that disease.  

He probably thought, “I need healing more than I need Christ.”  

Yet, it is Jesus Christ Who is our Healer. 

 

He got saved at that altar, not because he needed Christ, but that he needed healing.  He got the best healing ever.  

His heart healed and transformed from a heart stone to a heart of flesh.  

To serve Jesus. 

These are just a couple of miracles God did, and there are so many to share I wanted to give you my new website info to look up and see the other stories of my past, and present miracles God has done.

https://www.anewthingsee.com/

Ferguson Unit-Father's Day

My son and his friend from college are traveling with me this coming Father’s Day for three services, and I want to provide, like I did last year, the 2,300 bars of soap as a gift to all who live there.  

Please pray and help me purchase these bars soon, as I need at least 5 days for shipping to get them from Dollar Tree in time.  

Please pray and help me with this gift. 

 

Many men will be saved on June 15, 2025, only ten days from now. 

 

Thank you, in advance, for your prayers and support in winning the lost to Christ and fulfilling the scripture in visiting those in prison.  

I could not do it without you. 

Sincerely,

Evangelist Joe Wilkins 

https://www.anewthingsee.com/

Like Father-Like Son: Friend or Foe?

Who do you and I emulate?  Who do we act like or follow after?  Are you your own, self-made man?  

As a woman, do you respect and love the word “Father,” or does it bring back haunting memories of your childhood? 

Are we self-made, or Christ-made? 

If we all need a friend, then we must try to be a friend first to someone.  

Who is the someone? 

1st Corinthians 15: 33…

“Do not be deceived:  Evil company corrupts good habits.”

 Obviously, we need to be cautious in who we hang out with and allow to influence us.  

I know from experience.

We can become like those we spend time with.  

Word of wisdom for some of us today. 

 

All you have to do is ask any high school student about their peer group, and you will find out quickly who is who, and what each one believes.  

Mostly, all will agree that they like the same music, and hang out in the same places.  

It is either a den in one of their homes, or a den of iniquity.  

Not much middle ground here when it comes to influences from so- called friends. 

 

If this scripture is true, and it is, then our company we keep can corrupt what is good in us.  

 

The Bible says, “turn away from them.”  

In other words, run for your life, as if it depended on you failing or succeeding in life’s endeavors. 

Jesus Christ needs to be your best friend. 

Corrupt is defined as: broken, illegal, selfish, and self-less.  

Degenerate, nefarious, vicious, and villainous.  

I like the word “iniquitous” because it implies absence of all signs of justice or fairness. 

By us spending time with those who are tearing us down, not building us up, we are tainted.  

Little by little the poison of corruptions bleeds into our souls.  

The grip on our “right” beliefs (Godly ones) inevitably fade over time.  This decay of one’s moral convictions cannot keep us from disaster.  

Do not be misled.  

We are not teenagers any longer.  It is time to grow up and get up off our pity parties; it’s time to stop using the blame game for an excuse for our self-inflicted, moral wounds.  

 

As has been stated in previous stories, the wounds we create are the hardest to heal.  

Why?  

 

Because we did it to ourselves.  

No one to blame there.  

It is called moral and ethical suicide by hanging.  We put the spiritual rope around our own necks.  

Can’t jump off the chair with our spiritual hands tied behind our back and avoid that death in our hearts. 

 

Proverbs 27: 17-19…

“As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.  Whoever keeps, and nurtures the fig tree, will eat its fruit; So, he who waits on his master will be honored.  As in water, face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man.”

All you and I must do is look into a real mirror at home.  

What do we really see?  

I am talking about beyond the shaved face men.  

I am referring Ladies, beyond the eye liner.

 

What does your heart scream as you investigate its ventricles of venom that exist from the rattlesnake of regrets?  

The disease of brokenness and heartache can only be rendered by Jesus as we “rend our hearts, not our garments.” (Joel 2:13).

I see it all the time in over 40 years of prison ministry.  

A young 20-year-old inmate is in one unit, while his father is doing time in another unit.

Primarily in Texas, but I see it in every place I have preached in America.  Even overseas. 

An uncle, a cousin, and a brother are in prison at the exact same time as the young man.  

Why?  

Because, in part, it is the father who gave his ungodly attributes and teachings to his son.  

“Like Father, like Son.”  

The son repeated what he learned from his Daddy.  

He knew better when he came to the age of accountability.  

But it was engrained in him early on. 

 

In prison, like in the free world, we learn to hide behind a mask of insecurity.  

Our true identity is hidden away, and our souls become different.  

The picture on our spiritual driver's license, has someone else's face there.  

We have become a pretender.  

Not wanting to, but it is in our DNA. 

We are not who we say we are.  

Our lives do not match what is on the inside of our hearts.  

 

What mask do you wear today when you try to hide all your junk in your spiritual trunk? 

Are you hiding behind the façade of being a friend who is fake?  

Are you emotionally divorced from your family for whatever reason, or reasons? 

 

We can’t build better and stronger friendships if we can’t identify with the reasons why we wear masks.  

This is also like the game of “hide and go seek.” 

“Come out, come out, from wherever you are.” 

 

Where are you spiritually, really?

 When the lights go out at night, (unless you are in jail or prison reading this, they never fully go out) what do you see in the dark? 

Idioms:

“A friend in need, is a friend indeed.”

“Two peas in a pod.”  

“Birds of a feather, flock together.”

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out!” 

 

At the end of your life, if you and I have enough true friends we can count on one hand, we are blessed.   

 

Five things to ponder. 

One, your best friend should be Jesus, if you know Him personally.  

Develop this love relationship the best you can over time.  

It will last forever, so be diligent and work out your Salvation daily. 

 

Two, your spouse if you are married.  

If you got married and you were friends back then, this friendship should grow stronger, not weaker. 

 

Three, Children will always be your children.  

However, your responsibility to raise them and train them began and was partially completed once they left the nest.

We will support, love, and guide them as best we can.  It is still up to them to grow up and mature in the Lord. 

 

Four, your adult children will always be your children, and in a healthy way, they can be called friends too.  

Only in the context of relationships with the Lord.  Like Father like Son. 

 

Five:  “NON- family” friends, is self-explanatory.

  

Control your time, (men especially) that you spend with all your buddies.  

Do not neglect the weightier matters of home, wife, children, or even the stepchildren.  

If you are single, spend time with Jesus more than you spend time playing golf, or hanging out killing time.  

Time is too precious to waste.   

 

Women, if shopping and going to the salon with your girlfriends becomes an addiction, perhaps you should wonder why you are away so much.  

Is it because you want to be away from “him” because you would rather be comforted by your peers, rather than avoid the arguments waiting for you at home?  

 

Just a thought.  If that does not apply, hit delete. 

 

Soloman points out the value of a true friend and brother.  

He says that a true friend is always loving, and a brother helps in trying times.  

True love stands in unfavorable circumstances.  (Proverbs 17: 17). 

 

Paul was Saul until his “road to Damascus experience.” 

Blindness for a few days was good for Saul.  The blindness left once he became Paul the Apostle.  He was a Christian killer before God knocked him off his horse.  

He was a persecutor of Christians, but ended up a preacher. 

He was a true friend to all who read his letters he wrote from prison.  All the churches, and to Timothy, a young pastor.  

Paul was an example of a true friend.  

A friend in need is a friend indeed. 

Paul taught this young pastor Timothy the ways of Jesus.  

He saw the big picture beyond his incarceration.  

Philippians 2:17 proves this.  

“But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith; I am glad and rejoice with you all.”

 

Paul celebrated his friends but kept his eye on His best friend.  Jesus.

 

Philippians 2: 19-24 (read it when you can) describes Paul, being like a Father Figure to Timothy saying that even though he could not come to him shortly, he was contented NOT in Timothy (understanding his absence), but in His Christ!  

PRIORITY. 

 

I will end with this. 

Acts 14: 19-21…

“Then the Jews from Antioch and Iconium, came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul-dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead.  However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city.  (hit with rocks till half dead) And the next day, he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.  And when they had preached the Gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra. “ 

(That is a bunch of walking with broken bones and bruises).

He went to Iconium and Antioch too.  

Paul was able to preach the day after being stoned, almost to death. 

 

What are our excuses for not doing God’s Will today?  

Sinus headache?  Bad news from home? 

 

Situations and trials do come.  It is what we do while in these trials that matter.  

Either get up or lie down. 

In 2 Timothy 4: 17…

“But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me and that all the Gentiles might hear.” 

It is no wonder there are not many fathers in this generation in 2025.  

Yes, there are thousands of Godly men doing God’s will.  

I am talking about the limp-wristed, time wasting, excuse making men who call themselves men.  

It is no wonder so many young men end up in prison that I preach to.  

 

I have surveyed and even asked this question many times to the congregations in prison. 

 

“How many are here who never knew your biological father?” 

 

Sixty percent, and many times more, raise their hands.  

Like Father, like Son.  

In this case, I plead not. 

Not guilty.  

 

Because what is a young boy to do?  

If he has no father, where are the pastors, and men in the church to help nurture them?

 Either nurture or ignore the little tykes.  

Teenage boys, without a Father Figure, are not tykes.   

They are vulnerable to sin, without a Godly example.  

Moms can only be Moms.  

They do fill that void, to a degree, and it is admirable for them to try.  

God did not want them to carry the burden of being both parents to their children.  

Many mothers should be honored more than just on Mother’s Day.  

Every day to them, without the man side of life, have heavy bricks upon their spiritual shoulders.  Often working two jobs to make ends meet.  

Bless them for all their efforts. 

 

I am not speaking to those who do not want a man in their lives because they have been burned up in the wake of the forest fire of divorce or abandonment.  

Man-abuse plays a big part too in being alone for them.  Single moms are to be treasured, not ignored. 

 

“Daddies, where art thou?” 

If the cycle of “Like Father, Like Son” is to be changed for the good, then it takes a revelation.  

Not a village raising your children. 

 

It takes a man to be a Daddy.  

Any male can make babies, but it takes a man of God to be with his children, whether they are a part-time dad, paying child support, or a dad with full visitation rights. 

Life has hurt many families, and stress over money and other things, has torn apart the fabric of our Nation’s cloth.  

It is not a shameful thing to be divorced.  

God is a God of restoration. 

Our nation needs its fathers.  

Our churches need to preach about this fatherless generation.  

 

“If not now, when?” 

 

This may be Gen-Z's turn to lead our nation someday.  

What about the generation that preceded them?  

Generation X was deemed that because society gave up on them.  

Jesus will not give up.  Never will the Lamb of God ignore any sheep.   

No matter what generation you are in, or was raised up through, you are valuable. 

 

Either you are a dad, a son with a dad, or a son without a dad.  

 

No matter the case, your Heavenly Father is your friend.  

He is not your foe.  

Be like Him.  Be like His Son Jesus. 

 

Do your best, and someday, if/when you have children, raise them up with Jesus at your home.  

Then you can declare, if you have a boy,

“Like father, like son.”

 In a good, healthy, and Godly way.  

Not perfect, but peaceful.  

If you have daughters, then it is “like father, like daughter.  

It all applies. 

Let us all pray for this generation.  

We need our dads.  

I needed mine.  I lost him when I was eighteen. 

I am 69 now, and Jesus Christ is the best Dad I could ever ask for.  

He even tucks me in at night through prayer.  I sleep, because He never rests.  He is available 24/7. 

 

He always will be.  

Trust that.  

Do your best serving Him.  

He will do the rest, as you rest in Him. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Up The Down Staircase

Sometimes people have the tendency to think that Salvation in Christ Jesus is like a staircase.  

One that we must climb, with the top of this staircase being where we eventually find God and Heaven. 

Maybe we think that baptism is the first step in the Salvation process.  

 

It is not.  

 

The first step is found in John 3:3.  

“Jesus answered and said unto him, (Nicodemus) ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”

 

Jesus said this to this leader of the Jews and made His first declaration of Salvation.  

 

There are no steps to Heaven, but there are steps leading to Hell. 

We will get to that soon. 

 

Some think the next step, or any step leading to Eternal Life, is when people realize that they need God to help them out of a terrible situation.  

Their “baby” faith is real, and in desperation they cry out to God Almighty.  

 

This is good, but that does not secure one’s place in eternity.  

 

Refer to John 3:3. 

 

Alot of times, we look at how we live our lives; the good that we do, or the prayers that we pray, and believe our goodness will help us take another step on the ladder to Heaven. 

 

The lives that we touch in a positive way will not help us go up the down staircase. 

 

This is not in reference to the movie from 1967 with the same name.  

1,200 students going down the staircase when the last bell rang.  

No room at all for anyone at the bottom to go up.  

This satire of schoolteachers, indignant students, and the political public school arena had its moment in this movie.  

 

I can only draw one conclusion from the going “up the down staircase.” 

 

Thousands and thousands of people who are without Christ as their Savior, are running, like those students, directly into hell and its darkness.  

 

They do not know it, but the ones at the bottom of the staircase (let’s call them Christians), are trying to get to Heaven by means of trusting in their Salvation because of the Cross of Calvary.  

Jesus died there, so they can make Heaven their eternal home. 

 

They will face trials, like getting run over by the ones going to hell but will possibly enter Heaven with a few bumps and bruises.  

 

Going up, the down staircase is really like living this difficult Christian life.  

Always working against the grain of society.  

Always fighting the good fight of faith in Christ around unbelievers and their mocking attitudes towards Jesus.  

It is part of the flight up the stairs for all who call upon the Name of Jesus. 

 

It is worth the steps we take to know Christ and Him crucified. 

 

In 1970 we moved to a town called Columbia in Maryland.  

Not far from Annapolis, about a thirty-minute drive from our townhouse, provided a completely different culture for me.  

I was from Texas, and did not fit in.  

(I do not know if I have ever “fit” in anywhere, especially after surrendering to Jesus back in 1977). 

 

My first day in school started at the bus stop.  We were bussed to a high school called Mt. Hebron.  

Fifteen minutes from home was not a long bus ride, but it seemed so for me with all the stops in between to pick up all the long-haired freaks (I called them).  

My hair was short, and their hair was down to the middle of their backs.  

I am talking about the male students.  

 

The era of Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.  

All rock and roll stars, who all three died at age 27 from drugs or alcohol poisoning. 

 

I am standing on the bus stop, waiting for the yellow bus, and listening to the “freaks” tease me about my short hair, dingo boots, and basic short sleeve shirt.  

I didn’t look like them.  

They had bell bottom jeans, tie-died shirts, and carried mini purses made from leather.  

Cool Man.  Cool. 

 

They whispered to each other, “He is a head-burner.”  

Talking about me.  

I guess my hair looked so short that they thought it had been on fire.  I don’t know.  

I was just teased all day long at school about being a Texan and a head-burner. 

 

Some of our classes involved bean-bag chairs instead of desks.  

Especially in Shakespeare class, called Theater 101. 

 

The only place on campus where we were allowed to smoke grass, weed, pot, or whatever you want to call Marijuana, was the boys’ restroom inside, and at the tennis courts, outside, during lunch. 

 

The boys’ restroom.  

Wow.  I will never forget this place.  

Standing room only.  

Ash trays hanging from the ceiling, made with yarn, Macrame-style, to hold them in place; these ash trays swung from side to side.

The pot smokers needed a place to put their ashes.  

If we left the restroom a mess, then we would have to clean and mop it up after school. 

All the above-mentioned rock stars were plastered on the tile walls of the boy's room.  

The “heads,” another name for stoners, replaced the light bulb in the restroom with a black light to highlight the black light posters of the future dead rock stars.   

This was Mt. Hebron high school.  

It was no wonder I would become a Dope addict not too long after these 8 months in Maryland. 

 

Daddy and his job got finished early, so Mayflower Moving Company moved us back to Dallas within a year of when we arrived. 

It was during our time in Maryland that Mom was diagnosed with liver cancer. It was only a matter of time, and she was gone. 

 

I was going down the drug escalator, rather than up to sobriety.  

I knew nothing about Jesus Christ and never went to church. 

 

My lasting impression of school in Maryland was not a good one.  

My brother came home from the University of California, Berkeley, when Mom was diagnosed.  

He dodged the draft to Vietnam by being in college.  

He was considered a draft dodger by default. 

 

As a complete family now, we moved back to Texas.  

The state Mom demanded to be buried in.  

I remember her saying that as we packed our belongings.  

“I do not want to die in this horrible place, Homer,” she said to Daddy. 

 

Goodbye Maryland.  Hello Texas.  

 

By age 16, I was mainlining Meth and doing armed robberies just after we buried Mom. 

 

My staircase had trip hazards in it.  

The steps were rotten with sin.  

Every step I took, was another one headed to death, hell and the grave.  

 

The problem is you can’t scare a drug addict into quitting.  It will take a catastrophe to stop me.  

And I was about to find out, the hard way. 

 

Part of this “Up the Down Staircase” issue is that we sometimes consider our individual sins and then write them off as “not too bad.”  

Well, sin is sin in the eyes of God, and we would be amiss to think otherwise.  

All sin needs to be put under the Blood of Jesus through repentance.  

 

Can’t live holy and be anything like Jesus with unrepented sin in our hearts. 

 

It took prison to bring me to my knees in repentance.  

I am glad I did repent.  

I am not glad I was in prison, but it was prison that saved my life.  

Then, Jesus saved my wretched soul. 

 

It is not about what we have done.  

It is about what we have left undone. 

 

Not loving God with our whole heart, not loving our neighbors as ourselves.  

We sometimes see our neighbors as inconveniences.  

Interruptions.  

Time wasters in our busy lives. 

 

This causes us to take a few steps forward.  

Then a few steps back in our ignorance and complacency.  

 

Human beings need human contact.  

 

Not to be ignored, because our needs are more important to us at the time of leaving the Samaritan by the side of the road.  

Half- dead.  

 

Our ignoring someone's need, when we clearly see it and can help fix it, is like leaving that poor man on the side of the road.  

 

The Good Samaritan was good, because he paid attention to someone else's pain.  

Not his own. 

This so-called staircase that we go down, instead of up, is like petting a tomcat backwards from tail to head.  

He does not like that, and if you even make it to his head, you may find yourself scratched and bitten.  

 

Hope he had his rabies shot. 

It is not about the direction you travel.  

It is about the destination you arrive at. 

Heaven.  Hell.  There is no in-between.  

 

It is a choice to fight the crowd and try and go up, when everyone around us is headed down.  

It is contrary to physics. 

 

2nd Corinthians 5: 21, Paul writes,

“For our sake he made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

God took all our junk, and all our evil, and gave it all to Jesus.  

And at the same time, God took all of Jesus’ righteousness and gave it to us.  

 

“What an exchange.” 

 

In essence, we are a sinner and a saint at the same time.  

 

We will always sin and fall short.  

But as we repent and give our sins, (shortcomings) to the Lord Jesus, He make us whiter than snow.  

He took our filthy rags of sin.  

He covered the filth with His precious Blood.  

It is the Atonement.  

Reconciliation and restoration.  

Being in right standing with the Father, through His only Begotten Son, Jesus. 

 

But the thing is, for God, this staircase is a “down” staircase.  

We don’t go up, God comes down.  

It’s not possible to go up the down staircase.  

The Gospel, the Good News of God in Christ, isn’t that Jesus finally gives us a way to get up that staircase.  

It is that God in Jesus came down for us.

IMMANUEL.  

God with us.  

Not us with God. 

 

You and I no longer must worry about the staircase, about trying to scratch and claw our way up.  

You no longer have to be concerned whether you’ve done enough, about the number of good God points you think you have earned somehow.  

 

In Jesus, we are not caught in the game of point-keeping or stair-stepping. 

 

So, next time you see a staircase, remember this sermon.  

Go ahead and try and go up a down staircase.  

You may get mauled, or you may find some lost student in high school, who has no idea where he or she is going.  

 

I sure didn’t when I was in Maryland.  

 

Truth is, as far as eternity, “We are either going up, or we are going down.” 

 

Make sure, as you are on the staircase alone, that you take each step carefully.  

It is an eternal, forever and ever, step.  

 

Choose wisely.  

Step by step.

With Jesus, you will never trip and fall backwards. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Our Domino Effect

                                                          

We have all said, “If I had it to do all over again, I would not have done that.”

 Or…

“If I could go back in time, I would fix that.”

 

Well, we can’t.

 

Never will we be able to turn back the hands of time, or stop the pendulum swinging.  

Life.  

Time.  

Reality.  

 

So, what can we do?

 

We have a life-or-death decision to make.  

We have all been created with the supreme privilege of a free will choice.  

 

And choices we make are eternal.  

No human being has made the correct choices in life 100% perfect.  

Can’t happen as long as we are human.

There is a thought that I call the “domino” effect.  It goes like this:  

A decision we make, big or small, starts the dominoes in life to fall.  

We can’t stop them.  

A good choice produces good results.  

A bad choice, bad results.  

Sometimes catastrophic results.  

 

We really do not know our choices are going to cause chaos until it is too late. 

Can’t take back the words we say that are harsh. 

Can’t undo a letter we just mailed unless we want to hijack the postman before he delivers that horrible letter we just sent to a loved one.

The fact is that the domino falls and does what it does. 

Not just to us. 

But to the ones around us we love.  Even if we are alone, we suffer the consequences of our choices. 

Given to us from God, our free will choices allow us to make mistakes and move on. 

However, there are those we love, or say we love, who are in the crosshairs of our rifling words and actions.  They are innocent bystanders from far off, or right next to our hearts.

When we seek freedom from ungodly actions or decisions, only Jesus can fix our mistakes. 

The consequences remain, but we learn a valuable lesson. 

 

“I won’t do that stupid thing again.”

 

Well, with His help, we will not repeat dumb, selfish decisions. 

Our human nature and our flesh desires seem to outweigh and overrule our thought processes at times. 

Humans that we are.

Frail, fragile, finite human beings, trying to do God’s will. 

We will, undoubtedly, make errors, sins, and distasteful decisions, all in the name of Jesus in error. 

Thinking that it is good or that it is His will, we launch out into that investment, marriage, or job offer which turned out to be an angel of darkness rather than light.

 

I can’t see clearly what to do when I fail. 

Except pick myself up, dust myself off, and grab my bootstraps and forge ahead, by faith.

 

This freedom to choose brings with it the burden of the consequences of our choices.

 

Moses was commanded by God saying,

“Now listen.  Today I am giving you a choice between prosperity and disaster, between life and death.  I have commanded you today to love the Lord your God and to keep His commands, laws and regulations.  Walk in His ways.  If you do this you will live and prosper. If your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, then I warn you now that you will be destroyed.  Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses.  I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make.  Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live!”

Deuteronomy 30:15-18

 

Regrets lead to guilt. 

Guilt leads to remorse. 

Remorse leads to despair. 

Despair leads us into a spiraling out of control into depression. 

 

This depression, or commonly known now as Bipolar, is real, yet there is a way out. 

 

If a thought does reap an act, and an act reaps a habit, and a habit done long enough reaps a lifestyle, how do we stop this insanity?

 

Make better choices. 

How? 

Pray about every decision. 

 

This covers even little things, like which store to go to in my small town. 

I could go to the supermarket and wait in line longer. 

I could go to the smaller one, closer to home and wait even longer in the packed little store.

 

One day, I went to the smaller one out of convenience. 

Normally, I go to the bigger one, because it has better choices and cheaper prices.

 

Today, I felt I need to go, not because I was hearing a voice behind me saying, “Go this way.”  I just try to walk by faith and have my spiritual ears in tune to what God might do today. 

I do this every day, not even knowing I am. 

This is called a spiritual habit. 

Like reading the Bible every day. 

Praying. 

Worshipping etc. 

 

In the store, I allowed an elderly woman who was 80 plus in years, to go ahead of me in line.  She was in a motorized shopping cart. 

I saw her items as she put them on the belt. 

A half- case of Coca Cola.  A few toiletries. 

Some small food items, and a big case of Adult Diapers. 

 

My heart sank.

 

I used to foster care for the elderly, and my heart has always been big and open to them.

 

I made eye contact with the clerk and motioned with my hands and lips “I want to pay for her stuff.”  He acknowledged my gestures and rang up her items.

She had already zoomed to the debit card machine, almost running over my foot in the process.

Before she could get her card out of her purse I interrupted her.

 

“Ma’am, I would like to bless you today and pay for your stuff.” 

She responded, “Oh, that is not necessary, it's ok, Sir.” 

I replied again, “Well, Jesus has been good to me, and I know He has been good to you so please let me, okay?”

She hollered, “Well He has not done anything for me lately.” 

 

Gruff response and quite loud, too.

 

“Well Ma’am, Jesus is trying to right now if you will let Him.” 

 

Gruff, with love, back at ya.

 

I paid for her things, and she drove away.

Adult diapers are not cheap, and I wondered if they were for her or her husband.  Maybe she is a widow without much means. 

Her outward words of disgust or embarrassment were actually a bunch of words from a broken heart. 

I knew this by the Spirit of God.

The clerk laughed under his breath, but he, too, saw the generosity. 

 

The Name of Jesus was spoken by me twice, and it is the Name above every Name. 

 

It is the Name above poverty. 

The Name above incontinence

The Name above frustration. 

 

Life and death in the power of the tongue and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

 

She was in despair.  She had a need. 

I am glad, by faith I was at this store that day. 

Maybe the savings she saved from that purchase allowed her to buy her medication. 

Or her husband’s medication. 

I will never know. 

Maybe it allowed her to buy more groceries or pay her utility bill. 

 

Dominoes.

More of them fell that day and who knows where they ended. 

All I know is this. 

Good decisions produce good things.  Bad ones.  Well, you know.

 

We reap what we sow, and I am determined, like you, to sow to the Spirit and bless those who curse me. 

I will forever love my enemies. 

I will do, like you are trying to do, to be more like our Master Savior Jesus. 

We are the hands, feet, voice, compassion, and love of Christ our Lord.

Pray before you go to the store. 

Pray before you go to work. 

 

How about just praying?

 

We have the choice to be free. 

We are free to choose. 

The free will choice given to us from a Cross.

 

That Cross was not free. 

His Blood was not free. 

 

His pain was real. 

He did all this, so we can just try and try again to make good choices. 

If we fail, get up. 

Find the dust mop and dust yourself off. 

Try again. 

 

You will win. 

You will miss 100% of the shots you never take. 

 

Take a shot today. 

 

What happens if it works? 

 

I can hear the dominoes falling.                                                          

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

 

Less is More

The process of purifying silver requires many steps, but it must be heated to 1,760 degrees. 

Removing the impurities and all the dross is a process, but the less you do, the better it becomes.  

The purifying process is not as complicated as some may believe.  

This is the case where less is more comes into play. 

First you heat it up (Calcining) to the proper degree.  

Then you (Roast) it, which changes the composition of the silver, turning it from its sulfide property, to its native one. 

 

Sounds more than less, but bear with this analogy. 

 

Fusion melting is next. Which you melt the silver with lead to “alloy” it.  

Then the Cupellation process separating the silver from all the base metals. 

Finally, the “Miller process” which is primarily for Gold, not silver. 

 

Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let us look at the spiritual side of all this purification. 

 

When we purchase a product made of silver, we want it to be as pure and polished as possible.   We demand quality in the silver we purchase but seldom apply the same standard to a far more important part of our lives.  

 Our hearts. 

 This “feel-good” society we live in, demands we feel good all the time to succeed.  In the church sometimes, the preacher or pastor, tries to produce truth regarding God’s Word.  

 Some of the feel-good messages never point to the problem.  

 Sin. 

They try to keep everything positive in the church.  

I do not see this in Scripture. 

2nd Timothy 4: 2-5 declares…

“Preach the Word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, (the congregation members and visitors) rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, (lusts) because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.  But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

 

Paul is “charging” the church. 

 

I know this may seem negative to you, but if you are in a church, or part of a church, or “the” church, then please read on.  

 

Being the church is far greater than attending. 

 

Go out into the world and preach the Gospel and make disciples of men. 

Your attendance in the church building is important from the standpoint of learning, growing, and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. 

 

At some point, once we are fed, and then fed up with just listening and not doing, we will launch ourselves out into this dross- filled world and do something with our Christianity.  

 

Look for places where we can purify others as we purify our own hearts. 

 

As smelting removes the impurities in silver, the correction and rebuke, with patience and love, removes the impurities in our hearts. 

 “I will turn My hand against you, and thoroughly purge away your dross, and take away all your alloy.  I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning.  Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.”

Isaiah 1: 25

From the fire of purging to faith that moves mountains.  

Purified, cleansed, and made to shine in the face of death and destruction.

“God is the Light, and in Him is no darkness.”

1st John 1: 5

God is taking away from us, so we can be more.  

Less dross, more God.  

Less is more. 

 

A look into the mirror of life. 

As a former drug- addicted young man, I was full of dross, and there was no light or shining “anything” in my heart and mind. 

It took prison to hone me, shape me, and kill off my will.  

 

It also took a willingness on my part to change, but I was not willing until I was broken.

 

I was broken mentally, physically, and emotionally, while living in constant fear in a maximum-security prison.  Death and destruction were all around me, and I did not succumb to the games these violent men around me did. 

I hated myself, and them, for the insanity and torture they perpetrated on the weak fish in the pond. 

It took absolute heating up of my soul and will to boil away my sin. 

 

God did it.  

The pain of prison prepared me to be heated up past my own 1,760 degrees.  

I had to come to the silversmith’s heat-treating process to have any purity in me at all.  

Boiling hurts.  

It is more than hot, when you realize that my pain then, some 47 years ago now, would eventually bring gain to some soul in a prison that I get the privilege to preach to. 

It is like the potter's wheel in Jeremiah.  

The hand of God had to squeeze out my sin from me because I held on to it in my own death grip of rebellion and free will.  

Not free after I was purged by the Most High. 

 

It is like a “look into a mirror.” 

 

A little girl at age 8, looks at herself and sees herself as Cinderella sleeping beauty.  

By age 15, she sees Cinderella sleeping.  

Sleeping in her doubts as a want-to-be cheerleader.  

She cries out to her mom, “I can’t go to school to the try-outs because i am fat and have pimples today.  I feel too ugly, Mom.” 

 

At age 20, looks at herself and sees “too fat or too thin, too short or too tall.”  

Her hair is either too short, or too long, or too curly or too straight.  But she goes on into the world anyway. 

 

Now, at age 40, she sees that she is getting older now and reminds herself that of all the people who can’t go out into the world at all.  It is because of their own personal shame and guilt that makes them feel ugly in their mirror at home. 

 

By age 50, she has forgotten the Cinderella years and says, “What the heck, I will go anywhere I want to.  I do not care what people think of me.  I look the way I look, and I feel the way I feel, and I will be happy no matter what the world throws at me.”

 

By age 70, she looks into the same mirror she kept all these years, and sees wisdom, laughter, and ability.  She sees her worth in herself, and for the church, and mostly her self-esteem is in the Lord Jesus Christ.  

 

Can’t lose there. 

 

By age 80, she stops looking into the mirror at all.  She puts on a red hat and goes out to shop.

“Who cares?” 

When God turns up the heat in our lives, it is not to hurt us, but to help us.  Help us be more like Him.  The hands, feet and voice of Jesus.  No more, no less.  

 

Better put is, LESS is MORE. 

 

Go on, Little Girl, and dream of the silver slipper you need.  

Run on, Little Joey, and reach the National Football League with your abilities to run fast.  

Pump that iron and do those 100 sit-ups daily, Mr. Convict, in prison.  

Your outward man will get stronger, and you will look more intimidating to the other psychos around you. 

 

It would be better to build up your faith in Jesus and cut loose the iron pile.  

 

Fixing the body does nothing for the spirit.  

 

Read His Word.  

Take correction when needed.  

Dish it out too in love.  

Do not forget the love factor.  

Be the light amid a dark world.  

The Light of Christ. 

 

If less is more, then I would rather decrease in all areas of my life and allow the Holy Spirit to increase in me and through me.  

This is truly, “Less is More.”   

Let us all begin by emptying our spiritual vessels.  That is a lot less arduous than the 1,760 degrees of purging.  

Both will come in time.  Learn to embrace them both. 

 

Silver. 

Dorothy had ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz.   Silver slippers were going to be used, but with the new “technicolor” advances in film, they changed them to Ruby, to stand out on movie theaters’ silver screens, as well as our new color televisions sets at home. 

All Dorothy wanted was to go home.  

There is no place like home.  There is no place like home. 

 

There is more at home with Jesus, than in the world.  

 

The world offers less than His More. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Living to Prove Something

Every human being is living proof.  

Yes proof.  

We are proving out, not what we say, but how we live.  Many people say one thing about who they are, and what they believe. 

Then they live another way, usually, the polar opposite of what they confess and profess, especially in a church environment.  

Like we have something to prove.  

 

Yes, you do have something to prove.  

You are currently proving out your life by the way you live. 

 

You say you are married, but you live in adultery.  

You say that you are an honest person, yet you cheat on your taxes or skim off the top at work. 

We say that we are happy and good people, yet our orphan spirit hurts and is in pain.  

It is like becoming comfortable saying,

“I’m good and all is well with my life, yet I die every day in my soul through depression and suicidal thoughts.” 

 

We say one thing and live another.   

 

Paul said in Romans 12:1-2,

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present (prove) your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, and do not be conformed (persuaded, or drawn) to this world, but be transformed (changed) by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

 

You and I are going to prove out what we live, no matter what we say or confess. 

 

It is called fruit bearing.  Reaping what we plant.  

Can’t stop God’s eternal law of sowing and reaping.  

If you plant corn, expect corn.  You do not plant potatoes, expecting something else.  

It has to do with the seed and the soil. 

 

What is your seed that has sprouted into a full-blown addiction?  

Was it abuse that was planted in you and through you by someone who said they loved you? 

Are you an alcoholic who is abusive or mean?  

You say, “I can quit anytime I want to.” 

So, by not quitting, you are proving that you like to hit your family in their faces?” 

 

We are going to prove out, and prove who we really are, no matter what we say, and no matter what others expect from us. 

 

I proved I was an addict and a violent person at age 15-20.  

I proved I could not stop.  

I proved that I could fight the law, and the law wins every time. 

I proved that my words meant nothing.  

I was a liar and a thief, and I reaped a harvest of pain, prison time, and insanity.  

Why?

Because I was living proof of being a liar.  No person around me, back then, could trust me regarding what I said or promised to do. 

Thieves steal.  I stole.  

Addicts shoot Dope.  I shot Dope.  

Insane people direct traffic late at night in Austin, Texas, high on Meth, and several other drugs, without a badge and a gun. 

 

I was proving that my sin was real, and I could not stop on my own. 

 

So, to every so-called Christian, I ask this.  

 

If you have been transformed by the renewing of your mind, then why are you still depressed?  

Who are you going to blame that one on?

 

  The devil has nothing to do with your Christianity and the choices you make.  

If the devil does, then you are not truly saved.  

 

We are living to prove something. 

 

If you are a Christian, then why can’t you control your anger?  

Are you comfortable raising your voice and screaming at your family?  

Do you continue in this manner, asking for forgiveness from your spouse and children after the big blow up? 

Then, after all the tears of so-called repentance on your part, the next day, or next week, you blow up, like a raging volcano?  

 

I don’t think Paul was incorrect in his statement to the church.  

“You must present or prove your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

It is not acceptable to be a Christian and be filled with rage. 

It is not acceptable and your reasonable service to lack self-control with your mouth.  

Focusing on your past instead of believing for your future.  

 

Yes, if you and I are a Christian, we are not perfect.  

Never will be, but we can’t prove who we really are unless we prove to ourselves first that we are transformed.  

 

If we say we love Jesus Christ and then do all the things that are contrary to His Word, then we are liars, and the Truth is not in us. 

 

Christians should not be depressed, but some are.  

Christians should not fight, but we do.  

Christians should be faithful in all things, but some flounder and are half-baked in our dedications to Christ and our families.  

This is the worst form of being a hypocrite. 

 

Saying one thing and doing another.  

 

This grieves the Holy Spirit, and the worst thing we can do is get comfortable in our rebellion.  

Like it does not matter.

Just move on, go to church, and sing with the worship team.  

Parrot the words of the hymn or song.  

Never intending to live out what we profess. 

 

We will prove out and live out what we really are.   

 

I tell the men in prison when I preach…

“IF you are going to be a convict, then be the best manipulator you can be.  If you are going to run things on your cell block, then get all you can and prove you are the best.  If you are going to engage in molesting a weaker inmate, then realize that your act in abusing him is not just hurting him.  In the very act, you have become a homosexual by default.” 

 

They do not like this truth, but it is the truth. 

 

“So, be the best at your craft.  Put as much ink on your flesh as you can.  Just make sure you understand that those tattoos of teardrops near your cheek bone, will sag eventually as you get older, and look like acne instead of a symbol of how many men you have killed.” 

 

 

We are all living to prove something. 

There are so many places in scripture instructing the church to behave a Godly way; I do not have room to put them here.  

 

Paul made it clear.  

Be transformed. 

 

If you were a maniac before you met Jesus, and then met Jesus and have been born again, you are no longer a maniac. 

Prove it by being nice, rather than nasty. 

 

If you were an addict before Christ, stop putting a dirty needle in your veins. 

If you were addicted to prescription drugs, stop seeing the doctor and giving excuses for why you continue to need the drugs. 

 

Otherwise, the Jesus, you say you met, has no power to overcome IN you His deliverance and His mercy and His power to transform you.  

 

In essence, you are saying, “He is just not enough for me.” 

 

It is a sad situation for anyone to proclaim Christ as Savior and Lord, and not be recognized by their family, peers, co-workers, and even strangers; and not have any of them say…

 “Yes, they have changed.  They no longer get drunk.  They stopped stealing and cheating.  I have seen the PROOF of their transformed lives.” 

 

They are living to prove something.  

They once were THIS, and now they are THAT. 

 

Evidence of change.  

Proof of transformation and healing.  

 

The fact we say we are Christ followers is not enough.  

We need His power to stop saying words that kill our dreams.  

We need His power to defeat fears. 

We need His Presence in our walk daily, to overcome the temptations and lust of this world.  

If our Christianity is only based on going to church on Sundays, then going on Wednesday does not transform you.  It only proves you are diligent to play your role around people who look up to you perhaps. 

 

Who are we kidding, and who are we pleasing every day?  

Our neighbor?  Our spouse?  Our employer?  

No, we will be Christlike to them, if we put our effort in pleasing the God of our Salvation FIRST and foremost and quit playing the Christian Russian Roulette game. 

 

Put in our tithe this week and spin the wheel of fortune.  

Say a little prayer here and there and continue to be an abuser of people. 

 

Wouldn’t it be nice in church if we just fell on our knees at an altar?

 

Do this regularly and on any given Sunday, or any day we open the doors to the public, and just weep before a Holy God? 

This happens in some places.  

What would happen if the mainstream church, or the denominational ones, or even the home groups, would put aside their Bible studies, and testimonies and food afterwards, and just pray? 

 

What would happen if we got out of our comfort zones, and got uncomfortable in our sacrifice?  

Or in our service to the Lord?  

 

Pray without ceasing means, do not stop until the Lord releases you to stop.  

Not the fact your crockpot with the roast that is overdone, takes priority over His presence.  

Who decided church had to end at a certain time anyway?  

 

Go figure.  

I can imagine Jesus saying…

 “I wanted to heal them, and I wanted to fall on all of them and manifest my Presence in their lives, but they were in too big a hurry to go home, or shopping, or eat at Luby’s Cafeteria before the rush of church people show up and eat all the good stuff.  They say I am their Lord, but they won’t let me be Lord to them.” 

There is nothing wrong or misplaced in serving on a Sunday morning.  

Do not misinterpret what this is about.  

There is fruit that remains in the children's ministry you are a part of.  

There is Salvation in our stories of redemption.  

There is hope for the downtrodden when we preach or pray and lay hands on them on Sunday, or Wednesday, or whenever. 

 

I am simply declaring a change in routine.  

 

Every person who is a Christian, and means it, is valuable to the Kingdom of God, in any service we do in the church.  

 

Remain faithful and keep doing what you do, and the Lord will reward you. 

 

It is about living, to prove something. 

Look at your life as a Christian and ask yourself several questions.  

Am I happy?  

Am I free from my past?  

Am I filled with His Spirit, and the joy of the Lord is my strength?  

Am I faithful to act like, and be like a Christ follower? 

 

If the answer is yes, then you should be able to see the proof of your living. 

 

If you bounce back and forth in sadness, then joy, then you are a doubting man, being tossed to and fro, like a wave of the sea.  (James 1: 6-7).  

That man, or woman, or child is a doubting person, and God’s Word declares that they will not receive anything from Him because they are double-minded, and unstable in all their ways. 

 

This is not the fullness of His Salvation from the Cross.  

If you are like this, then you can be set free.  

 

If you are a mean Christian, then God can set you free from the anger that was deep rooted in your childhood. 

You do not need a dose of medication.  

You should not just go to church to feel good.  

You do not need a dose of temporary peace. 

 

A full dose, and immersion in His Presence, will kill off complacency.  

It will destroy the work of the devil.  

It will replace your lack of purpose with destiny. 

 

If you and I are going to live to prove something, then let us examine our hearts, and let the Holy Ghost clean out the doubts, fears, anxieties and frustrations of this life.  

 

If you are not saved, then you can be by simply accepting Christ, repenting of your sins, and believing in Him and His finished work on The Cross.  

 

“All who call upon the Name of Jesus will be saved.”

 

You're living to prove something.  

 Live to prove you are a real Christian.  

 

Otherwise, you are dying to disprove His existence.  

You will only live, if you surrender to Jesus Christ.  

There are no other options.  

You and I have proved what we are.  

 

Now, we must prove what we are not. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Three Strikes, You’re Out

The American way.  Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.  

This memorable phrase was used in a Chevrolet commercial to evoke feelings of Americana.  It was launched on television in 1974, featuring a jingle with scenes that showcased these American staples. 

I am not a baseball fan, but it is apparent that when a batter strikes out, he is through, until his rotation is back up to bat.  Only if there are enough “innings” left in the game. 

America was founded on morals, ethics, and Christianity.  This is not a story about our history or influences “from sea to shining seas.”  It is about decay.  It is about disorder, and the answer to stop all the chaos we feel in 2025 in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 

 

I direct your attention to the classic Jonah story in the Bible. Jonah was a prophet who disobeyed God’s call to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh.  

Instead of doing what God commanded him to do, he ran. 

 

Notice that I said repentance.  

Preach repentance.  

Question: why is it that so many sermons on Sunday morning and in many churches, hardly ever talk about sin and repentance? 

 

Answer.  Because some, not all, preach a squishy Gospel.  

A feel-good Gospel.  

No confrontation about sin.  

No opportunity to get things right with God.  

Just a simple message about this or that.   

 

Yes, we should, as preachers and teachers of God’s Word, explain and direct the congregation to learn and grow in Him.  

This is assuming that everyone in the crowd is born again.  

 

Not the case where I primarily preach.  

I preach in maximum-security prisons. 

 

Equipping the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12) is valued by every church pastor.

He or she cannot do it all by themselves.  Every church needs volunteers.  

No leadership can lead unless someone follows. 

 

There is an old saying,

“So, you call yourself a leader?  Look behind you.  If no one is following you, you aren’t!” 

 

 Let us see Jonah for what really happened.  Most Christians know this story, so I will capsulate it. 

Jonah was told by God to go and preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. 

He rebelled and went instead to Tarshish.  

Once the storm came upon the ship, Jonah was thrown overboard because the men on the ship realized the storm was because of Johah and his disobedience.  

 

Jonah deserved what was coming. 

 

A great fish swallowed him.  He did not fall into the blow hole or in the great fish’s lungs.  

He did not get chewed up because the fish was hungry.   

 

He was swallowed because God had a plan of repentance for the people of Ninevah.  

 

It just so happened that Jonah had to repent first, before he could preach repentance. 

 

His first “strike” was not a swing and a miss.  It was almost drowning in the sea, a real sea.  

Not a sea of remembrance in his disobedient mind. 

Jonah got what was coming to him.  Not death.  

But a second chance to swing the bat and hit a homerun. 

 

The second strike was the living in the belly of a fish.  

The fish was digesting its food.  Stomach acid?  I do not know the inner works of a great fish.  

I just eat Halibut fish and chips from Newport Bay in Portland, Oregon when I visit there.  

“Hold the tartar sauce, please?” 

 

“For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me.  Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’”

Jonah 2: 3-6

Jonah was coming to an end of himself and his disobedience. 

“The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; the deep closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head.  I went down to the moorings of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever; yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God.”

 

Notice, that Jonah was not “out” of the baseball game yet.  

He had two strikes against him with the ball headed his way.  

 

Would he strike out?

 

Jonah declared, “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.”  verse 7. 

 

Had he not repented, he would have been digested, and would have left the great fish, like all the rest of the great fish’s food.  

Not through the blow hole.  

There were three other options.  

 

Vomit. 

 

God had the fish vomit Jonah up onto a beach. 

Jonah had a second chance to do what God told him to do.  And he did, and Nineveh was saved.  

Some scholars say over 120,000 inhabitants believed God and repented when Jonah preached to them.  

God spared them from judgment because of their repentance. 

 

This notion of the “earth with its bars” closed behind me forever, that Jonah said in verse 6, brings up a personal point with me. 

 

My bars were real.  

Maximum-security prison has bars, and I was behind many of them in 1976.  

This Texas prison was horrible, and there were times I would have rather been digested and destroyed by the inhabitants of this prison.  

But God had a better plan for me to be spit up on to a beach of freedom.  Not just freedom from my incarceration. 

Freedom in Christ.  

Free to take my one and only chance of redemption, and I ran with it.  

 

The stench of my sin was like Jonah and the digestive juices inside this great fish which surrounded Jonah.  

It stunk.

I had stunk in my sin.  

I was putrid. 

 

Jonah got a second chance to do right by God.  

 

I wonder how many chances people will get to repent, and receive Christ?

 

One, Two, or “Three strikes you're OUT.” 

 

I preached a similar message like this in Costa Rica in 2008. I was in a horrible, run- down prison near San Jose. 

The guard towers were made of wood and were leaning to one side.  

The perimeter guards, on the outside of the fence, rode a bicycle with a machine gun and bullets draped across their chests.  

They rode around the prison, hoping to see someone, anyone, try and escape. 

My interpreter did a great job taking my words in English, and “exactly” sending them into the crowd of prisoners in their language. 

When I was done, several men came forward and received Christ.  The crowd was around 70 men, and over fifty percent knelt at the altar and received Jesus as their Savior. 

I prayed for anyone, and everyone, who wanted prayer.  

The power of God was very thick and evident in this small chapel inside this prison.  My interpreter continued with his inflections and body language, mimicking me and my every word and hand movements.  

He was an excellent interpreter and became me, to a degree. 

 

Once I had prayed for all the men at the altar, I gently reached over and touched my interpreter on his forehead.  

He collapsed and fell on the wooden floor.  The Power of God hit him, and he stayed on the floor for over thirty minutes. 

Had this happened in a prison in America, the officers would think someone put a knife in him and would have locked down the prison.  

 

They do not understand the power of God. 

 

These Costa Rican guards noticed, but did nothing. 

When it was time to leave, the officers brought in a stretcher, thinking he was sick.  They wanted us out of there and instructed us to leave hurriedly. 

The other volunteers with me helped carry him out to the van. 

 

An hour passed, and he came out of his Anointed moment. 

 

He spoke to us about what had happened to him.  

He stated,

 

“I was caught up between Heaven and Earth.  I saw a dimension in the Spirit of the Lord I have never seen.  I was in a whirlwind and was moving fast, as the Lord showed me true, Godly repentance.  I was gone in the Spirit for what seemed like a few seconds to me.” 

 

He was out cold for over an hour and a half. 

 

Jose Louise, the interpreter, stated that he felt the sorrow of the Lord over lost souls.  

He felt Hell and the true meaning of being choked out with seaweed, like Jonah almost was. 

He told me privately,

“Joe, I got saved, all over again.

It is hard to imagine this, but I thought I was born again, but when you touched me with your finger on my forehead, I left my body.  My spirit was in a different place, sensing Heaven and Hell all at once.  I now know what it means to repent.  Truly repent.” 

 

I share this to let you know what Paul said…

“It is a Godly sorrow that leads to repentance, that leads to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

2nd Corinthians 7:10.

 

Jonah had his second chance.  He did not strike out. 

 

If you are playing a game of baseball, I hope you win.  

If you are playing games with God, you will lose.  

Do not take His grace for granted.  

You may feel you have already struck out with God.  

You haven’t.  

 

If you are breathing air, there is hope.  

 

You are not in a sea of forgetfulness.  

 

God knows all that is going on with you and me. 

 

If you strike out in baseball, there is always another opportunity to step up to the plate and swing. 

Take the opportunity to stay in the game.  

There will come a day when the lights of the ballpark go out forever.  

 

Keep swinging.

  

God owns the bat.  He owns the ball.  He owns the game.  

If Jesus is on the Throne of your heart, you will never find a day in this game of life where you will hear, “YOUR OUT.”   

 

You are not out, you are up.

Step up to The Cross.  

It is at the foot of The Cross, where you will “hit” it out of the park. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

The Construction of Sorrow: No Pain, No Gain

                                                           

I have been working on this ranch for three years now, and lately, I have been digging holes with a pickaxe and shovel.  Setting posts in concrete is fun, even though at 69 years young, it is not as fun as when I was in my twenties. 

With a string line and level to keep things straight and true, the process of this construction began about a month ago.  

Considering the terrain, and the ground not being level, it has been a challenge to construct this chicken coop and free-range for the 12 chickens I have raised since they were baby chicks.  

 “Tweet, tweet.” 

Building anything is not my trade.  

I am a baker, and the hot Texas sun is like an oven to a degree.  

My body is baked, not muffins. 

I say this to make a simple point.  

Sorrow is built from scratch, like this chicken project.  

 

We do not get the luxury of deciding when sorrow will hit us.  Or the intensity of the pain we feel.  

The way it is built, in some ways, is healthy for us. 

We all must deal with sorrow during our lifetime, and it comes in various ways and to different degrees.  

Some instances are easy to deal with where others are grieving and hurtful to the core of our being. 

 

The sudden impact of the loss of a loved one is very challenging and can affect the way we think and react when we are in our storm of sorrow. 

Our responses to these kinds of sorrows vary.  They differ depending on our personality, but many of us just stuff the feelings deep down somewhere in the faraway places of our souls.  

We can ignore it for a season, but it always surfaces and shows its ugly head, usually at the wrong time in our life. 

 

The lifestyle we are in will magnify the issue if we are in an addiction, or fresh out of a divorce or breakup.  

Sorrow is blown out of proportion as we allow it all to be multiplied in our hearts and minds. 

 

2 Corinthians 7: 4-11, declares that “Great is my boldness of speech (Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church) toward you, great is my boasting on your behalf.  I am filled with comfort.  I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation.  For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were troubled on every side.  Outside were conflicts, inside were fears.  Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you, when he told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more.” 

Paul went on to declare that even if he had made them sorry with his letter, “I do not regret it.” 

 

 Because he knew that their sorrow would lead to repentance.  

 

Paul is highlighting the fruits of their Godly sorrow, including a renewed sense of diligence, clear-headedness, indignation at sin, fear of repeating it, and a desire for reconciliation with God.  

Only worldly sorrow leads to death, but a Godly sorrow leads to repentance, and salvation. 

 

What does this have to do with the building blocks of constructing sorrow? 

 

We may try and intellectualize and drown our sorrow when it hits.  This defense mechanism is used by reasoning and blocking confrontations.  The unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress involve removing oneself emotionally and avoiding the reality of a serious problem. 

 

Good sorrow, which is dealt with in God, and His Mercy, will become the foundation of your life, for handling the storms of sorrow which will come. 

 

It is up to us to build upon this “sorrow-concrete” foundation, and not let the rest of the building start, until the concrete has cured.  

Otherwise, it will crack, and the house will come tumbling down.  

 

“Rock or sand, where do you build your life?” 

 

Not all sorrow is bad for us.  

Jeremiah said, “Though God brings grief, He also shows compassion according to the greatness of His unfailing love.  (Multitude of mercies). Lamentations 3;32.  

 

When you are bummed out, go to Lamentations, and you will find if you read through it all, your problems are not as bad. 

First Book of Lamentations is entitled “Jerusalem in Affliction.”  

Second Book is, “God’s Anger with Jerusalem.”   

Third, Fourth and Fifth is, “The Prophet’s Anguish and Hope, the Degradation of Zion,” and finally, “A Prayer for Restoration.” 

 

“Our sorrows are bad, but are they as bad as what happened to Israel?” 

 

The Corinthian Church had grief and sorrow, and it was good because it came from honest self-evaluation, not morbid self-condemnation.  

We can learn to accept our sorrow as part of freedom in Christ, praying that Romans 8: 28, will happen.  

Hoping ALL things, including our sorrows, will work together for the good of our lives.  

They will, if we love God.  

They won’t, if we leave the Lord Jesus Christ out of our pain. 

 

I remember when I was 15 years old.  I was just told by my father that my mama was dying of liver cancer.  I cried, and cried, until I could not cry any longer.  

The tears stopped, then a new anger raged in me.

 

I did not know why I was so mad back then, but I was angry.  

This escalated during the 9 months of her demise.  The cancer, from the day she was diagnosed, until she died, took nine, long, painful months.  She suffered greatly.  

I suffered more, in my mind and heart, because I thought that she gets to die, while I live on in my addiction. 

 

So selfish was this.  I did not know or realize that my sorrows were fueled by bad behavior and shooting drugs into my veins.  I opened the door to this insanity and demonic influence.

 

My construction of sorrow was flawed from the beginning.  

The foundation was made of quicksand, not God’s conciliatory concrete.  

 

A solid foundation to build upon the sorrow I was facing and endured.  

My older siblings survived and moved on with their grief.  

I was in sinking sin, drowning in my depression and anger. 

 

“Where was the Apostle Paul and his kind words he spoke to the Corinthian church?” 

 

I could have cared less about God and the Bible.  

I thought the Bible was something to leave closed on the coffee table.  

 

As far as God, I believed, in my sick and twisted mind, that it was His fault my mom died.  

At least I had something to blame.  

In my heart, it was not the cancer that killed her.  It was her abusive behavior towards me and my siblings that killed her.  

She reaped what she sowed.  

I did not know about this eternal law at 15.  I just knew that if I did enough of the Meth, I could erase my pain for 38 hours at a time.  

That worked for a while, until time caught up with me.  

 

Time was spelled POLICE DEPARTMENT, in my heart. 

 

I got caught alright.  

Handcuffed and stuffed into the back seat of several police cars and paid a heavy price for my addictions and anger.   

 

Not only was my foundation flawed, but it was also non-existent.  

 

 

Spiritual matters in the Wilkins’ home were muted because of living for the world and making money.  

Yes, my daddy was successful as far as the world is concerned.  He died at age 46 from a single gunshot wound to his head.  

My mom was 41 when she succumbed to cancer.  

Both died young, and did not finish their race at all.  

Barely got out of the starting gate, in my opinion. 

 

I had a bunch of regrets, but I do not regret the sorrows I felt then.  

I found out, later in life, that my sorrows would bring an anointing from the Most High God.  

His name is Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, sent from God.  

He took my pain and turned it into His gain. 

Every time I share from a pulpit in a prison, or in a church in the free world, His Power comes when I preach with tears in my throat.  

 

My pain is relived for a few minutes in my sermon as I talk about my mom and dad.  My throat fills up with tears of happiness when I get to the part about how Jesus saved me while in prison.  

I re-live to re-love.  

I fall in love with Jesus, all over again during the altar invitation when souls come forward to accept His grace.  

 

My pain was someone else's gain.   

 

Yes, it hurts all over again, and I never get used to it.  But I know that if I share my past pain, some poor, lost soul will relate to my anguish, and the Holy Ghost will get them.  

 

“OH, how He gets them.”   

He lures them to an altar, one scripture reference at a time as I preach.  He sinks His pearly white teeth into their heart, not to harm them, but for their heart to begin to heal, as His teeth are a metaphor for His Power to heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds.  

Psalm 147: 3.  

His teeth turn into a kiss.  

One kiss from His heart to ours begins the foundation of faith.  

 

Now, we can build upon the Rock.

 

 “The solid Rock I stand.  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ Blood and righteousness.  I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.  On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” 

 

You and I can avoid the quicksand of insanity.  We can bypass the bear traps of turmoil.  We can stop drowning in our doubts and fears.  

We can rely on Christ, and all that He stands for.  

 

Yes, it takes time.

 

What are the alternatives? 

There are none.  

You can endeavor seeking counseling and pills.  

You can let yourself be diagnosed manic-sad.  

You can talk to a physician and let them convince you that you are terminal.  

Or you can meet the Great Doctor, Jesus, and bypass the surgery all together. 

 

I guess the reality is this.  My pain when I was young was real.  I am not ignoring it at all.  

I am not so super-religious that I ignore pain when it comes.  

I can identify sorrow easily. 

 

We can become so spiritually minded that we are no earthly good to anyone.  

 

No one cares what you believe or who you believe in, when tragedy strikes your heart.  

What they want is answers to their pain.  

I only have one answer for pain.  It is a pain killer over time.  

No prescription is needed.  

No money spent on doctors or pharmacies.  

It is a prescription of love.  From the original One who created love.  

He bore our sorrows on a tree.  

He bled and died, and then rose again from death, so you and I can build a new foundation.  

It is based on His love, and Mercy for us.  

He knows our pain, before it arrives on our doorstep. 

 

Put on your tool belt.  Work boots intact.  Go and build a house.  

It is a dwelling place for Jesus to be in with you.  

 

This construction of sorrow you will build is not in vain. 

 

Remember, no pain, no gain.  

Sorrows will come our way from time to time.  

It is what we do with them that matters.  

 

Give them to Jesus.  He can handle it. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Happy Mother’s Day!

God Bless you wonderful mothers out there!

Happy Mother’s Day!

An Equal Opportunity God

2 Timothy 2: 11-13…

“This is a faithful saying:  For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him.  If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.  If we deny Him, He will also deny us.  If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”

This sure foundational truth is that our eternal life is based on faith in Christ, and Him alone.  

Though we are less than faithful at times, He remains faithful in all His promises to us. 

 

If we endure hardship for Christ, we will reign with Him.  

Conversely, if we deny Christ, He will deny us.   

 

In a certain way, this is like a long-term employment opportunity given to us by God.  

If the Holy Ghost reveals Jesus to us, then we must respond to His work on the Cross, and never deny the fact that Jesus Christ died for us all. 

 

Because of God’s great love, He bestows His gifts and treasures in us.  As humans, we tend to look upon preachers, evangelists, pastors, prophets, and apostles as, somehow, above the rest of us.  

 

Called by God?  Yes.  

Anointed and appointed by the Most High God?  Yes.  

 

God uses people of all types, and His love for us is like an equal opportunity employer. 

He does not choose us based solely on our willingness to be His servant.  It is His love for us, and the love we give back, that draws us to sacrifice our lives for the Gospel’s sake.  

He pours His treasures in earthen vessels.  2nd Corinthians 4:7.

 

This excellence only comes from God regarding His Power.  We are just willing vessels, or the conduit He uses to pour His power through us. 

 

Let us look at His hiring process. 

 

C.S. Lewis once wrote…

“You cannot continue being the good egg forever.  You must either hatch, or rot.”  

 Billy Sunday said…

“Joining the church does not anymore make a person a Christian than entering a garage will change you into an automobile!” 

 

If we claim to be a Christian, we should have transformed desires that result in transformed behaviors.  

I believe our lives should reflect what Jesus did for us.  

 

He loves us so much so, that He died for us.  We should now live for Him. 

 

God is an equal opportunity employer. 

Just because our interview went quite well, and we accepted this job, does not mean we get paid, if we do not show up and work.  

 

We must finish all our tasks He gives us. 

 

Even an unbeliever can be morally stable and even have significant life changes that result in good works.  

Except for all the wrong reasons. 

 

Serving God to avoid Hell is like accepting surgery so you won’t die.  

How about accepting the surgery so you will live? 

 

What is our true reason in accepting this job offer from God?  

 

So, we can get a promotion?  A pay raise?  

Or is it because we want the pension and gold watch at retirement?

 

First, there is no retiring as a Christian.  

No quitting.  

No unemployment benefits.  

Nothing, if we quit.  

There are no other jobs available that offer eternal life.  

No matter what your resume lists about you being a good egg. 

 

Just go out and apply to every other religion and their promises.  

None had the Son of God die, and resurrected.  

None.  

 

Oh, they will hire you.  

No questions asked, as you head to a place in the ultimate eternal retirement.

 It’s hot there.  

Too hot to handle. 

 

Most natural office retirement parties include the gold watch.  Fellow employees celebrating you retiring.  A cake, with your 25 years of service, decorated with blue icing.  

Yum.  

A goldish time piece to keep track of porch sitting and rocking back and forth.  

“Can’t wait for that.” 

 

They all say to you, “Job well done.  Enjoy your retirement.” 

 

 I would rather hear,

“Well done My good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will set you over many, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

Matthew 25: 21.

 

To serve in any job description as an employee of Jesus Christ, we must be willing to start anywhere. 

 

I did not start preaching 40 years ago.  It began with being an Armor Bearer for an Elijah model of a man.  

I was his go-to man.  

I carried his luggage at the airport.  I traveled a little with him but still worked a full-time job at home. 

When my sons were born in 2000 and 2001, travel stopped for the most part.  My sons were little boys then, and I never neglected being with them.  

 

I was the subordinate servant and was glad to be there.  

There was nothing better than to sit under a seasoned preacher and learn the art of the altar call. 

 

My preaching style came later.  

I was happy to learn.  

 

How will you become what God wants you to be and do, unless we are willing to learn and grow? 

 

Why not work hard to better the company, rather than trying to get all you can, “can” all you get, and sit on the lid.  

Never thinking about the other people you work with.  

 

There is no ladder of success to climb in the Kingdom of God.  

 

Only steps.  

Following Jesus requires obedience.  

 

Not promotions handed out, because we think we deserve it. 

 

The Word of God says to us clearly,

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you (hired you) and appointed you (chosen for a particular job function) that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.”

John 15:16

 

“Work your job, and do not complain.” 

 

Jesus nominates us for a position He chooses.  

He wants us to be His servant and do what the Master says do. 

 

He loves us, not because our resume was so good.  

You and I were only qualified to be hired because we were sinners in need of a Savior.  

 

Jesus, who died on the Cross, died so we could be hire-able. 

 

To serve in our job description He gives us, is not on paper.  

Well, it is if you read the Bible.  

 

Your specific job will be explained as you go.  

It is called, ON THE JOB training. 

 

Jesus, the greatest equal opportunity employer, does not discriminate against any person because of race, color, or national origin.  

Religion, sex, physical or mental disabilities or age, is overlooked by Him.  

He always sees potential.  

Jesus looks upon mankind equally because 2 Peter 3:9 says,

“The Lord is not slack, or slow, concerning His promise, as some count slackness.”

(looseness, weakness, lack of care or concern, slowness or negligent in duties performed)] 

“He is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish (jobless, dying on the streets, hungry) but that all should come to repentance.”

 

In other words, a surrendered heart.  

A heart that says, “I will accept any position you want Lord, no matter how hard it might be.” 

 

The question today is, “Who do you really want to work for?” 

 

Why do you want to be employed by Jesus?  

 

It is not an easy job.  

 

In fact, Jesus when He began his company, He started as a baby in an animal stall.  He was wrapped in swaddling clothes which were narrow strips of cloth, wrapped around this baby Jesus.

 It was to restrict His movement.  

He went from the bottom of the fish tank in birth, seemingly restricted physically, to the Son of God fully.  

He was qualified by His Father to raise Lazarus from the dead.

  

The cloth around Lazarus was like what Jesus had on as a baby. 

 

Jesus has the power today from Heaven to make a profit in His investment in you and me.  

He does not look for interest earned on His Blood investment.  

Every drop was money in His account. 

 

Jesus never looked for a promotion in His Kingdom.  

He wanted to promote us, and step aside so we could be valued.  

 

As the CEO of Heaven, Jesus declares the truth. 

 

Isaiah 45: 21-24…

“The Word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return. That to Me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath.  He shall say, surely in the Lord, ‘I have righteousness and strength.’”

The best Entrepreneur Jesus, who has the ability and power to always be ready to develop His employees, organize and run His Kingdom business enterprise.  

Even with the human element in His employees, with all our uncertainties and lack of skills, at times, He makes a profit that cannot be lost or stolen by anyone, or anything. 

 

“What is this profit, you may ask?”  

 

It is expanding this enterprise called Heaven by franchising the business and spreading His company all over the world.  

In every jurisdiction, town, village, and city.  

All countries on Earth eventually can fill out an application and be hired.

 They are not disqualified.  

 

Jesus is not looking for anyone with any experience.  

He only wants those who will obey His every command.  

Not with an iron rod, but with nail- scarred hands, He will embrace every employee of His.  

He will do it with love.  

His unwavering love for all of us. 

 

He will never sell out.  His company will never go bankrupt.  

No lawsuits will ever come against His Kingdom.  

He knows exactly how to run His company, without flaws.  

Without cheating on the books.  

(Well, there is only one book, the Book of Life).  

He knows how to write a new name in there, without having to ever erase it. 

 

He is the accountant over all the earth’s inhabitants.  

All of us, whether we worked for Him or not, will give an account of our lives, of how we lived, and who we worked for.  

 

We only have so much time to be employed anyway. 

 

Jesus always hires unqualified applicants.  

He hires ex-convicted felons.  He hires many of them while they are still employed in prison.  They physically work for The Boss Man.  

 

But, while they are off work inside, they moonlight for Jesus. 

 

No overtime.  Just obedience to work for the Master. 

 

He hires drug addicts and prostitutes, on the spot, without an interview.  

While they are still practicing their trade, He puts them under His employment and Authority.  

Little by little, they stop doing those things that cause Him to cry over their souls.  

After some time, He sets them free.  

Not from their job with Him.  

 

He frees them from their hangups, hiccups and hypocrisies, so they can be more productive and fruitful.  

 

He even hires those who do not have these kinds of problems.  

 

We do not become qualified because of how good we are.  

We are qualified because of how Good He is.  

Do not confuse this. 

 

He is the only Chief Executive Officer.  

He is controlled, only by His Father. 

 

You are His stock options.  He won’t sell you off, give you away in a proxy fight.  

You won’t be traded or sold on a chopping block of this world’s system.  No takeovers, either. 

 

If you let Him, He will take ownership of your soul too.  

 

You do not have to sell your soul to the Devil any longer.  

 

No matter what is left of your life, Jesus wants you.  

He needs you. 

 

In my life, from age 12, until now, I have had 53 different jobs in this world. 

I was a retail manager.  I drove forklifts.  I milked cows.  I have washed dishes in the early years.  Pumped gas.  I learned the upholstery trade.  I was a machinist before I went to prison. 

 

I have worked in every secular job I could find.  

I was a warehouse manager for a phone company in 1978.  

I even climbed telephone poles before the era of underground cable. 

For thirty years, I was a master baker and pastry chef. 

 

I have done a bunch of jobs.  

 

All in all, I know how to do many things.  

But I have never worked a white-collar job.  It has always been hard labor, to a degree.  

The best job, outside of the job I currently have, is not a job I was qualified to do.  

 

I learned while on the job.   

 

I am working full-time on a ranch today.  

I am 69, digging holes with a pickaxe and shovel, and pouring concrete and setting fence posts. 

It is good for me physically.  

 

MY best job is not a job at all. 

 

I am a preacher of this precious Gospel.  

The Good News that Jesus Saves.  

It is a calling, not a job, to me.  

 

I do not have a white collar or a blue collar.  

I have a yoke upon me, and I am learning every day from Him. 

 

I was hired by Jesus, from a cotton field, 47 years ago.  

That is one job I would like to have never done.  

I had to do it while in prison at age 20. 

 

He hired me.  

 

He has the best benefits of any employer.  

I have full medical and dental and eye care.  

My body is in his care, as He is the Great Physician. 

My 401 K retirement plan is set in stone.  

The same stone that was rolled away from the tomb Jesus was in.

He died, so I could live without a grave.  

No headstones for me. 

 

 My name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life today.  

It has been there since May 8, 1977.  

Mother’s Day morning while in prison.  

 

I surrendered my job with Satan, to work for the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. 

Jesus Christ is the Equal Opportunity Employer of a lifetime.  

 

If you are hired by Him, or ready to be hired, you will have a job forever.   

 

It will be in Eternity.  

You will work for Him, the rest of time itself. 

 

Please do not wait any longer to go to work.  

It is so rewarding to serve Him. 

 

I do not need a gold watch when I leave this earth for Heaven.  

I will live on streets of gold, and the Sea of Glass will shine and shimmer.  

There will be no more pain, sorrow or tears.  

Only Jesus.  

 

What more could we ask for today?  

Ask Him.  

 

He is stretching out his hands to embrace you today. 

He stands at your door knocking.  

Just open the door by faith, and He will come in, and be with you, no matter what your current employment status is. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Forgiven

In 1966, there was a western movie depicting the Civil War era, featuring actors Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach.  

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

 

Clint Eastwood was a bounty hunter named Joe.  He was the Good guy.  

Lee Van Cleef, named Angel Eyes, was the Bad man, a ruthless, confident, and borderline sadistic mercenary.  He took great pleasure in killing.  

He always finished the job for which he was paid, usually as a “tracking assassin!” 

 

The Ugly part, was played by Eli Wallach, cast as a Mexican bandit named Tuco Ramirez.  

 This movie was set in the historical era of 1862, in the American Southwest.  It was all about money, murder, and fame.   

Much like the many reasons we sometimes find ourselves in jail or prison, or divorce court, and in financial ruin towards homelessness.  

Some of us were good, then turned bad.  Ugly in our sin, then redeemed by Jesus to be good.  

Good is defined as doing good works, trying to earn our salvation.  

We know what bad is.  

Many different levels of bad behavior. 

 

Keeping this in mind, therefore, I have entitled this message,

“The Good, the Bad, and the Forgiven.” 

 

Greed, outbursts of anger, selfishness, and outright abusive tendencies, were portrayed in the Western movie I spoke about in the beginning.   

Today, not much has changed as far as the way human beings bounce back and forth in bizarre behaviors and sins. 

Luke 10:25-34, and 37,

“And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’

Jesus said unto him, ‘What is written in the law?  What is your reading of it?’

So, he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’

And He said to him, ‘You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.’

But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’  Then Jesus answered and said, ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half- dead.

Now, by chance, a certain priest came down that road.  And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.  And when he saw him, he had compassion.  So, he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.’”

 The rest of this story proves the Samaritan man was the true “neighbor” to this half dead person.  

He showed compassion, and Jesus said in verse 37,

“Go and do likewise.”

Jesus was asked the question of, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The question showed up nineteen times, in different ways, throughout His ministry.  

 

No one in the history of the world has ever lived and performed perfectly, 100% of the time.  Every single day, without fail, no one has loved God with all their heart, and their neighbor as himself.  

Impossible, because we are frail, humans who sin sometimes. 

 

We fall short in our sin, which is rebellion against God, and He deserves all the Glory.  Romans 3:23. 

 

We will never live up to perfection, but by God’s grace and mercy, you and I can strive to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves.  

Luke 10:27. 

Be careful though.  

Decide today where you are at spiritually.  

Good?  

Bad?

or Forgiven? 

 

Like Clint Eastwood, the good one, we are only good because of Jesus.  If you and I do not love who we are in Christ, we will not have the capacity to love anyone.  Including our neighbor. 

 

Like Angel Eyes, in the movie, he was a murderer for hire.  

He was truly bad to the bone.  

We were like that too, before we met our Savior, Jesus.  

Some of us were master sinners, expert manipulators, and if we were addicted, we used and abused everyone around us.  

Especially our family.  We murdered them, without killing them. 

 

We became emotional stranglers, killers for hire.  

Choking out the family finances for our selfish gains. 

We did this to get what we wanted, no matter what the cost.  

The wreckage of our past is dead in a graveyard.  Once Jesus forgives us, the bones without a grave, can never be dug up.  

Nor can they be kept in a closet, to pull out to kill again.  

They are all under the Blood of Jesus Christ, when we repent of our killing attitudes and actions. 

 

Like the assassin, our murdering attitudes affected and then INFECTED all who were in our path.  

Our disease was thrust upon them, and they got sick.  

Sick of us, and then mentally, emotionally, and physically dying on the inside; we left them to die a slow, arduous death. 

 

In verse 29 of Luke 10, that lawyer wanted to justify himself when talking to Jesus.  He tried to cross-examine Jesus, so to speak, by asking,

“Who is my neighbor?” 

 

Then, Jesus tells His story.  Luke 10: 30-37. 

Look at what the Samaritan did!  This person was GOOD, not bad, and not ugly, in any way.  

He truly loved this man, unconditionally.  Fully.  Jesus shows here in this story, true love. 

 

The Samaritan did not ask for anything in return.  His motivations were pure.  This injured, and HALF-DEAD man, was not the Samaritan's close friend or family.  

The Samaritan did not know this dying man at all. 

Samaritan people did not get along with Jews.  

They were divided by racial and ethnic barriers.  For many reasons, the Jews called Samaritan’s “half-breeds.”  The Jews would send them away. 

 

Samaritans built their own temples which Jews considered Pagan.  

This feud grew and by the time Christ came, the Jews hated the Samaritans, so much so, that they would cross the Jordan River rather than travel through Samaria. 

After Israel’s fall to the Assyrians, they intermarried with the Assyrians, contrary to Deuteronomy 7: 3-5, that taught against these relationships in a marriage.  

This is one reason why the Jews hated the Samaritans.  

“You are dogs,” they would say. 

They treated them even worse than the vulgar name calling. 

 

I would consider the attitudes and behaviors of these people as: “UGLY.” 

Bad too, but ugly in their sins. 

 

We had the GOOD with the Samaritan.  

The BAD would be that priest who ignored the dying man.  

Some priest.  

Perhaps he should be demoted for his selfishness, and ignorance of the Law. 

The Levite, verse 32, came.  

He looked at the dying man’s condition and passed by on the other side.  

He was bad, but more so, cruel. 

The Samaritans were a constant source of difficulty to the Jews who rebuilt Jerusalem after returning from Babylonian captivity.  Ezra 4:10, and Nehemiah 4:12. 

These prejudices prevailed then and live today.  

Americans used to be gracious and loving to their neighbors.  I am not painting all Citizens of the United States as cruel and obnoxious.  I am trying to help us see how far we have come from the story in Luke, to today.  

In many ways, it is worse now. 

 

I know, because I grew up in the “Leave it to Beaver” era.  

Mom stayed home, cooked and cleaned, and prepared the house to be made into a home.  A respectful job and calling back then.  

Not to be ridiculed, or put down, because a “homemaker” was a true gift.  

 

In grade school, I Pledged my Allegiance to the Flag.  The Principle came across the loudspeaker every morning in “homeroom,” and prayed, in Jesus Name, Amen. 

 

Once some women (not all), in the 1960s decided to burn their bras, all hell broke loose spiritually in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  

It became, the Land of the living dead, and the home of our Veterans of War, living on the streets in cardboard boxes.  

It took “bravery” to live on the streets of Chicago or the Bronx.  

I was homeless myself, and I know the looks down the noses of people, who thought I was not worth a handout.  

I have never begged for anything.  

Even when I was an addict, I still worked a job full time. 

 

Women’s liberation or the Feminist movement, was widely recognized as having begun in the sixties, but the emergence of various organizations with activism, focused on issues like reproductive rights, equal pay, and challenging traditional gender roles.  

“Tell that to Mrs. Cleaver and her husband Ward.”

Beaver Cleaver did not need a pronoun called he or whatever!

 

This is not a joke, or a put down regarding equal pay for equal work.

It is a spiritual decay of sorts.  

Tell me,

“Who leaves their front door unlocked in America today In 2025?”  

Anyone?  

No, of course not.  

This is not the era now.  This is the era of fear.  

 

How can we love our neighbor, if we do not even know their names?  

Communities have locked gates at night.  

The homeowners' associations charge a bunch of money every month to monitor the weeds in your flower bed, and then send you an eviction notice if you do not pull the “one” weed they photographed, within 24 hours.  

 

Neighborhood watch?  

How about watch your neighbor closely, and help them when you see a need arise.

 

This Samaritan had compassion for the dying man.  

Sympathetic pity, or feeling sorry for others, and feeling their pain, is what true love is all about. 

 

I do not want to be found as Good only, or Bad, or Ugly.  

Only forgiven.  

Daily, hourly, and minute by minute, if needed.  

 

Being cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus, is better than any other spiritual dynamic that the world offers. 

 

The Denari was what the Good Samaritan gave to the innkeeper to aid in the healing of the beaten man.

One Denari in today’s monies is around $200.00.  

He gave two Denari.  

The average day’s wages then were one Denari. 

 

Today, a young 21-year-old air-conditioning man came to repair our system that was not working.  

It was 88 degrees outside today in Texas. Inside, without air, it got up to 76.  

Not a fun thing when I had been working outside all day building a chicken coop. 

 

He arrived, and within two minutes diagnosed the problem.  

 

I asked him his name, and he said, “Micah.” 

 

I responded, “Thats a Bible name.”  

He replied, “Jesus is good to me.” 

 

OH BOY, this is not about an air conditioner.  

My spiritual antennas were up. 

 

Once he finished the repair, he was loading his work truck, when I asked,

“Can I pray for you?” 

I shared what happened to me when I was 21, and he responded,

“I am glad I did not have to go through that.” 

He took off his hat, and humbled himself, and I prayed for him, and spoke encouragement to him.  

He was only 21 but had been a repair man since he was 17 out of high school.   

He was not a bleeding man on the side of the road.  He was not in need of anything, except, maybe, a prayer. 

 

He became a new friend to me.  

He is my neighbor.  

 

He works about 5 miles from where we live, but it is the “neighbor” attitude of love that makes us neighbors.  

It is Jesus which we have in common.  

 

I was so glad to have the air fixed, but happier to meet a young, 21-year-old Godly young man who is a hard worker.  

It reminds me of how things used to be, way back when.   

If a neighbor next door needed a cup of sugar, they went next door and knocked on the door.  The woman who was there, (homemaker, not home alone) saw the empty cup and smiled.  

She knew what she needed.  Sugar. 

No strings attached.  No expectations.  No monies exchanged hands. 

 

And as a good neighbor, you and I should mow the grass next door.  

If it is in need, do it.   

 

These are simple situations requiring simple answers. 

 

Find a need.  Fill the need. 

 

Like the Samaritan, just love people, regardless of how they look.  

No matter if they are Good, Bad, or Ugly.  

 

Perhaps, they will see your good works and good deeds and eventually become Forgiven by Jesus.  

 

I would rather see a sermon than hear one any day.  

 

“How about you, neighbor?” 

 

 Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Divine Moment in Time

December 27, 1974, at approximately Midnight: the events of this night would become a miracle.  

Not just any miracle.  

It saved two lives, all at once. 

 

Warning: Graphic Nature. 

 

The following account is real, and the names have been changed, somewhat, to protect the interests of those involved.  

The backstory to this event at Midnight must be discussed briefly for any of this to make sense. 

 

I was 18 years old.  My mother had died three years earlier from cancer, and I was already an out-of-control drug addict.  

An accident, waiting to happen.  

 

It turned out to be a spiritual and physical head-on collision with a gun. 

 

Six months before, in early July of 1974, a burglary took place.  I was with friends, fellow drug users and abusers, when we decided to go to my trailer house a few miles away to continue our party. 

Once we finished, we went back to our friend's house and discovered the entire house had been burglarized.  My girlfriend was a Marijuana dealer, and all her dope was gone, along with all her stereo equipment and booze. 

All four of us knew who did it.  

He had been to her house earlier to buy drugs.  We watched him go into her bedroom, score the Dope, and then leave.  He knew exactly where it was in her closet.  Nothing was disturbed in her room, except the box the Marijuana was in. 

 

Besides, my best friend David was a notorious burglar.  His method of operation was to take off the screen from a bedroom window, primarily in the back of the house, away from the main street and the front of the house. 

His methods were like fingerprints.  His fingerprints were all over this house, and so our next move was to call the police.  

The police arrived around two a.m. and searched the premises.  They concluded that there was not enough to charge anyone for this crime.  

Then they left. 

 

I was furious.  My girlfriend was also mad, mainly because the two pounds of Marijuana was fronted to her (like a consignment) from her dealer.  

Now she must come up with the value of all that Dope.  

It would have been sold in ¼ ounce baggies, for $15.00 per baggie.  You can do the math.  That was a bunch of money that never was earned.  

Now she is obligated to come up with the loss of the amount of monies and the profit, all on her own. 

 

I made a promise to her that July night.  

“If I ever see David ******* again, I will kill him!” 

 

This was almost a prophetic voice from within my demon- possessed heart and mind. 

 

Four months passed since the night of this burglary.  

It is now early November of 1974 when I decided to go and visit my Daddy.  He was living with a woman who was a policewoman. 

 

“How many of you know that Dope Fiends and PO-lice, do not get along?”   

(My opening line to inmates in prison when I preach sometimes, regarding the beginning of my sermon.) 

 

She did not like me, and I did not like her.  

I had only met her once, and this next event was the one time, until December 27th at midnight. 

 

I arrived at my Daddy’s apartment and ran up to the door.  (Meth makes you run and hide when necessary). 

Here is the scene.  

The policewoman is in the tiny kitchen cooking, and my Daddy is at the small breakfast nook table about 10 feet from the kitchen.  

She can hear our conversation.  

 

Remember that.

Daddy answered the door, and we sat at the small table.  

I hollered at my Daddy,

“I can’t believe that the %$#@**&^%^ police department who came out to investigate my girlfriend's house, did nothing to help us. It has been almost 4 months since the burglary, and they won’t help us at all.” 

I said,

“If I ever see David again, I am going to kill him!” 

 

My father replied, trying to comfort me, attempting to persuade me against such a violent thing.  He tried to settle me down.

But the Meth and my anger were getting the best of me.  

I left my Daddy abruptly. 

 

Fast forward: Literally, two weeks after this short meeting, my Daddy came out to my trailer, and was off to El Paso, Texas to be married to this cop. 

 

(That is another story, for another time). 

 

The day after seeing my Daddy and watching him drive away to go and get married, he was found dead.  

A single gunshot wound. To his head. 

 

I am going off the deep end of a pool of heinous and unspeakable evil after my Daddy’s death.

 

 I am completely out of control. 

 

Keep in mind, as I now approach December 27, 1974, just about four weeks since we buried my Daddy.  

I am a lunatic looking for prey. 

 

I found out, through a set of circumstances, that my enemy, David was back in town, selling the remaining Marijuana he had stolen from my girlfriend.  

When I overheard this news, I was off to kill David. 

I had mainlined 5 tabs of Purple Microdot Acid, (L.S.D.) and was high, but not so high that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I got in a car with my other friend, and off to a neighboring town a few miles away from where I was. 

I had been using a 38-caliber pistol for my armed robberies of late and was planning to use it on David.  

 

Now.  

Tonight.  

Soon, and very soon. 

 

We arrived at an arcade in this town, and I told my getaway driver to keep the motor running. 

As I walked into this two-story house that had been converted into an arcade, time seemed to slow down.  

Like in slow motion.

 

Yes, it was the drugs that caused this, but much of it was the anticipation of me wanting to shoot my best friend.  

And kill him, fulfilling a vow to my girlfriend.  

 

“If I ever see David again, I will kill him.” 

 

This promise was about to turn into a major problem. 

 

I walked down the narrow hallway, leading to the snack bar where David was supposedly working.  I entered the dimly lit room and saw him behind the counter.  No one else was in this area of the house except David, and a demon- possessed killer, namely me. 

David made eye contact with me from about 15 feet away, and he was smiling.  He was smiling because he had heard I had been looking for him for months and wanted to confront him about the burglary.  

He sold all my girlfriend's dope, so he knew I was out to get him. 

 

His smile seemed to say,

 

“Hey, Joe it is cool, we can work this deal out, right?” 

 

Wrong. 

 

Without saying a word, I am now standing point blank in front of David. 

I slowly pulled out my pistol from underneath my oversized shirt.  The gun was lodged just inside my jeans near my belt. 

I pointed the gun at David’s face, and the look of horror in his eyes was not describable. 

Fear and panic were written all over his face; his brown eyes were quivering from side to side. 

 

Two feet from my future victim, I pulled the trigger.  

It looked like two feet of fire and sparks coming out of the barrel of my 38.  

Slow motion was in full affect in my dilated eyes from the drugs. 

 

The first bullet hit his face, and I remember watching him clutch his face with both hands.  Blood was gushing out from his face through his fingers and dropping to the floor like a flood. 

 

Before he fell, I shot again.  

This time hitting him in his chest.  

The impact of the shot forced him to fly backwards in mid-air.  His feet were off the floor for two seconds before his bloody body hit the wood paneled wall nearby.  

I stood over his convulsing body, ready to unload the remainder of my four bullets, when I came to my senses.  Blood was pooling all around his head and torso. 

I heard screams from every room in this arcade.  Young teenagers were running through the front door, as I realized, it was time to go. 

 

To make a long story a bit shorter, I was arrested within two hours after this shooting.  

Taken to police headquarters in the town where I shot David, were several officers ready to interrogate me. In the back of the room, was the policewoman my Daddy had been dating.  

She was staring at me, as if she never knew me.  

Mystery.  

An unsolved mystery to this day, as to why my Daddy was murdered. 

Remember it had been just a few weeks before this December night, that we buried my Daddy.  

The pain from all of that was still fresh in my mind, as I took all my anger out on my best friend. 

I recall my getaway driver asking me on the way back to our home,

“Did you kill him?” 

I sat in silence.  Clutching my warm pistol, all I could think about was sweet revenge. 

 

John said to me,

“Did you hear the music that was playing when the gunshots rang out?” 

 

(Of course I didn’t, I was focused on murder, not music.) 

 

John continued to tell me that, precisely when the gunshots were fired, the song by Eric Clapton was playing on the jukebox inside the arcade.  He could hear the loud music because it was piped into the parking lot, to draw the young people inside, from outdoor speakers on the porch. 

 

The song played,

“I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot no deputy.  Yeah!  All around in my hometown, they’re trying to track me down, yeah.

They say they want to bring me in guilty, for the killing of a deputy.  For the life of a deputy but I say Oh, now, now, oh...I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.  Yeah, I say, I shot the sheriff, Lord, they say it is a capital offense.”

John told me at the very moment the song said,

“I shot the sheriff,” the two gunshots rang out.

Then the song continued, “but I did not shoot no deputy.” 

 

“Perfect timing,” he said.  

Well, the timing was real.  The shooting was real.  Jail is real too.  

David’s blood was real, and he was dying. 

 

When I was arrested, it was found out that my Daddy’s fiancé, who was there during the interrogation, was the one who put out the All-Points Bulletin on me. 

She was the one who overheard me that day when I was at their apartment, while she was in the kitchen cooking.  

She heard me say to my Daddy, in my frustration,

“If I ever see David again, I will kill him.”  

 

While patrolling, that fateful night in December, the news on her patrol car radio came with the news of a shooting in an arcade.  

“The victim is David *******, and the shooter was described by witnesses as a white male, six foot two with long brownish blond hair.”  

She knew it was me, and I was arrested rather quickly once they found me. 

She is, indeed, a cop.  

 

Cops listen.  Cops obey.  

Cops.  

 

My favorite pastime, sitting in the back of a cop car with handcuffs on. 

 

Miracle Number One: David lived.  

The first bullet hit his left cheek bone and lodged in his right jaw.  The second, more serious of the two wounds, blew out the aorta in his heart, and lodged in his spine.  He lost 64 pints of blood total, during and after surgery.  

There was a special blood drive to help save his life that early morning of December 1974. 

I received a two-year probated sentence for Conspiracy to Commit Murder, Aggravated Assault, and Attempted Murder.  All three charges carried a 25- to- life sentence.  

 

Miracle Number Two: I received probation.  

That is a story for another time. 

 

Miracle Number Three: 20 years after the shooting, God put me on the phone with David’s mother after all this time had gone by.  

She said to me while on the phone,

“Joe, I remember when your mother died, my son David went to the funeral with you that day.  And I heard about your Daddy dying.  But the night you hurt my son, I went to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and they were taking my son David into surgery.  His blood was all over the floor under the gurney. 

While he was dying, and headed into surgery to save his life, I got down on my knees in my own son’s blood and prayed.  I forgave the person who shot him, not knowing it was you yet, Joe.  I forgave you because I am a Christian.”  

 

Wow, what could I say to her after that moment on the phone?  

With tears in my eyes, and all choked up, I told her how sorry I was for hurting her son and traumatizing the entire family.  We talked and finally she asked me, 

“Joe, will you do me a favor please?  

Will you pray for me and for my son David now?” 

 

(Remember, this was twenty years after the shooting.) 

 

Before I prayed, she told me that after David came out of surgery, in critical condition at first, he woke up out of a coma. He was in a coma for quite some time, and he ended up in a wheelchair for a season because the bullet that tore his heart valve in pieces, lodged near his spine.  He was temporarily paralyzed. 

 

“Joe, David never learned his lesson after that shooting. He never stopped using drugs, and I do not know where he is now.”   

 

(This call was in1994. David would have been 40 years old.  He was two years older than me when I shot him).

 

I had told her how I got saved by Jesus while in prison, and she was so happy to hear that, and thanked God over the phone with me for my salvation. 

 

She continued talking on the phone with me,

 

“Will you pray that my son will come back to Jesus, as he was raised in a Christian home, but he became the Prodigal Son to me and his Father.  Please, Joe, pray for reconciliation and restoration for me and for my son, okay?” 

With tears in my throat now, I prayed for her, and wept with her, and rejoiced with her for all that the Lord Jesus had done over the phone that day. 

 

God allowed me to bury my past.  He let me talk to her, to remind me that “Nothing is Impossible, for them that believe.” 

 

If God can do what you just read about, and bring healing to the broken hearts like he did with me and with my victim’s mother, He can, do what you need Him to do.  

 

If you hurt, cry out to Jesus.  

If you are in pain, cry out to Jesus.  

If you are doing okay today, still cry out to Jesus. 

 

What He did for me will never be forgotten. 

On a drug-fueled high, late on a December night, shots rang out. 

I didn't shoot a Sheriff.  I certainly did not shoot a Deputy of the law. 

I did shoot my best friend.  

 

I regret some things to this day.  

I regret the hurt I caused to those around me, and to my family.  

Not many of them left now. 

 

Before I knew Christ as Savior, I had a bunch of excuses and traumas to blame for my behavior. 

I do not hold any blame for anyone now.  I do not blame myself.  

I was a different person in 1974.  

Jesus made me into a new man when He saved my soul. 

 

As most people would say today,

“If I had it to do all over again, I would have done things differently.”  

 

We all would.  

But we can’t.  

Let us keep a posture of thanksgiving for all Jesus is doing and is planning to do in our lives. 

Yesterday is gone forever.  

Tomorrow is not promised.  

It is the “now” that we must live in and make the best out of a situation that seems hopeless. 

 

It was hopeless for one woman the night of that shooting.  

A mother.  

A mother who loved her son.  

He did not deserve what happened to him that night. 

 

What he deserves is to know that it was his praying mother, kneeling in his blood on a hospital tile floor, praying.  Praying for a miracle.  

She got hers.  I got mine.  

 

Let us believe for your miracle.  

Miracles are what God is all about. 

The fact that you are reading this story is a miracle.   

 

Jesus is not only the Lord of all, but He is also the Lord your God who is dealing wondrously with you and me.  

 

It is not a happen-stance that David lived.  

The phone call with his mother was not some random chance thing.  

It was Divine. 

 

It is truly a divine moment in time. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Pride Born of Hurt

If we have pride at any level, it can keep us from asking for what we need.  

We may have grown up in a family where we were ignored or disappointed.  We were afraid to ask for anything, for fear of some kind of retaliation or punishment. 

Our childhood needs that we had were rarely met, and this caused us to become self-reliant, to a degree.  These self-sufficient tasks we tried to do required us to do everything on our own.

We were determined never to ask anyone for help of any kind. 

 

This is not the normal response to this kind of human existence.  

Being ignored is a form of abuse.  

 

Never again would we be in a place where we needed to ask for any help whatsoever.  

This is a form of self-destruction, called pride, born out of our hurts and pains.  

It was never to be born at all.  

This pride was conceived in a spiritual womb, finally brought forth into our soul, by neglect, silence, and ignorance, on the part of the rearing in our childhood. 

 

I always remind myself that “we battle not with flesh and blood,” but as a child, I did not know anything spiritual.  

My home was just a house, begging to be called a home. 

 

There are four types of pride.  They are identified in different religious and psychological contexts. 

 

Pride of Timidity is characterized by fearing the judgment of others and overvaluing human respect. 

Pride of Sensitivity involves being overly concerned with self-love and how it’s affected by others’ opinions. 

Pride of Complacency (Vanity) manifests as an excessive desire for human admiration and a tendency to show off.  

In other words, “I have a need to be needed.” 

Finally, Pride of self-exaltation involves attributing one’s excellence to oneself, rather than to God. 

Timidity is rooted in fear of what others might think, leading to over-reliance on external validation.  

No true humility in this type of pride. 

Sensitivity pride manifests as a heightened awareness of criticism and a tendency to see oneself as more vulnerable than others.  

This sets off a defense mechanism, unaware and unable to receive any correction, even if it is constructive. 

Complacency leads to excessive desires for human admiration and the need to “show off” at times. 

Self-exaltation is dangerous and attributes one's own achievements and gifts or talents based on personal achievements and efforts.  

God gets no Glory in this type of pride. 

 

There is no need to do a deep dive on all of this, as my point is a simple one, based on God’s Holy Word. 

 

Proverbs 11: 2 declares,

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.”

 

James 4:6…

“But He gives more grace.”

  Therefore, it says…

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

 

I ought to know all about pride.  

Pride took me to addictions and finally prison.  

Pride cost me everything, because I thought I was above the law.  

I thought I was above disease from inserting a dirty 26.5-gauge needle into my vein in my arms.  Once all the veins in my left arm collapsed, I had to mainline Meth into the veins on the tops of my hands and feet.  

Good luck covering up those canker sores.  What was I to do, wear gloves in the summertime, and boots?

 

Matthew 7: 13-14,

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

 

The path I was on, prior to accepting Jesus into my heart while in prison, was a wide, broad, and rocky road.  The twists and turns of Meth addiction, and the rocks and potholes of violence were killing me.  

The problem was, I did not care.  

And pride kept me from asking for help of any kind.  Not much maturing in an eighteen-year-old junkie.  

 

Destruction, according to the Bible, is: complete ruin, annihilation, loss, and moral devastation.  

 

 It is the consequences of sin, leading to God’s judgment, which is also a serious, eternal, and spiritual destruction from God.   

 

“He would have none perish, but that ALL should come unto repentance.”

2nd Peter 3:9

There isn’t anything a human being can do to stop a $200.00 a day Meth habit, on his own.  

Yes, we can seek treatment, but being clean and sober, without the Joy of the Lord Jesus, just makes us a dried-out addict.  

There is nothing worse than an angry addict who sits around all day, thinking of ways to avoid going back to this horrible lifestyle. 

 

This is where pride plays a big part.  

Pride is the way of the world.

  1st John 2: 15-16,

“Do not love the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-is not of the Father but is of the world.”

 

Can’t get past this mighty Word. 

Pride corrupts the entire person.  

It did ruin me.  

It was more than addiction that fueled my issues.  The abuse and the abandonment I felt when my mom and dad died, were only part of the overall prideful attributes I fed into. 

 

I thought I was invincible.  

Drugs played a part in this, but at 18 years old, I felt nothing could harm me.  

Yes, I was broken hearted, but I did not care what the police did to me.  

I did not care that I ended up in prison.  

This lends to the worst of the pride examples called, “pride of self-exaltation.”  

 

I became my own God.

 Excluding the One who eventually saved my soul.  

 

I did not know He existed back then, and I did not care.  

 

How stupid was I to stand on my own mother’s grave, the same day we buried her, and without anyone around, I stood on the pile of sod and dead flowers on her grave.  

I screamed and cursed a God I did not know.  

 

This self-exaltation was the epitome of PRIDE, in my wicked heart.  

Blaming a God that I did not believe existed, proved my heart was still open to a God, because I cried out in my pain and frustration. 

 

I believe that God was trying to get my attention at that graveyard, as I cried, screamed, and blasphemed His Holy Name. 

 

He did not send lightning bolts that day.  He sent mercy, but I was too far gone to receive it then. 

 

My broad path was leading me to destruction, but Jesus Christ allowed this destruction because of my free-will choices, and He was trying to get me to come to an end of myself.  

I call it the Joe-pride.  

 

I was full of myself, and I hated myself at the same time. 

 

Jesus said,

“And so, I tell you, keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for.  Keep on looking, and you will find it.  Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened.  For everyone who asks, receives.  Everyone who seeks, finds.  And the door is opened to everyone who knocks.”  

Luke 11: 9-10

 

Though I screamed and cursed His Name, that was a form of asking.  

 

Though I saw through spiritual eyes that were blind to grace, I kept looking in my darkness.  I knocked on every door the world offered, and those doors opened wide for my drugs, lusts, and violent nature.

 I fell into that trap like I was falling in an open elevator door without a floor to hold me. 

I crashed and burned in my sin.  

I did not die, because God had a purpose in my selfish pride. He broke me and humbled me in the cotton fields of prison.  

He protected me, like I was in a force-field of His Love. 

This message is not designed to make any of us comfortable or content about where you are in this thing called life.  

 

It is written to keep you and I from going into a spiritual coma.  

It is fashioned for holiness, not happiness.  

For you to be uncomfortable, not complacent. 

 

To inspire you to always seek Jesus and distinguish yourself as separated from this world and its desires, lusts, and fears.  

 

Whether you are ready or not, He is coming back.  You can’t stop that from happening.  

What you can do is be ready.  

 

 Jesus said in John 14: 2-6,

“‘In My Father’s house there are many mansions.  If it were not so; I would have told you.  For I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.  And where I go, ye know the way.’

And Thomas said unto Him, ‘Lord, we know not where ye go; how can we know the way?’  Jesus said unto him, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes unto the Father, but by Me.’”

 

Fact.  

This can’t be disputed by anyone on this planet.  

He is coming back. 

Thomas traveled with Jesus for three years, and when Jesus’s life was at risk by returning to Judea, after Lazarus had died, it was the Apostle Thomas who courageously told his fellow disciples they should go with Jesus.  

No matter what the danger.  No matter the cost.  

 

Like other disciples, Thomas deserted Jesus during the crucifixion. 

 

After Jesus rose from the dead, Thomas was still not convinced and wanted to touch His wounds to see for himself the truth.  His faith was based solely on what he could touch and see for himself.  

That too, is a form of pride. 

I had to learn the hard way about all the elements of pride.  

To be a servant of the Most High God, we must humble ourselves.  

 

I do not know what it will take for mankind to be

humbled.  

Catastrophe?  Heartache?  Pain?  Abandonment?  

Who knows.  God knows.  

And, because of our free-will choices, we may pay a heavy price to be humbled. 

 

I would have loved to have avoided prison.  I wish I had not done the things I did, to get what I got. 

 

We all must come to a place of giving up our prideful self-sufficiency.

We must be willing to ask God for His help.  

We can’t ask for help just once and be done with it.  

Knock and keep on knocking.  

We must be persistent and ask repeatedly as the needs arise. 

 

When God answers us because we were patient to wait, we will always acknowledge it was Jesus who answered.

He deserves all the Glory. 

We may have been born into a family that did not recognize us, and pride entered in as we grew.  This may have been us becoming a product of our own environment, but God can change everything and heal all that we went through.  

 

Pride will always be your enemy.  

Pride may have been borne in your hurts. 

I would have rather been born free than to have gone through the pains of life.  

Though we were not born free, we can be free.  

It costs us nothing.  No price to pay.   

 

“Jesus paid it all, and all to Him I owe.  Sin had left a crimson stain; He washed it white as snow.” 

 

I was born with pride, born out of pain.  

Life offers pain in various ways.  

 

If we can eliminate pride, then the pain has no place to grow.  

The placenta of pride needs fuel to live.  Stop feeding the baby, and the pride will die, before it is fully grown. 

 

It is our choice.  

It was His choice to die for you and me.  

Jesus died so we could live.  

Now, and forever.

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Born Once, Die Twice; Born Twice, Die Once

The title of this tells it all. 

If we have never received Jesus Christ, and the work on the Cross of Calvary that was completed through Him, then when we die physically.

That is it.  Our eternal state is sealed. 

John 3: 3-7:

“Jesus answered and said to him, (Nicodemus, a man, and a ruler of the Jews) ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”

Nicodemus said to Him,

“How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus answered,

“Most assuredly, I say to you, (like truly, truly or verily, verily that Jesus used too at times) he was emphasizing the truth and authority of what He was about to say, indicating it was a statement of great importance and certainty. 

(This is not a casual statement by Jesus.  It is mandatory to listen and learn, with eternal emphasis.) 

Meaning Hell or Heaven: our choice. 

Jesus continues,

“Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, (water birth naturally) and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

(The born-again message of the rebirth from death unto life in the spirit, from darkness unto light, and from Hell to Heaven, eternally.) 

 

Jesus continues again,

“Do not marvel (be surprised at what He says) that I said to you, you must be born again.  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

The analogy of the wind: 

The Holy Ghost being compared here, is like the wind, which blows where it wants.  The verse emphasizes that the Spirit’s work is free and cannot be controlled by humans. 

The wind’s effects are observable and can be heard too.  The wind itself is invisible.  Similarly, the Spirit’s work in salvation (John 3:3) is felt, but cannot be fully understood. 

The wind’s path is unpredictable, and so is the Spirit’s work in our salvation. 

The wind’s effects are perceptible, and so are the effects of the Spirit’s work in salvation. 

This is beyond human control, and so is the new birth. 

The best example is my story. 

 

I was the worst of the worst, in my opinion. 

Driven by death in my family, I became a psychotic, demon- possessed drug addict. 

Mom’s death from cancer at my ripe young age of 15, started the dominoes to fall. 

My daddy’s murder, three years after mom died, put me over the edge. 

I committed two attempted murders in the span of time from 1974-1976.  One was a shooting I perpetrated against my best friend.  The second, while on probation, was against a police officer. 

 

I was a self-destructive, angry, addicted, broken-hearted young man. 

I had great excuses for becoming a sinner who was beyond the pale. 

However, on Mother’s Day Morning, in 1977, while in the most notorious prison in Texas back in that era, I heard the Wind of the Holy Spirit. 

He met me in my cell when I was by myself. 

He spoke to me in my heart. 

Not verbally, but in my heart of hearts.

I did not know it was Him yet, but I knew it was supernatural.  It was, to me, more than a wind.  It was a CAT 5 hurricane of the Spirit. 

I felt it.  I could sense it.  I could understand it, to a degree. 

I was going to commit suicide within seconds. 

But I was arrested by the Holy Ghost. 

 

He spoke clearly into my heart. 

“Joseph, I love you, just the way you are.” 

Rather than jumping to my death off the third floor (tier) of this prison block, I made my way, (gently being led by the Holy Spirit who arrested me spiritually that morning, unlike my physical arrests in my past that were violent) to the Prodigal Son Chapel inside this prison and then, gave my heart to Jesus Christ through repentance. 

I was truly Born Again in the Spirit of God. 

 

Just like a bullfrog and the butterfly, they went from a tadpole to frog, and from a caterpillar in a cocoon, to a beautiful butterfly. 

The cocoon, in my opinion, is like a resting place or protective place of growth.  From a safe place, to a free place, to fly away into the Heavens. 

For me, I was in a dangerous place, not in a cocoon, but in a maximum-security prison, and was transformed in the Spirit to a new man in a holy place called church inside a prison. 

 

The good news is, you do not have to be an addict or a prisoner in prison to know Jesus.  He would not want you to suffer the way I did. 

I did it to myself. 

My sin took me farther than I wanted to go, kept me longer than I wanted to stay, and cost me more than I was willing to pay. 

In God’s eyes, there is not a sin that we can do that is so big that God can’t forgive.  But there is no sin too small, that does not need to be forgiven. 

The blaspheming of the Holy Spirit is the only unpardonable sin.   

I wrote this:  Thank God for the children who were either raised by loving, nurturing Christian parents early on, and as they grew, they maintained their walk with God, all their lives.  Or the young person who, around the age of 12-14, sensed the winds of the Holy Spirit showing them their need to be born again as well.  Under conviction, they surrendered to Jesus.  Without the damage of addiction, incarceration and insanity I went through.  This is a better testimony, in my opinion because they have avoided, with God’s help, the lifestyle I was in and that was so destructive.   

 

It is like going into God’s auto body and mechanic shop for repair. 

Some of us only have, in our minds, dings and a few dents and in need of a tune up because our spark plugs are a bit dirty. 

Then, like me, some need a new engine, transmission and a fully paint job because I have made a wreck out of my life. 

 

It cost me more than money to know Jesus.  I needed the shop for repairs and rebuilding by God. 

It would be better to spend less time in the shop, because you understood the need for Christ early on.  You have avoided a bunch of heartache. 

Does not mean you won’t have trials.  You will. 

Because Jesus is your Lord, you will overcome without the spiritual scars I have.  

Mine were self-inflicted. 

 

You are either a caterpillar or a frog. 

Frogs go from one lily pad to the other when they are grown.  As a tadpole they swim and eat until their metamorphosis.  A little caterpillar crawls, and avoids many predators, but ends up in a safe place (church as a child) growing and growing and eventually sprouts wings and flies into God’s Will. 

Both are born again. 

But I think I was the frog.  Hopping from one broken heart to the next addiction, and even prison.  I did not learn as a tadpole what to do. 

I was like the frog put into a pot of cold water, and then having the heat turned on slowly.  I did not feel the effects of addiction and brokenness, because it was hidden in the cold water of pain. 

Once I got acclimated to the water, the heat of life was turned up (prison) and before I was totally scolded and burned alive, I jumped out of the boiling waters of life and the trials that come and found refuge. 

I cooled off and received Christ. 

The frog had metamorphosis from tadpole to frog.  I had mine too. 

But it was tadpole to frog, frog to boiling water, and then the hot water to the cool hands of Jesus the Christ. 

I am glad I was not just born one time in this life, from my mother’s womb only.  I am grateful I had the honor from God to be born-again, so I would only die once in this flesh. 

If I had not met Jesus when I did, I would have died twice.  Once in the flesh, and the second time, without Christ as Savior and my name written in the Lamb’s book of Life, I would have died twice.  The second time would have been for eternity, with no hope of ever being with the Lord again. 

My fate would have been sealed. 

Eternal damnation and separation from God forever, in a place called Hell. 

 

Where are you at?  Where do you live spiritually? 

 

Are you a caterpillar waiting for a lizard to eat you? 

Are you a frog or tadpole getting swallowed up in sin? 

Jesus said,

“YOU must be born-again.”

 

If I were you, and I am not, I would run to the cocoon, or swim to the lily pad and grow up. 

Born once, die twice; Born twice, die once. 

Your choice. 

Hop into His arms.  Fly to His resting place.  He wants to hide you under the shadow of His wings and hold you in the palm of His hands.  Nail scarred hands.   

Wounds that never heal, remain a scar, beyond the flesh wound.  It is a scar deep inside our soul. 

 Wounds that are healed by Jesus, may have a scar.  But the scar is only a reminder of our sin.  It is under the Blood of Jesus. 

Forgiven. 

The scar never goes any deeper than the memory of sin. 

Why remember it at all? 

It is gone, as far as God is concerned.

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins