The Four “R’s (No Matter What)

No, I am not having an alphabet cereal fun time, but I am endeavoring to have a spiritual outcome to this true story.  Some names have been changed to keep those involved in this story safe and secure from all spiritual attacks on their lives. 

 

The Four “R’s” are explained from the Bible.

 

 Restoration is described as God’s act of bringing things back to a state of wholeness, health, and prosperity, often surpassing their original condition.  It’s a recurring theme of renewal and redemption throughout both the Old and New Testaments.  

These references reflect God’s desire to restore His relationships with humanity and creation.  

Especially the Nation of Israel.   

 

Job’s fortunes:  

In Job 42:10, “And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends.  Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” 

 

This is but one of many examples of God and His restorative Power. 

Biblical restoration goes beyond simply fixing what is broken.  It implies complete renewal and an abundance of blessings. 

 

God’s initiative is primarily HIM who initiates and accomplishes restoration, demonstrating His Grace and Love throughout. 

Restoration from God can encompass physical healing, spiritual renewal, and the mending of broken hearts and the relationships that brought on the brokenness to begin with.  

 

It is His Great Mercy prevailing in this restoration process. 

 

The New Testament highlights Jesus’ role in restoring humanity’s relationship with God through His death and resurrection.  

It is His shed Blood that bought back our relationship with the Father.  

It is because of the remission of sin.  

 

 Luke 1:77, “To give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God with which the Dayspring from on High has visited us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” 

 

Revive (Revival):  

Jeremiah 30:17, “For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord.” 

 

To revive is like a heart patient who has flat-lined, and the electrical shock applied by the doctor, REVIVES the heart to beat again.  

Shock value is placed on how God through Jesus, brings the dead things that have died and are rotting in a spiritual grave, back to life and living.  

 

True revival, in the sense of our nation turning to God, involves the church being shocked back into repentance (first), so that true revival can begin again, and hopefully never stop.  

 

If the church does not repent, then the hope of a sweep of God’s Spirit is almost impossible.  

 

It is probable and possible.

“If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My Face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14.

 

IF MY PEOPLE will do what this scripture directs the church to do, and be sincerely repentant, then and only then can revival begin.  

 

This is my opinion, so I hope you get the love behind my words regarding revival.  

 

God will do what His Word says whether we get in line with Him or not.  

 

It is corporate repentance versus individual repenting of sin. 

 

Reconcile:  

 

The concept of reconciliation involves finding a way to make different ideas, facts, or situations agree or work together.  

It will kill conflicts withing people, jobs, and even our walk with Jesus as we repent. 

 

The real reconciliation is proved by the shed Blood of Jesus for our sins.  

He has reconciled us back to normalcy with the Heavenly Father. 

 

Repentance:

 

(I saved the best for last).

 

Simply put, get on your knees and talk to Jesus about your issues and sins.  

Spend time in a state of sorrowful regret for what you and I have done.  

 

Daily, hourly and minute by minute, try and talk to Him all day long.  

 

From the time your feet hit the floor by your bed, till you lay your head down on a pillow; talk to Him.  

 

The quicker we repent, and do not linger without speaking in prayer to the Most High, the cleaner we become, and peace arrives.  

 

Sooner, than later, is the best medicine called repentance, a turning away from the sins we do.  

 

Run from them, do not jog or walk crawl.  

 

Run for your life, as your spiritual life depends on daily repentance. 

 

 I must pause and tell a true story about my life, not to interrupt, but to clarify why restoration, revival, reconciling, and repentance play such a big part in my 47 years since my Salvation in 1977. 

 

I was living in my car in 1991, because of a backslidden time in my life when I repented.  

 

I re-affirmed my Salvation in Christ and truly meant what I prayed. 

 

I was in a state of almost being homeless.  I lived in a 1974 Datsun B-210 two door car. My spare tire was my pillow at night, as I slept at the rest area parking for 18-wheeler trucks.  

Some nights, I slept by the dumpster at a motel nearby.  

 

My life was in this condition because of my sin.  

 

I was still working full time as a baker, but my financial life was in ruin. 

 

One night, around midnight in November in Portland, Oregon, I was reading my Bible inside of my car, using a penlight to read by.  

I didn’t want to run down my battery, because I needed my car to start in the morning. It was how I got to work.

 

I ran across Joel Chapter 2, by accident.  

Well, by accident in my mind, but it was the Holy Ghost doing this.  

 

 (I have injected my actual thoughts at this time in my life, as exactly how I was thinking during the reading of the scriptures).

 

I began to read, not at the beginning of this chapter, but began at verse 21.  

 

It read, “Fear not, O land…”

 

(Boy was I living in fear inside of a car late at night, continuing through verse 27). 

 

“...be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done marvelous things!...” 

(I did not feel He had done much for me at this time).

 

“…Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field…”

 (I was one paycheck away from full homelessness and would have felt like grazing like an animal for sure if that happened). 

 

“...For the open pastures are springing up, and the tree bears its fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield their strength.  Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God; for He has given you the former rain faithfully…”

 

(Boy was it raining at the truck area I was parked in during November in Oregon). 

 

“...And He will cause the rain to come down for you-the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. 

The threshing floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.  So, I will restore to you (I thought for a half-second, YOU mean little ole’ ME?)  ...the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you…”

 

(Swarming locust is pressure in a divorce, crawling locust is health issues and almost homeless, consuming locust, in my mind at that moment was all I had was being eaten up, financially, physically and mentally, and the chewing locust felt like taking three steps forward and five steps back, because I just could not get ahead in my life at this time.  Seemed like no hope for me at all).

 

“...You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied…”

 

 (I had a half of a package of Ritz Crackers, and a small can of Vienna sausages to my name.  Payday was a week off, so I was in a forced fasting period.  “Eat in PLENTY!” I would have been grateful for some crumbs on the floorboard of my Datsun at that point.  I lost 40 pounds during my living-in-my-car era.) 

 

“...and praise the Name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.” 

 

(Yes, He was dealing with me in all manner of living and surviving this cold night in a monsoon of rain.  I was beginning to thank Him at this very moment that I did have something to eat, and a dry car with a sleeping bag.  I looked around the inside of the car, thanking Him, with tears in my eyes, knowing full well, there were hundreds of homeless people in Portland during this time in1991.  

There were over 3,200 homeless people in Oregon, statewide, with the majority in big cities like Portland.  600 were children.  Some were in emergency housing or in shelters, but many lived on the streets.  Under overpasses with tents, if they were fortunate enough to have a tent to stay dry in. 

I am in my car, not a tent.  I was very thankful at this very moment continuing to read Joel Chapter 2.  Tears dripping on to the pages of my only Bible). 

 

“...And My people will never be put to shame.  Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel…”

 (In my car at that very moment was my thinking that He was with me).

 

“I am the Lord your God…” (Me, and He is my God) “and there is no other.  My people shall never be put to shame.” 

 

Wow.  What can I say now to what I just wrote to you?

Believe it or not, as I am writing this letter, I am spiritually reliving that moment in my Datsun.  I am sitting here at a computer screen and a keyboard, writing, but I can see that moment in the rain, pelting down on to the roof of my Datsun.  In the spirit, I can see but I can physically smell too.  Right now! 

 

I can smell the rain.  I can hear the trucks idling their Diesel engines.  

I can see the words from my Bible, as they literally hovered in midair in my car.  

I am reliving this, but at the very moment, in my cold interior of my car, in a sleeping bag with a penlight, I am worshipping my Jesus, and as I write this now, I can feel His presence with me as I type. 

 

He never left me in that moment in 1991.  

Those words from the Bible that hovered in midair in my car were profound to me.  

 

I said to myself, at that very moment I finished reading about locust and restoration; I blurted out loud to the Lord, “You mean You will do this for me?” 

 

The very next morning, as I was preparing to put on my last set of white “baker” clothing that had been laundered the day before, I was getting a sense of a miracle coming for me.  

After work, I made my way inside the truck stop cafeteria when the miracle happened.  A temporary job at the truck stop, unloading a truck. 

That money I earned, though it was only $40.00 cash. It paid for some fuel, a hot meal, and a motel room for the night. 

 

I showered after my meal at the truck stop and turned on Christian television on the black and white television inside this motel room. 

With my few belongings, including an old briefcase full of my old photographs of my family, and some bills that needed to be paid, I watched the preacher on the T.V. 

 

It was E.V. Hill preaching.  He said, as he pointed at the camera inside this big church that was filming him live for Christian television…

 

“I see a man out there, who knew the Lord Jesus, but fell away for a season.  You are not a failure, and your life is about to take a turn for the good.  You may have failed in your past, but Jesus loves you, and you will come out of your current circumstances soon.  He will restore to you the years that may have been deemed by you as wasted; and He will give back to you what was eaten away from your life because of your sin, and your circumstances.  Many of those things were not your fault.  You are taking blame for things that you had nothing to do with.  Be assured of His love for you, Sir.” 

 

Then he finished his message with John 8:36.

 

“FOR whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.” 

 

Wow again! 

God read my mail through that preacher. 

Yes, at that moment, I was in the Spirit realm in my heart.  I turned off the television, got on my knees and wept.  I wept because I had discounted the ability of the Lord to restore me for years.  

Even though I had felt His Presence in the car the night before, I still had my doubts of His ability to restore me.  

 

I repented for my doubts and unbelief's that I had in my heart. 

 

It was only a month later that the Lord gave me an apartment.  

 

And the rest is history now. 

 

From a moment in a car at a rest area.  Reading Joel 2, mostly out loud to myself as the rain beat on the roof of the car.  It rained so hard, it was coming down sideways and hitting the car windows so hard that the seals in the windows leaked.  The inside of my car was getting damp.  

 

My perspective had to shift at that moment when I said, “You mean You will do this for me?” 

He did, and He continues to restore the years all those bugs ate from my life.   

 

The Four R’s. 

Restoration, Revival, Reconciliation and Repentance. 

 

Not necessarily in this exact order, but the Lord Jesus has done what He said He would do for me, and He can for you too. 

 

Never give up or give in to the lies the world says about you.  

The enemy of your soul is out to steal, kill and destroy your dreams. 

Whatever you do, and wherever you go, remember this one thing. 

 

Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and of good courage, do not fear or be afraid, for the Lord your God goes with you, and He will never leave you or abandon you.” 

 

He is with you now.  

 

He was with me then and is still here as I finish this thought. 

 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.  

 

Trust Him to restore you.  Fully and completely.  

He loves all of us the same.  

He is no respecter of persons.  

He is there right now with you as you read this account of my life. 

 

From the eyes of a child, way back when, I witnessed many things that ate away at my young life.  I have been set free. 

 

Remember John 8:36.

 

“Who the Son, (Jesus) sets free, is free indeed.” 

 

You can count on Him.  

He counts on you to trust HIM, no matter what. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Sibling Rivalry

The account of my life is very painful to write about, and there was really no rivalry between my sister and myself.  

My behavior was the culprit, and the events that took place started back when I was 8 and my sister was 10 years old. 

Unlike Miriam and Aaron in the Bible in Numbers 12, my sister and I loved each other, but time would tell if this love would last. 

In the Book of Numbers, Miriam was punished by God with leprosy because of her and Aaron’s actions.  

These two siblings challenged Moses’ authority and marriage, suggesting God speaks through others as well.  God appears in the Tabernacle, reaffirming Moses’ unique role as His prophet and mediator of the covenant. 

 

Leprosy was her punishment.  

Moses pleaded with God to heal Miriam, demonstrating his humility and forgiveness.  Though Miriam is exiled from the camp for seven days, and the Israelites remain at Hazeroth until she is healed, this illustrates the impact of their actions on the community. 

 

They needed to respect God’s chosen leader Moses and not let pride or jealousy reign.  

Humility and forgiveness were the outcome of this story. 

 

This relates to my sister and myself in several ways. 

Again, for the sake of privacy, I will call my sister Drue. 

 

Drue was two years older than me and suffered more abuse from our mother than myself back when Drue was 10 and I was only 8 years old.  The scars lived on in the both of us, as time went by fast, after our mother died in 1971.  

Drue was 17 and I was 15 when Mom died from cancer. 

 

Life went on. 

Drue moved away to Georgia to live with my Aunt Wanda, my mother's sister. 

My older brother joined the Army. 

 

I was left with Daddy.  

I was already a drug addict, and I ruined our relationship all the way up to his murder when I was 18.  

I never had a chance to reconcile with my Daddy, and the pain in my heart bled out to the point that my heart grew hard and callused. 

 

Again, time went on and I ended up in prison at age 20.  

My brother was still in the Army and my sister had her own life to live after marrying her high school sweetheart, living happily ever after. 

 

Mom and Dad were gone, and the Wilkins’ family disbanded in a bad way.  

It was spiritual leprosy, like Miriam had.  

The reality was evident.  

I had the spiritual disease, not Drue or my brother.  

I was a sheep.  

A lost sheep, and the black sheep of the remnant of a family that discarded me for many years. 

Back to the story of Miriam, a type and set of my sister.  

 

Miriam was described in the Bible as a wise and courageous woman who played a crucial role in saving her brother Moses’ life. 

 

My sister was also wise.  

Drue was wise enough to move away from the tattered remnant of a family, after Mom died. 

 

In 1974, when my Daddy was murdered, Drue was pregnant with her first child.  

My Daddy never got to see his first grandchild.  

Drue was hurt deeply yet moved on in her life and became a successful nurse.  Her husband was a life-long Army Ranger and retired from the Military to become a juvenile probation officer around New York City. 

 

Prior to Drue moving to New York, I visited her and her husband.  

By then, in 1981, just after Mt. Saint Helens blew her top, I moved to Washington.  Her husband was stationed there. 

 

I was not serving Jesus at this time in my life.  

I was 25 years old and backslidden away from the Lord. 

 

Not a good Aaron example at all.  

The real brother to Moses was the first High Priest of the Israelites.  His early life is shrouded in mystery, with various theories about the origin of his name and his upbringing.  

Some thoughts are that he was raised in Pharaoh’s palace. 

 

The one weakness in Aaron was like me.  Aaron struggled with insecurity.  

Like all Biblical characters, Aaron was unabashedly human.  

Despite being commissioned as priest for the people, Aaron is not perfect by any stretch.  Several instances of his life (and mine) testified to his insecurities. 

 

In Exodus 32, Aaron was requested to cast new gods for the people.  

Without hesitation, Aaron agreed.  

He knew better.  

I knew better than to be stupid and addicted, yet I continued in my rebellion. 

 

My relationship with my sister became strained when I lived with her for that short season in 1981.  

It came crashing down all because I cast, (like Aaron) a new god (my addictions), into my life, ignoring my older sister Drue.  I hurt her deeply. 

 

Towards the end of our time, I stole her credit cards, and a diamond ring which was given to her by my uncle who was a Vietnam veteran.  My uncle gave her this expensive ring, as a token of love during her wedding, prior to my Daddy being killed. 

 

I stole from her, and abruptly left the State of Washington, heading quickly to Idaho. 

 

Time went on with this sibling rivalry that I created. 

To make a very long, painful story shorter, I was temporarily reunited with Drue in 1994.  

Over the phone, I led her to Jesus Christ, and it seemed all was forgiven. 

 

However, the communication died, like all our past issues were supposed to, and we became estranged again.  

From 1994 until today in 2025, we have not spoken even once. 

 

Over thirty years of silence. 

 

I have prayed, repented, and prayed some more, with no answers in sight.  

I can relate to the story in the Bible regarding this sibling situation. 

 

Eventually, after Miriam was healed from her leprosy, she and Aaron died in the wilderness before the Israelites enter the promise land. 

The well of water which was provided for the children of Israel in the desert, dried up when Miriam died.  

Aaron died five months later, though Moses smote the rock twice, and water continued all the way to the Promise Land.  

God did bring the miracle of the Promise Land, despite the children of Israel running around the mountain for 40 years. 

 

I had absolutely no business being in a backslidden state in 1981.  

 

I loved Jesus, but was living in the world, rather than serving God.  

My spiritual desert lasted from 1979 (two years after being released from prison), until 1989.  

Ten long years of misery. 

 

I burned every bridge I had with family.  

No one trusted this so-called Christian Joe. 

No one to blame but myself. 

 

Sibling rivalry, as youngsters, can be healthy as children decide the fate of the other siblings in a loving pecking order.  

Just like chickens, the strongest survive.  

 

I survived, but I also knew better than to steal from my normal sister.  

I knew better than to steal her credit cards, heirloom ring, leaving a wake of destruction that only time and Jesus could heal. 

 

I am thankful I led Drue to Christ.  

Regardless of her current walk with Jesus at her ripe age of 71, I am not responsible for her actions.  

If she has decided to never contact me, so be it.  

 

Does that hurt?  

Yes, it does, because she is my sister, and I love her. 

 

Miriam was loved by Aaron.  Their relationship had a lot of hurdles to overcome with their brother Moses. 

 

In the Bible, Moses and Aaron grieved Miriam’s death, despite the text not detailing a mourning period for her.  

Here is why some scholars and traditions suggest Aaron and Moses were saddened by their sister Miriam’s death. 

 

Family relationship:  Aaron, Moses, and Miriam were siblings who shared a history, and played crucial roles in the Israelites’ journey to the Promise Land.  

It is likely that their strong emotional bonds, and the loss of a sister would naturally cause grief. 

 

I would love to find a scripture reference or hear the Voice of the Holy Ghost regarding my sister Drue. 

 

I have prayed, fasted, and grieved for over 31 years in hopes of reuniting with my sister.  

She is my blood sister. 

 

Most normal families have a close bond with each other.  

My family line and lineage have no history to speak of.  

My Daddy had two brothers and one sister. 

My mother had two sisters, and two half-brothers. 

 

I do not have any insights from God to know who, if any, were Christians in my family tree.

This “tree” feels more like a family weed.  

 

My grandmother was a believer, and my aunt was a believer.  

Both loved Jesus with all their hearts.  They are responsible for praying me into God’s Kingdom.  

This is a fact that can’t be disputed. 

 

As far as the tree that grows close to the waters of life, the hope deferred has caused my heart to grow weary at times.  

Seems like the water is far off for the roots in my life that appear to be parched for the love of my sister.

 

I am not getting any younger, and I wait, pray and wait some more.  

I know God and His promises are Yes and Amen to them that believe.  

I will always believe. 

 

Sibling rivalry. 

Drue.  

She’s named after one of my aunts.  

She is a successful, retired nurse.  

She has two grown children with “who knows” how many grandchildren.  

God knows. 

 

Here is how I deal with the former sibling rivalry.  

Remember, I created the deep wounds, not Drue. 

 

I look at things this way.  

I have people in my life who I currently cherish.  

All of them are not blood related. 

One is a woman of God who I have a deep respect for, and she knows who she is.  

I consider her my little sister. 

 

If I never see Drue again in this life, I will see her in Heaven. 

I do not have a vacancy in my heart that bleeds for restoration.  

I would love a family reunion like normal people.  

 

I have never been normal, nor is the life I have lived come anywhere near to normal. 

So be it. 

 

Jesus knows my heart and He, alone, is enough for me.  

 

I have recently learned to let Him open my eyes a little bit more for Mankind.  

 

He has, and it is a good thing that brings tears from my aged eyes.  

Like today, in a prison this morning, when I preached. 

 

Men got saved.  

Many wept.

Jesus did what He always does.  

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  Psalm 147: 3. 

 

If you and I have wounds from our past, He can heal them.  He desires to.  He wants us to heal more than we do. 

 

It is His Nature.  

He loves us so much that if anyone understands sibling rivalry within a family, He does.  

He dusted off the sandals of His own feet to move on away from those who did not receive His message of repentance. 

 

Are you welcome in your own hometown?  

Jesus was rejected at every turn.  

Do not be weary in doing well, Saints.  

People are people.  

And if human beings live, they are apt to offend those who they profess that they love. 

 

Love should be unconditional. 

Learn what I have learned.  

Love those who are unlovable.  

Love them, even if they hate you.  

Love them the way Jesus does.  

His Love never fails. 

 

I will never again put myself in a place where I create a rivalry.  

Even as an only child, rivalry comes in different forms.  

It comes from parents, or lack of a good parent. 

It comes from peers in school. 

It comes from strangers.  

 

Jesus told us that the world will hate you for His Namesake. 

 

I would rather be hated by the world and loved by Jesus.  

No sibling rivalry there.  

He will never leave me or forsake me.  

He is the best family member I have.  

The only one Who really counts.  

 

He counts, and we can fully count on Him to do what He says He will do. 

 

If you need to have a little talk with Jesus, do it now.  

 

Do it while your heart is tender to hear the Voice of the Holy Ghost.  

He is with you right now where you are at. 

 

Listen closely.  

He is speaking.  

Can you hear Him?

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

 

Two Different Brothers

This story is real.  The names have been changed to protect the interests of both parties. 

I want to talk about my biological brother first, to put into perspective about why I am telling the story. 

For anonymity purposes, I will call him Dean. 

 

He is my older brother.  

I am the youngest of three children.  I have a sister who is older than me by two years.  

Dean is four years older than me. 

 

For those who know my story, I will not labor over all the horrid details of our growing up years, except to say that Dean was a first born. 

At least 100 pictures of this first-born son to the Wilkins family existed at one time.  

I ended up with the photo albums but lost them in my last arrest.  I was arrested on Industrial Boulevard near Downtown Dallas, Texas.  My effects, including the photo albums, were strewn all over the road in an untidily scattered way.  Cars ran over the albums and destroyed all the pictures of my family.  Deans included.  

The ultimate price I paid for being hit by an oncoming car in my addiction.  

I was running from the police.  A bad habit I had in my addiction.   Oncoming cars, one of which hit me and knocked me unconscious.  I woke up inside the Dallas City Jail. 

 

My brother grew up in our home and was favored above myself and my sister.  He was favored more by my mother; his high I.Q. made it easy for anyone to acknowledge his smarts.  

Daddy loved us three children equally, but not my evil mother. 

 

She would say to me, “Why can’t you be as smart as Dean?  What is wrong with you, Joseph?” 

 

He was a master chess player.  He taught himself to play and tried to teach me.  

I learned, but he would never let me win.  

So, I quit trying to keep up with the intellectual older brother. 

 

Dean made straight A + grades in Calculus, Trigonometry, Chemistry, and Physics.  

He never cracked a book.  Never did homework.  Always had a natural tendency to learn quickly.  

It is no wonder that he became an airline pilot for Continental Airlines in the 1980’s.  Had to be smart and stable to become one of “them” kind of people.  

“Great vernacular, Joseph.” 

 

Me, on the other hand, I was a failure in school.  

I should have been a foot. I could have run away from home had it not been for being pigeon-toed and wearing a size 13 shoe at 12 years old.

 I would have been a light in the Wilkins home.  

My bulb burned out once Mom yelled at me about being smart like my brother.  

I hated her for that. 

 

I was stepped on by Mom a lot.  

I made my only “A” in spelling.  

I won the spelling bee at age 9.  (I think that was my age, but it was a long time ago).  

I won the spelling contest by spelling accurately the word: “Ocular.”  

 

She never acknowledged my success in Spelling class.  

Her words to me that day I brought home my certificate of completion was, “Is that it?  So, you spelled a word.  What about the F you got in History Joseph?  What about the F you have in Math?” 

 

And, so on, and so forth.  

She had a way with words.  

Sticks and stones would have felt better upon my brow than those harsh words of criticism and ridicule coming from a hateful mother. 

 

Dean succeeded in being the focus of attention at every turn. 

On to the reality of this story.  

Brothers in the Bible. 

 

Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau, and the apostles like Simon and Andrew.  

Joseph and his brothers as examples.  

The concept of brothers also extends to those within a nation or those united by shared beliefs. 

 

Cain kills Able.  

Jacob and Esau were twin brothers with a complex relationship, like me and Dean.  

Marked by competition and deception.  

Even Joseph and his brothers.  

The breakdown of Joseph and some of his brothers leading to Joseph’s imprisonment was like my life.  

I was not put into prison because of jealous brothers.  I was put into prison because of my sin. 

 

My brother Dean did not send me to prison, but he might as well have.  

He belittled me and made me feel constantly inferior to his expertise in everything he touched.  

I do not blame him today, but back then I did.  

My hatred grew as each year passed. 

 

Jesus commands his followers to love one another, just as He loved them, and this love is presented as a way for the world to recognize who are His disciples.  

 

The Bible makes it clear that love for one another is inseparable from love for God.  1st John 4: 20 declares, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?  And this commandment we have from Him; that he who loves God must love his brother also.” 

 

Tough pill to swallow for me back then.  

Before I met Christ, I hated everyone, including Dean. 

 

A day came when less than 14 hours from the time my Daddy, (our Daddy) was murdered, Dean had to fly from Anchorage, Alaska where he was stationed in the Army.  

On a special Red Cross leave of absence, Dean flew directly to El Paso, Texas to claim the body of our dead Daddy.  

 

I never thought how he must have felt to see the cold body in the refrigerator of the coroner’s office, back in 1974.  

Dean was 22 years old.  I was 18.  

The coroner pulled out in a six-foot drawer, to be claimed by my brother, and asked him, “Is this your dad?” 

 

His head had not been bandaged, so the gunshot wound was fresh, just as he was found by the Sheriff’s office, some 14 hours earlier as his lifeless body was taken to this cold storage facility.  

Blood everywhere.  One third of his skull was gone. 

 

Dean’s perfect grades in school and college did not prepare him for this moment.  

It did not matter to him how smart he was while in the Army.  

This scene could never allow Dean to reflect on how good he was on his aptitude test to join the Army.  

His excellence in the Armed Forces mattered not at that very moment as he had to deal with the death of our once loved Daddy.  

 

Not just a death.  A murder. 

 

That is my brother.  

My flesh and blood brother Dean.  

I have only seen him two times since my Daddy’s demise. 

 

Once, after I got out of prison, and the other time, when he came to visit me in Oregon City, Oregon in 1988.  

He was a commercial airline pilot, stationed outside of Aurora, Colorado, and out of nowhere, he contacted me.  

We visited for one day.  A short, 24-hour period, before he left to fly away to Australia.  

His last words to me that day at P.D.X. Portland airport was, “I have a bunch of flyer miles to use up, Brother Joe.  If you have a passport, I want you to join me soon for a trip to Australia.  I will wait to hear from you, Brother.” 

 

That was the last time I physically saw my older brother Dean. 

 

Fast forward to 2015 from 1988.  

27 years passed, and I was able, through a supernatural event, I get in touch with Dean. 

I asked him, over the phone, “Where have you been for all these years?”
 

He calmly answered that he had been flying for Saudia Arabia airlines and has been living in the Samoan Islands for years, married and with two children. 

 

We talked for a moment.  

He ended the phone call, which seemed sincere at the time, with a question to me.  

“Hey Brother Joe, can you help me with some money I need?” 

 

Wow.  

I was shocked.  

After all we lived through in childhood, and all that we had to endure with our mother dying of Cancer when I was 15 and Dean was 18.  

Even after our dear Daddy departed at age 46, Dean only wanted money?  

Are you kidding me? 

 

I haven’t heard back from him since.  

 

It is now 2025 and he lives in Oregon with his wife.  

No contact.  

No nothing.  

I have lost contact with my blood brother, perhaps forever. 

 

Now, on to the real brother.  The “different brother.”  

The one who I cherish, more than he may know. 

I will call him Edward. 

Ed for short, is a man who is a believer in Jesus Christ.  

He was saved during the Jesus movement in the 1970 era.

 

Ed is related to me by marriage.  He has gone to the prisons with me in Oregon and has an exact opposite testimony than me.  

In fact, it is a better testimony because he did not wreck his life like I did mine. 

His story is not deficient of sorrows of his own.  

He overcame a lot of heartache too, but because of Jesus, he has maintained his walk with the Lord Jesus all his life since his transformation early on. 

 

Ed shares in the prisons with me and his story brings much perspective on “how” to live for Jesus without all the chaos of addiction.  

 

OH, but he is an addict in my opinion.  He is addicted to Jesus! 

 

Ed has several grown children, and a bunch of grandchildren.  His children love the Lord and several of them are in ministry to this day. 

His legacy is one that is like the coat of many colors. 

 

1st John 3:14 declares, “We know we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren.  He who does not love his brother abides in death.” 

 

Wow.  

Ed shares from his heart many parables of truth from God’s Word.  He has story upon story of the mercy of God and His grace upon his life.  

He is married to one woman.  Only one. 

I am married to one woman too.  

However, my past is riddled with failure upon failure regarding relationships.  

I will leave that one lay dead there. 

 

Let me not kid myself.  

I am not Ed.  And Ed is not me.  

We are like oil and water.  When mixed, they make a good salad dressing.  

If you get my drift.  

He learned, early on, about Jesus and what NOT to do in life.  

I learned, without Jesus yet, what to do that was entirely wrong.  

Oil and water. 

 

When it comes to passing from death to life because we love the brethren means to me a simple point.  

Since actions speak louder than words, I will simplify this.

 Ed is a doer of the Word.  

He is human and able to mess up, and none of us are perfect, but if I ever wanted to duplicate to a degree anyone I know as a man of God with integrity, it would be Ed. 

Why?  

Because he is a different brother than the one, I grew up with?  To a degree, yes. 

 

Is he my biological brother?  

No. 

Am I comparing him to Dean?  

Never. 

 

It is an honor to know a man like Ed.  He has ministered with me, side by side in prison ministry, and he and his precious wife have supported this prison ministry for many, many years.  

That has not gone unnoticed by me when it comes to support, as preaching is not cheap.  It takes money to travel and preach.  

This family is a family of soul winners. 

 

“How can that be, Joe?”  

I am glad you asked me. 

 

Because of Ed, and the love he has for men in prison, and men in general, he is a man’s man, in my opinion.  

I am not talking about Macho this, or Macho that.  

I am talking about a word that is lacking in many circles of Christianity and the local churches. 

 

It is a thing called integrity.  

Integrity is different than just character.  

Godly character.  

Godly integrity is the long-term, genuine history of a man and his walk with God. 

 

Not a firecracker.  Lit one moment, and then “Bang.”  

 

I am talking about a flare that burns and burns and sheds light in dark places.  

The calling of God is different for many people.  Women and men alike.  

Some preach.  

Some teach.  

 

Ed is a teacher without saying a word.  

 

I would rather see a sermon, than hear one anyday. 

 

A life lived for God is a better testimony than a sermon with five points.  

I only have three-point sermons.  

Jesus died for you.  You must repent.  And you MUST be born again. 

 

Ed preaches without preaching.  

He teaches without a bunch of Greek or Hebrew explanations.  

He probably knows more than I do.  

Truth is more powerful than words spoken. 

Legacy. 

 

Ed, and his legacy are more than an inheritance to his children and grandchildren.  

It is more than homes, cars, and boats.  

It is more than even being a brother in the Lord to me.

It is an inheritance of longevity in serving Christ. 

 

We are the same age, but he is older in the sense of knowing Christ longer and knowing more about how to live, without the history of a reconstructed life.  

My life had to be rebuilt in the Lord, and the Lord Jesus did a good job giving me a second chance at life.  

Ed had a chance to serve God early on.  

He took the chance, and it was more than a chance encounter.  

He met the Living God, and the Living God still dwells in Ed and his legacy of love for souls. 

 

So, a day will come when I lay my soul-winners crown down at the feet of Jesus in Heaven.  

1st Thessalonians 2:19, “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing?  Is it not even you in the presence of our lord Jesus Christ at His coming?  For you are our glory and joy.” 

There may or may not be a real crown with jewels.  That is left for the theologians to figure out.  

I could not win those to Christ in the way I do, unless I am sent to do so. 

 

Ed sends me. 

Ed supports me in most every way known as a true servant.  

He cares about men in prison, and he cares that they have a bible. 

I have watched him, his children, and his family for years. 

Nothing changes.  

All is still good regarding this family of God serving God. 

 

Two different brothers. 

 

Dean and Ed. 

Both have integrity.

Both have lived through some heartaches and pains in life. 

Both have a history. 

One has a history of being Agnostic. 

The other, loves Jesus.  

 

My prayer is that the one who is a non-believer will be one soon.  

He is my brother by the blood of my mom and dad. 

 

The other one.  Good ole’ Ed. 

 

I love them both.  

 

I honor Ed today in this letter.  He may not know this or even receive this note of love from me today in this story. 

 

“Ed, I hope when the Lord lets me make disciples of men in prison, that I always remember your influence on me for these some 24 years plus since I have known you.  I celebrate you today in this letter.  I honor you, “Man of God.’” 

 

So, if you have two different brothers in your life, I hope that your influence on them, even in some small way, reflects the love of God I hold dear to my heart in loving my other brother. 

Ed.  

Good, ole’ Ed.   

Keep looking up!   

 

If I never see my brother Dean again, this side of Heaven, I know I will see you again, in Oregon, in the future, and we will go into a prison there and tell “them” men, “Jesus is Lord.”

 You tell them your side of the Gospel, and I will try mine again.  

 

I will endeavor to make a good salad dressing from your oil, and my water.  

Bless you Ed. 

 

Regardless of the type of salad we make together, the dressing will be delicious. 

 Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

No Deposit, No Return

Many states in America use the recycling method for cans and some glass bottles, offering a return of $.05-$.10 apiece for recycling them for a financial return on their investment.  

Yes, they invested hours walking or driving around picking up discarded recyclables, often in dumpsters, trash cans, and alongside highways and byways.  

This is a lot of work, considering seeing one giant lawn and Hefty bags full of these treasures, getting our shiny dime in return, nets about $5 - 8 dollars.  

If it took three hours of walking, dumpster diving, and driving, then there is not any profit to be made, except, of course, the feeling of satisfaction, knowing we are cleaning up the planet.  

It sounds like a way to make a deal with Mother Earth.  

Greener planet without glass and cans reflecting the sunlight in Texas.  A true “green new deal” without making a deal at all.  

Nevertheless, no deposit, no return is a reality for some of these states.

Spiritually we get a return on our deposits of prayer, Bible reading, digesting what we read, and our worship/devotional time with Jesus, our Lord.  

No recycling here except the concept of taking a dirty vessel like an empty beer bottle with a .10 cent return, recycling, it and getting our shiny outcome in return.  

What about the dirty vessels we are without Christ?

 Some people will let us cash in our dirty vessels by making a deal with the devil.  

I would rather take my sin-filled vessel and have Jesus clean me up, to hold a better product inside.  That means His Holy Spirit lives in me, having my vessel poured out wherever He wants to use me.

Is my vessel a container of honor or dishonor?

2nd Timothy 2: 20-21 declares, “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.  Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, (dishonor) he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”

Are we really prepared for every good work?  

Are we ready to be used by Jesus?

No matter our spiritual condition, He loves us and wants to use our lives for His Glory.

The dumpsters I physically dove into to eat were real ones.  

No metaphors here.  

Real filthy, maggot- infested dumpsters filled with refuse from a restaurant.  

I ate at this fine food establishment.  My seat at the table was not one with fine linen tablecloths.  Rather old, wet cardboard boxes, mixed with trash and remnants of food discarded from the kitchen staff, and out into garbage bags with no twist ties.  

Twist ties took too long for me to undo.  

 

I tore the bags open and fished for anything somewhat edible.  

Once I found a morsel or scrap, I flicked off the swarming maggots and devoured the delicious garbage.  

Hence, a dumpster-diver.  

 

I was diving deep and wide in my sin of addictions.  They took me farther and deeper into insanity than I really wanted to go.  

Meth, shot into my collapsed veins with a needle, drove me to the garbage can of life.  

Properly named a vessel of dishonor.  

Nothing noteworthy or honorable about a stinky, filthy, and addicted 18-year-old boy, who wanted to eat my dinner inside with the white tablecloths.  

I did not qualify, because my money was spent on three McDonalds cheeseburgers with no fries.  

That was my daily diet when I did have money to spare.  

Otherwise, it was peanut butter and honey sandwiches and sweet tea when I got paid from my job in the filthy printing ink company I worked for.  

My hands and fingernails remained a dark shade of charcoal black stained deep within the cuticles of my fingers and thumbs.
My callused palms were stained from the printing ink.  

No chemical made could remove these imbedded stains.

No wonder I never had a girlfriend.
My sin-stained heart and sin-stained skin, to match, had the dark recesses internally and externally.  It was a clear indication that I had no return because I had nothing to deposit into my life worth a penny.  I was worthless in my mind.  

Not worth a single, red cent.

Something needed to change, but I liked being a filthy addict.  

Drugs kept me bound, and it took another near-death experience to somewhat wake me up.

This all happened prior to my Daddy’s murder in late 1974.  

Months before this horrible news came to me, I had no excuses to be as bad as I was.  

I went as far as stealing a clear liquid chemical from the previously mentioned printing ink company.  It was used to clean out the steel vats we used to mix the printing ink in.  This flammable liquid, when soaked into a cloth rag and put inside a paper sack, offered me another new chemical high.  

If Meth was not bad enough, I took my addiction to another demonic level by breathing these toxic fumes from a bag closed tightly around my mouth and nose.  

“Breathe deep, Joe.”

I would breathe these fumes until I actually heard the sounds of crickets getting louder and faster in my ears, until I passed out.

I would wake up an hour or so later with a headache and repeat this process until the small jar of toxic liquid was gone.

Brain damage, yes.  

Heart and lung damage, yes.  

Spiritual destruction?  

Almost completely, until Jesus intervened.  

 

Thank God there would be a return on His investment from His Shed Blood for former inmate number 262066 in a Texas prison.  

 

He rescued me and gave me a new non-toxic brain, new lungs, and every other organ I must have destroyed from the 7 years of daily drug and alcohol use and abuse.  

Only Jesus could help me.

Gideon, King Cyrus, King Hezekiah and others were found by God as vessels of honor, not dishonor, like I was.  

Emphasis on the “WAS” because I was an addict, convicted felon, and state hospital patron.  

A proper nut case in the nut house in Austin, Texas.  State hospital stay for 90 days from the Austin Police Department.  

Apparently, the cops did not like me directing traffic on their beat.  

Just because I did not have a badge and a gun did not mean my skills as a traffic controller were not admirable.  Can’t imagine why.  Can you?

Bottom line is this.  We reap what we sow.  

I did, and so does every person on this planet.

No deposit, no return?  Ask yourself a simple question.

“What are you depositing into your spirit daily?”

If you want a return on your life, put Jesus on the throne of your life, and let Him direct your paths.  

It is only a short life here on this planet compared to eternity.  

Make your shots count.

Learn the Bible.  

It will teach you more about what to do than what not to do.  

 

I leaned from my past horrible life, more about what not to do, than to do.  

Now, with Jesus, I know the difference.  

There is a difference.

He gathers the refuse in this life and recycles our garbage into worthy vessels.  

You and I are holding something in our vessels.  

“What is in your bottle?”

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Maximum, Optimum Return

The greatest investment we can ever put into our lives is not financial, or our time, or even our other so-called priorities.  

Yes, our jobs and careers are part of life.  

Our children, if we have children, grandchildren, and beyond are important, and the love we have for them is unending. 

 

However, even as much as we love our families, and our ministries, and our local church, the investment of time that we put into them is good and rewarding.  

Yet, the most important investment that carries with it, the joy and fulfillment, is the dividends and interest we gain from knowing Christ and Him crucified.  

 

Knowing Him and the fellowship of His sufferings. 

 

Knowing, and having relationships, beyond the natural ones we love, including our families and friends, do not hold weight in knowing Jesus Christ.  

Knowing Him first is the best investment we will ever put our time into. 

 

It is because we reap what we sow.  

And it is because this eternal law of sowing and reaping is for those who know Him and for those who do not know Him yet.  

 

This is not theory, but the law. 

It is a law, just like gravity.  

 

I would never test gravity from the 11th floor of a building, to try and see if gravity works by throwing something from that height.  

Especially not myself.  

I do not have a parachute or wings.   I may want to fly, and desire to fly, but we are not built to test all the laws of nature.   

 

Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation describes gravity as a force by stating that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers of mass.  

 

Ughh.  

 Lots of stuff there.

 

 In other words, the object you throw off that building will crash down on the ground below with force.  

Unless it is a carrier pigeon that is healthy with a note attached to its feet, saying, “I can fly, not you.” 

 

Both Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton are correct, though one believes in the theory behind the facts, and the other believes in the law.  

 

Both have effects.  Both works. 

 

How about the investment that has the Maximum, Optimum return? 

 

It is defined as, “the highest achievable profit or benefit from an investment or business venture, considering all relevant factors and constraints.”

Optimum is the most favorable. 

 

Maximum is the limit of achievement or gain.  The return on the investment may take time, and it has its risks.  Especially in business. 

 

Spiritual investment never fails. 

 

Of course, it depends on Who you are investing in, and what you are doing spiritually.  

If you want to go to a mountain somewhere in Tibet and worship creation instead of the Creator, then have at it.  

Maybe you will be enlightened and find some solace.  

This is a bad investment, in my opinion.  

 

Knowing Jesus Christ as your Master Chief Operating Officer, will allow you to have faith in what you are doing.  

Will you always win?  

Depends on what you deem to be winning.  

 

Faith in Christ is not a game, or a race to the finish line.  

However, there is an end to all things.  

Winning can be confusing. 

Winning is subjective.  

 

What is winning?  

Well, it is making Heaven your home and hearing, “Well done, my good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.”  

 

Losing the race of life, means that you may have run to Heaven, but did not follow the LAWS and THEORIES of God Almighty, and found that your belief system was a false one.  

 

There is always hope if you are alive.  

Winning is not losing.  Losing is not winning.  

Death is real.

Life everlasting in Jesus Christ is also more than real.  It is eternal.  

Only one way to Heaven. 

John 3:3.  

Read it. 

 

Maximum, Optimum return.  

You are not owed anything from Jesus.  

He does not owe you anything because of your investment in Him. He invested in you through His Blood, so you can partake of His death, and die to yourself.  

His return on His investment is you and I when we repent and ask Him into our lives.  

No more, no less. 

 

“It is by His grace ye have been saved through faith, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.”

Ephesians 2: 8-9

 

I spent all my younger years investing in the wrong companies.  

The company I kept was not a business.  

Unless you consider drug dealers a business.  

I guess it is. 

 

I was given, or fronted (handed this Dope with no money exchanging hands), a 2.2 Kilo of Marijuana from Mexico from my dealer.  

Meaning that he gave me the Dope, with an amount of money he wanted back from my ability to sell this large quantity of Marijuana.  

I sold it in ½ ounce baggies.  This initially was 77.6 ounces of Marijuana.  

An investment. 

That 77.6 ounces, sold as ½ ounce baggies for $15.00 per baggie, equaled, when done, a total of $2,310.00 dollars.  

All I had to do was give my dealer $500.00 cash (after I sold all that Dope.)  

 

It might have taken a few days because I had people wanting it and stood in line in the parking lot of the arcade I hung out at.  They lined up to my driver's window of my 1970 Ford Galaxy, and I walked away with a net profit of $1,800.00.  

That was a bunch of money in 1973. 

The problem was, I was greedy. 

 

Of course I was.  I was an addict.  

NO deposit No return for my investment, or the dealer's investment. 

I owed him money and never paid him.  

Therefore, I was a hunted man by a very serious dealer. 

 

He finally caught me, and I had to pay up, which I did.  

Mainly on installments. 

He trusted me repeatedly, and to his chagrin, he became distressed and embarrassed, feeling like a failure because he had a boss to answer to.  

I let him down and he had to pay a price for my stupidity and selfishness. 

 

One day, he fronted me another 2.2 Kilo of Dope, and when I left his house, I parked a block away with my headlights off. 

 

I watched him leave his house, through the back door.  

He would go out to the doghouse where his violent Doberman dog was, and move the doghouse over a bit, to expose a hidden, underground bunker where he hid the other pounds of Marijuana. 

 

I watched him with my binoculars.  

He put the 50 plus pounds of Marijuana in the hole in the ground.  Moved the doghouse back on top of the bunker.  

The watchdog was chained to the doghouse.  

A protector of his investment. 

 

When he drove away to his next appointment, I casually walked through his unlocked, chain-link fence to the backyard.  

I walked up to the growling dog, shot the dog dead with my pistol, took all the Dope, loaded it into my trunk, and drove off. 

 

This obviously worked, and he never knew it was me who did this. 

He was never to be seen again as his “bosses” must have given him a ticket out of town.  

Or a pair of cement shoes to wear in the nearest river.  

I do not know the outcome; except I had to find another dealer who would trust me as an “investment.”  

Maximum, Optimum return. 

 

I maxed out, burning all the bridges with killers and thieves, and finally ended up paying for my theory of relativity which, in Einstein’s thoughts was, how speed affects space, time, and mass, and applies to situations without gravity. 

 

My speed (Meth in my veins) did affect the space and time I had to spend in prison, which was a mass of confusion, applied without any gravity.  

Except the gravity of my pain-filled, addicted situations. 

 

I reaped what I had sown.  It is God’s eternal law. 

 

Psalm 90:12 declares, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” 

 

Teach us, Lord. 

I learned the hard way about life, death, investments, time, love, and heartache. 

God never intended for me to become a mess.  

He turned my mess into a message of hope, through the preaching of the Gospel. 

 

He restored my life through the trials and tests I went through.   

 

My tests turned into testimonies of His grace and love. 

 

Only He can fix our issues. 

 

There are many millions of people who never took the path I took.  

The path of least resistance is just to serve God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

Avoid the self-inflicted sorrows of life by trusting in Him during your storms. 

 

Investments are here one day and gone the next.  

Especially financial investments. 

Thank God for wisdom in how to conduct successful business ventures.  It is His money anyway, and He expects us to use His finances and blessings with wisdom in faith towards His abundance for every good work. 

 

Besides this investment, our time spent with the Savior of our souls, Jesus is the ultimate “time well spent.” 

 

I wasted too much time being stupid and broken. 

 

I am believing God to continue to restore me and my family, one day at a time. 

 

We only have 24 hours a day, according to a watch or a calendar. 

 

When we pray, and I mean “really pray,” where we lose track of time when we cry out to our Heavenly Father.  

 

Time stands still when we weep, worship, and pray out loud or silently, alone in an actual closet.  

A private place we have segregated away from the norms in life, becomes our personal altar of mercy and sacrifice.  

We will find solace there. 

 

My closet is a greenhouse.  

Somedays it is a chicken coop.  

 

Anywhere I can find to be alone with my Master Jesus is a good place.

 

Quality of time is better than quantity, but more time in quality of prayer means more answers from the Lord to our prayers.

 Simple talking with Jesus. 

 

My maximum return for my time with Jesus is basically just a little more peace in the middle of my personal trials. 

My optimum results come as Him speaking to me through His Word and sometimes in that Still, Small, Tender Voice of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Mostly, the return on all of this is just knowing Him more and the fellowship of His sufferings for me, personally.  

 

If you and I can realize the personal pain He went through for us personally, one on one...then we will see the tears on our cheeks.  

We will feel the sorrows He felt, and little by little, have a glimpse of His eyes for people.  

Even His eyes for us, personally.  

He loves us so much, words can’t describe this kind of love. 

 

Maximum, Optimum return on the investment of time with the Master-Teacher Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, sent from God. 

 

All the drugs I stole, and all the times I should have been killed are truly countless.  

I remember over a dozen times I should have died.  

I try to forget, but I remember for a purpose in my pains of life.  

My purpose is to preach this Gospel of Peace. 

 

NO pain, no gain.  

 

If for even a moment, we could understand that compassion is more than love, then we would be more like Him.  

 

A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for others.  They suffer beyond, perhaps, what we have suffered.  

Our compassion in Christ for others allows us to alleviate their pain, even if, it just a little bit.  

 

All they want is to be loved and understood.  

Listen to their pain.  

Feel their tears upon your shoulders.  

Pray for them. 

 

The men who I have preached to in prisons for almost 40 years understand why I have compassion for them.  

It is because Jesus had compassion for me.  

He felt my pain.  

He bore it all upon the Cross of Calvary.  

For me, and for you. 

Invest wisely. 

 

Your return on your investment is more than finances and even peace. 

Your return is simple. 

It is knowing more about Him and realizing that we might as well get to know Him more now.  

We will spend eternity with Him.  

 

It would be better to not be so surprised in Heaven about Who and What He is, then.  

Let's find out together now in prayer about His investment in us.   

Individually and corporately.  

 

He is the best.  

And Jesus, the Best, is yet to come.  

He is coming back.  

That is His investment in us.  

We are worth so much, He died and lives again.  

He is coming back for His church. 

Be ready.  

 

“Be still and know He is God.”

 The return on His investment, is His Return to Earth to take us home.  

Maximum, Optimum return. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

My Danger Zone

No, I am not talking about the movie, “Top Gun,” and the iconic theme song played for the film’s intro. 

I am not talking about Kenny Loggins singing those lyrics like…

 “Revvin’ up your engine, listen to her howlin’ roar, metal under tension, Beggin’ you to touch and go.  Highway to the danger zone, ride into the danger zone.” 

What a box office hit that movie was.  Grossed 357.3 million dollars worldwide.  The highest grossing film of 1986. 

 

Moving on into my personal, real-life events of what I call my Danger Zone.  

It was not a hit song that was played on my behalf.  

There was no fiction involved in this take on my life.  

 

Unlike in a movie, I was not given a bunch of chances to get my “scene” correct or memorize my lines.  

It was all improv, without the comedy.  

Sick and twisted was I. 

 

Influences.  

Music, drugs, sex and rock and roll, before the era of 1977 and Ian Dury’s song by the same name, “Sex, and Drugs and Rock and Roll.”  

Lyrics like, “Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all my brain and body need, sex and drugs and rock and roll is very good, indeed.” 

 

So much for 1977.

 I lived in this era, beginning in 1971 through 1977.  

Music played a big part in my demon possession.  

Yes, demon possession, not oppression.  

There is a big difference. 

Rock and roll with the influences and lyrics of AC DC’s Highway to Hell, was truly prophetic as I was literally on my way to the abyss.  

Definition: seen as a prison for demons.  

This usage was picked up in the New Testament.  

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus sent the Gadarene swine into the abyss.  Luke 8:31. 

 

Graphic?  

Yes.  

I was in a true danger zone.  

Revelation 11: 7, “When they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them.”   

 

This signifies a time of opposition and persecution against those who faithfully preach God’s Word but also highlights the Divine timing and purpose behind events, as the witnesses complete their task before being overcome. 

 

The Book of Revelation has several places in which the abyss is mentioned. 

My abyss that Satan had planned for me began on earth when my mother died. 

I opened the door to the occult by taking drugs.  

Not starting out easy.  

I began with Marijuana laced with a secret white powder which was hallucinogenic.  

I was an addict the moment I took this demon drug.  

I craved it to cover up the pain of watching my mother die a slow death from liver cancer. 

 

My danger zone was plural.  

Zones after zones of drug experimentation.  

Dangers around every puff from a pipe to the dirty needle going into my vein that was tied off with a string to make the vein pop up for easy injection of the Meth and L.S.D. 

 

Demons came in, and I did not realize it until I turned 18.  

Kenny Loggins’ song was not intended for me to Rev up my engines of insanity. 

 

With this theme of 1970’s songs, and how they played into my demise, I turn to the song “Le Freak,” by Nile Rodgers and Chic from 1978.  It came out after my salvation in Christ in 1977 while in prison, but I have a point to one of its lyrics. 

 

“All that pressure got you down, has your head been spinning all around?  Feel the rhythm, check the rhyme, come on along and have a real good time.” 

 

Reality?  

There was a good time to be had on the dance floor.  

My problem was that I never hit the dance floor.  

I hit the vein with my drugs.  

I never did anything this song was coined for except the lyric of “Freak Out.”  

Yes, freak out.  

I freaked out on drugs. 

 

I freaked out on the Police in Austin, Texas.  

I freaked out when I shot my best friend with a pistol.  

And I, ultimately, freaked out on a cop in Dallas which sent me to the ultimate FREAK OUT.  

Prison, maximum- security style.  

 

 Texas style had no style points.  

The razor wire was sharp.  

The steel bars of my cell were not rusty.  

The guard towers stretched upwards to 30 feet in height, allowing the officers inside them to see the entire perimeter of the prison.  

 

No escaping this Danger Zone.  

My danger zone that I put myself in.  

I did it.  

I committed the crimes that landed me in prison.  

 

Yes, I was possessed by the Devil, Himself.  

Obviously, a normal human being would have never done the things I did, but I opened the spiritual door by using drugs, and listening to demon- possessed music. 

 

Whatever you do, do not burn your vinyl records now.  That may be too toxic if you breathe the fumes from the burn barrel outside. 

 

The old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.”  

This is true, whether we want to believe it or not.  

Whatever we listen to or watch on television has an impact on our walk with Jesus Christ.  

 

As a Christian, we must guard our hearts by only feeding our lives with His Word and observing the dos and don’ts of our personal walk with the Most High. 

 

I am not talking about legalism.  I am talking a lifestyle. 

 

Once I walked the gangplank off the ship of stupidity and then into the ocean of drugs that I was addicted to, I found myself drowning.  

I was drowning in a pool of despair, brought on my mother dying and my Daddy being murdered.  

I could use these two issues as a crutch or an excuse for not being healed by Jesus Christ.   

 

But I am healed by Him.

 I do not remind myself any longer about all my self-inflicted wounds of the past.  

I ignore the temptation to dwell on the past sins and mistakes I made.  

I only refer to them when I preach.  To, hopefully, win the lost in prisons that I preach in. 

 

Influences we allow in, DO make a difference of whether we will enter a spiritual danger zone, or avoid a pit of perversion of His Holy Word.  

 

Yes, we can be deceived.  

We can get entangled in the doctrines of men and find ourselves in a danger zone of being a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.  

 

Are your ears itching?  

 

Living Wisely and Intentionally: 

 

Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but a wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” 

 

This verse highlights the importance of making wise decisions and using time effectively, recognizing the influences of the surrounding cultures.  

Music, television, theatre, etc. 

 

Proverbs 4: 26, “Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.”  

 

(All means all).

This verse emphasizes the need for careful consideration in our actions and a consistent commitment to righteousness and holiness. 

 

Guarding your Heart: 

 

Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the springs of life.” 

 

Protect your inner self, and your thought life, words and actions. 

 

Remember, we are not cookie-cutter Christians trying to be robotic in our lives.  

We are saved by grace, yet we do not want to take His grace for granted.  

Some call this “greasy grace.”  

Sin is sin. 

 

The television programming has changed from the “Leave it to Beaver” era I grew up in. 

The love at home that I did not get was a true vacancy for my young 8-year-old heart. 

Finding love for my mother was hard considering the abuse issues I faced.  

I was not the only one.  My sister suffered more than me. 

 

Leave it to Beaver, the Real McCoys and Father Knows Best were the only shows I watched where I felt true love.  

Until, of course, when I was told to turn off the television and go to bed.  

“Don’t forget to tuck yourself in, Joseph.”  

My mom would holler that statement from the kitchen as I walked slowly down the hall to my bedroom.

From the den, where my love was left behind on a Motorola black and white T.V., I had to wait until the next day to feel love again.  

These love substitutes for the attention I craved eventually died.  

Mom died when I was 15.  Daddy died when I was 18.  

It was too late for me then to know love.  

I hated myself, God, and life. 

I hated everyone around me, except for my drug connection. 

My vinyl records of Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and the like, were my heroes of Rock and Roll. 

I was about to rock, alright.  

Making little rocks out of big boulders in prison with a sledgehammer.  

I was about to roll too.  

 

I would roll out of my pathetic two-inch mattress in prison, to another day of torture in the cotton fields.  

Rehabilitation, Texas style. 

 

The simple point is this.  I learned the hard way. 

 

We can’t go back in time and unlisten to those records.  

Even if they were the Carpenters or soft rock like “How deep is your love” by the Bee Gees in 1977.  

I was in prison in 1977. 

I had to listen to records playing in the Dallas County Jail over the intercom in 1974 when I had my first attempted murder charge.  

Daily, over and over, until lights out at 10 pm.  

The Doobie Brothers hit, “Black Water.”  

Lyrics, “Well, I built me a raft and she’s ready for floating, Old Mississippi, she’s calling my name.  Catfish are jumping, that paddle wheel thumping, Black Water keeps rolling on past just the same.” 

 

My mind was already tormented because of drugs.  My demons inside my soul were very healthy and ready to do more damage. 

 

See, the influences in our life are real.  

People.  Preachers. Iconic actors.  Friends, and even enemies.  

Hopefully we do not have an enemy, but if our neighbor is not so friendly, well pray for him, or her. 

 

Ear gates.  Eye gates.  Touching things that are inappropriate.

   
Allowing our minds to wander into a fantasy world.  

I will let you figure that one out on your own. 

 

Do not try and convince me that garbage in, garbage out is not real.  

I lived it in the 70’s and all my bad influences almost killed me.  

Jesus Christ rescued me.  He gave me a second chance. 

 

The true Danger Zone is this.  

Not knowing Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and then allowing Him to rule your life as your Lord and Master. 

 

 “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart (your heart right now as you pray this with me) one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  For whoever believes on Him (Jesus) will not be put to shame.”  

Romans 10: 9-11. 

 

It is a simple prayer.  Just ask Jesus to forgive you and believe in your heart He died for you.  

Ask Him right now, as you have read this story, and Jesus will forgive you for all you have done which is contrary to His Word, and you will be saved.  

Simple. Just do it and believe it.  

It is real.  Jesus is real. 

 

I avoided the Danger Zone.  I was in it, like the movie “Top Gun.”

 I was flying high on drugs.  I was a fast mover, burning fuel which was pumped into my veins with drugs and alcohol. 

I was almost burned out and burned up, headed to Hell. 

 

Once you ask Christ into your heart, cut lose all the bad influences that so easily keep you saddened and sorrowful.  

Truth is, that when I hear those songs from my past occasionally in the store or in the mall, I have memories.  

Real, bad memories. 

 

The key is, I do not live on the Black Waters in Mississippi any longer.  

I am not on the highway to Hell like AC DC wanted me to be on.  

I do not “freak out” any longer because of the Holy Ghost in me. 

I live and let live.  

Not live and let die like the movie from 1973, the James Bond film with the same name.  

The song, by the same name said, “When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say, “Live and let live.  But in this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’, makes you give in and cry.” 

 

Yuk, another depressing song.  

My point.  

Live.  

Let the dead stuff in your life die. 

 

Christ Jesus will help you shed the old man or woman and be all He wants you to be. 

 

Avoid the Danger Zones. 

 

I am not going to give in and cry, like that song.  

I will not, as a preacher of this Gospel, let those I see who are dying and headed to hell like I was, stay in that condition.  

I am going to tell them the answer.  

His name is Jesus.  He is the Name above all Names. 

 

He is the protector.  

He will keep you from all the danger zones in your life.  

Just do not enter them on purpose.  

Purpose to live for Him, and Him alone.   

 

I am on the right path or highway now.  

It is a Highway to Heaven, not hell.  

Goodbye forever the songs from the past.  

If they do not Glorify God, well, they are glorifying something. 

 

Be good to your ears.  Be safe with your eyes.  

And if need be, wear gloves in the bitter cold of life.  

We are supposed to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus.  

Do your best, and He will do the rest.  

It is His promise to those who believe in Him. 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

Our Mix Master-Stop, Look, and Listen

This term is associated with Dallas, Texas regarding the multiple, modified stack interchanges of highways, modified and called the Horseshoe Project.  

Construction began in 2013 and ended in 2017. 

The original Mixmaster Highway was constructed between 1958 and 1962.

It never saw significant changes after its construction.  Traffic congestion, coupled with miles of slow-moving traffic, was its downfall.  

New construction was imminent.  But not for a while. 

 

Then came the Horseshoe Project, looking like spaghetti thrown against a wall from an aerial view, was quite the relief for the “rush-hour” traffic in this overgrown Metropolis called Dallas. 

Not enough “off ramps” to Downtown Dallas also caused its need for massive change in the 1970’s through the beginning of 2013.   

Though Dallas was on the map, regarding the Assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the city of Dallas, and State of Texas were trying to move past this horrible crime.  

In the immediate aftermath and for several decades, Dallas residents and leaders actively tried to forget the events of November 22, 1963.  

New freeways would not solve the problem of this horrible black eye on Downtown Dallas. 

 

There was a strong push in the 1970’s era to demolish the Texas School Book depository building, which many considered an “ugly monument” to the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. 

The sixth floor of the building remained untouched until 1977.  An effort by the city’s residents to try to move on with life, beyond the tragedy, was largely ignored. 

 

Dallas eventually went from ignoring the assassination and shifted towards learning from the past and looking forward, emphasizing shared ideals and the ongoing efforts to address the challenges that remain.  

Like Dealey Plaza and the Downtown area itself, Dallas had many memorials and memories attached to J.F.K.’s demise. 

 

To my spiritual point now. 

 

How does your spiritual journey of freeways, off-ramps and traffic jams look today?

 

Either you are getting on the road, getting off the road to Christ, Who was crucified, buried, resurrected, and is now sitting at the Right Hand of His Father, making intersession for you and I; or we are in an endless ditch, ravine or field of sorrows.  

Looking for the right path to God is like being in Downtown Dallas during President Kennedy’s death shots to his head. 

 

(Thought I had forgotten about Dallas)?

 

Think again, Saints. 

 

My Daddy was in Downtown during that shooting.  

He was an electrical engineer on his way back from lunch when all traffic stopped.  

He was in a 1960 Fiat 500.  

Bright Red in color, it would reflect, to a degree, the blood of our President who would later die at the Parkland Hospital Dallas.  

 

Blood, death, and lies would haunt this tragedy in Dallas that November. 

 

Even the Warren Commission could not figure all the details out.  

 

We may never know the truth about our 35th President of these United States of America.  This Warren Report remains the official account of the events surrounding Kennedy’s assassination.  

It is the subject of ongoing scrutiny and analysis to date. 

 

“Why all this talk about Dallas?” 

 

That Mixmaster of freeway junctions and overpasses is part of my pathetic history as an addict, and an eventually convicted felon, in Texas.  My last arrest was on South Industrial Boulevard and R.L. Thornton Freeway, near Downtown Dallas. 

 

Dallas.  

Death in its history, and my death to self and all the spiritual luggage I carried in 1971 through 1977. 

 

Why do humans try and cover up our pasts?  

 

Like the Warren Commission, all the lies and secrets surrounding a President’s death, linger on into what seems like forever. 

 

We cover up because of what Ezekiel tried to explain in Chapter 33: 10-16.   

“Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus, you say, if our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?  Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.  Turn, turn from your evil ways!  For why should you die, O house of Israel?’”

 

PINE AWAY:  

“To become progressively weaker, thinner, or less healthy, especially due to sadness, grief, or longing for someone or something.  It implies a gradual decline in physical or emotional well-being caused by intense yearning or despair.  To become frail or sick.” 

 

Yes.  I was sick of my life before Christ came in and saved me.

 I was frail in my addiction.  

I was yearning in my despair of sadness and pain from my mother dying and my daddy being murdered. 

 

I pined away my life.  

 

Better put, “I pawned my life away without a deadline to pay.”  

 

Like in a real pawn shop, we need cash for a temporary bill to pay, yet sometimes we forget to pay back this loan, and we lose our valuable item.  Be it a watch or ring.  Or a precious locket made of Gold. 

 

I pawned my dead father’s wedding ring for drug money.  Never got it back because of my selfishness and greed to get high.  

It was on his left-hand ring finger. He was in his casket at the funeral home.  

I gazed at that ring, and the bandage on what was left of his head from the fatal gunshot wound.  

As his aged-spotted hands were across each other, cold and still, I saw his wedding ring.  

His covenant reminder to my dead mother.   

 

How could I do such a thing?

 

Addiction.  

Pawned away a memory.  

Gave up his ring for my covenant with a death sentence.  

His ring.  My loss.  

 

He would never know the depth of my addictions.  

I was glad later in life, knowing he and my mother were spared from seeing their youngest son.  

Little Joe.  

The mixed-up boy, serving a Master of Disguise.  

Satan. 

 

So many of us seek peace and find turmoil at the end of the assassination attempt of our souls.  

 

The problem is not the shooter on the sixth floor of the Dallas School Book Depository in Dallas in 1963.  

We carried our own spiritual rifle.  The rifle of our rejections of life.  

We loaded the bullet, a 6.5mm round in the chamber of our Italian- made rifle, like Lee Harvey Oswald had.  

We pulled the trigger.  

We did it in our spiritual coma we had before we knew Jesus as our Savior. 

What will it take for us to turn from our wicked ways like Ezekiel pointed out to the House of Israel?

 

God said He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. 

 

When we find ourselves on the wrong road, or freeway (the mix master), in this life, we end up in bad places and experience devastating losses.  

If we go too far down this overpass of ocular blindness, we endanger our very life and our future eternity.  

It is a real life or death situation for many of us. 

Just think about a drug addict like I was, for example. 

 

One time too many.  Too much of the pure Meth I was putting into my veins mixed with L.S.D., or the combination of Thorazine, a psychosis-preventing narcotic, mixed with beer.  

I did this.  

My one time too many came, and I overdosed and almost died. 

I look back now and realize it was truly Jesus Christ who stopped my self-inflicted bullets I shot at myself with my own rifle of renowned refuse in my wicked heart.  

My attempt at trying to repudiate my claim on life was dead upon arrival.  

I denied the truth about my addictions. 

 

Have you and I gone too far in our sins? 

 

If you must ask that question about yourself, then there is hope.  

Worrying if you have gone past the point of no return, is a good thing.  At least you are capable of the thought about going too far.  

If you have not gone too far, then you are alive.  

Too far is death.  

Physically, yes.  

 

There are worse consequences to our mix master of continual driving down the road with no end in sight.  

There is an end.  An end of all life as we know it.  Here on Earth. 

Spiritual death.  

Without Christ as your Savior and Lord, death of the body is an actual grave.  

Death of the Spirit is eternal.  

An endless grave you will suffer in for eternity.  

It is your choice. 

 

When God says that “I would have none perish, but all come to repentance” (2 Peter 3: 9, part), this scripture means business.  

Eternal business.  

All means all.  

Every human being has and will have an opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

“And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Matthew 24: 14

Jesus spoke these words. 

 

I go back to our 35th President.  

Did he know Jesus as his Savior?

What about famous others we know from history?

 Martin Luther King assassinated as well.  

Yes, he proclaimed Jesus as Savior, and beyond in his speech called “I have a dream.”  

 

What does your dream look like today?  

Is it a dream and a hope for your future, or is it a living nightmare that never seems to end? 

 

Time. 

Tick- Tock. 

 

I know this one thing; this one thing is all that really matters. 

 

I know, without a shadow of doubt, if I died before this letter is finished, I will be in Heaven with Jesus my Savior. 

 

Confidence in me?  NO. 

My confidence is in the Bible and the Words in it.  

I repented.  

I continue to repent when needed.  

I sometimes make it a whole day without something stupid I say or do that needs forgiveness from God.  

I am human, not a robot. 

 

Dallas Texas used to be a place of sorrow for me. 

I did all my crimes in that general area back in 1974-1976. 

 

I don’t live in my past any longer.  

It is because of Jesus I found the road to life.  I got off the freeway of foolishness and found the overpass to eternity.  

It is because of His Blood I can proclaim I am Born again. 

 

Mix master? 

 

Perhaps it is time for us to stop, look and listen to the Spirit of God.  

 

He will answer you and me.  It is His promise to us.  

“My sheep know MY voice, and they follow Me.” 

What voice do you listen to? 

 

My mix master was a web of sin and rebellion, with a dead-end street at the end. 

Our mix master can be a road that leads to life.  

Go ahead and, if you must, get lost on the freeway of life.  Not all roads lead to eternity.  

Only one.  

His name is Jesus, and He is waving at you every time you stop at the next exit.  

You will never be able to say, you did not hear the Gospel after reading this letter. 

It is a letter of love from a man who knows pain.  

I hit every possible roadblock in life.  

I did it to myself. 

I am now free.  

No more mixed-up thoughts, because my Master is Jesus the Christ. 

 

Our mix masters must be sorted out before it is too late.  

Look at the road you are on.  

 

Go find a Bible; it is the best roadmap for your life you will ever need.  

 

In fact, it is the only map you will find that leads to the right eternal destination.  

Heaven.

And if you read it, you will find the right exit ramp.  

 

It begins with believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.  

 

He is flagging you down now.  

Do not run that red light.  Stop and breathe.  

Remember, we are all only one heartbeat from eternity.  

Can you feel your heartbeat? 

I feel mine.  

It belongs to Him.  

He gave me air to breathe.

He is the air I live on.

My days are numbered.  So are yours.  

Stop, Look, and Listen.   

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

A Lifer Brigade

In the military, a unit typically composed of several battalions and supporting elements, form this tactical formation called a brigade.  Larger than a regiment and smaller than a division.  

A brigade is self-sustaining. 

A prison in Salem, Oregon called O.S.P., standing for the Oregon State Penitentiary, was originally established in 1851, in Portland, Oregon, and then relocated to Salem in 1866.  

It is the oldest prison in Oregon.  

It has big walls around it and the ominous guard towers with over a half mile of razor wire throughout its structure.  

Several escapes have happened since 1861, and a few are still at large according to the history of this Maximum-Security facility.  

This prison holds 2,242 men prisoners when completely full. 

I have preached here since 1991.  It has several security checkpoints from the first entrance, all the way to the chapel. Up several flights of stairs, then down a few.

Four checkpoints to be exact.  

It makes you feel that you may never get out of here, if something goes haywire. 

 

In 1992 through 2004, I ministered once a month in the huge chapel.  

On every other Tuesday, I would conduct a Bible Study for the men doing life sentences.  I called them the Lifer Brigade.  

These men love Jesus, and they are unmovable.  The spiritual armor they wear depicts their faith in the Most High.   

 

Steadfast in their trust in Jesus Christ, I watched them grow in the Lord and felt their pains and frustrations of doing life.  Some were doing life sentences without the possibility of parole.  

Many tears and breakthroughs happened as we learned to trust each other. 

This took time.  

They had as much time as it took, considering they were doing time, and trying to make the best out of the “timeclock” that ticked and ticked daily in their young lives.  

Most were under 35 years old.  

I was the elder guy back then, spending precious time with them as they counted the days and hours of each day in this grueling prison. 

 

One man, I will call Mike, for the sake of anonymity, was around my age, and was locked up when he was 18.  With 20 years of time under his spiritual belt, he remained in the same jail cell, looking out the same window every day.  

He watched the ducks near a pond by Center Street in Salem.  His cell was on the third floor (tier) overlooking the huge wall surrounding this dungeon of a prison.  

He had a duck-eye view of the little creatures of habit. 

He named each duck (in his mind) and became familiar with their behaviors over all those years.  

He saw a family of ducks grow up and die.  

Then another family started their journey across Center Street to the small pond during his countless years behind bars.  

The same bars he arrived behind in 1976 to this current date of 1992. 

One day in 1995, I was sitting around the same table we met each time I came.  I had one hour, twice a month to minister to, pray with, and become a friend to men that society did not want any longer. 

 

Mike was sitting across from me when the Spirit of the Lord said, though me, a word of knowledge to Mike.  

“Mike, I see your daughter, Sir.  She was very, very young when you went to prison, but today in her late teens, headed into her 20th birthday, she will contact you, and you will be reconciled to your precious Baby Girl.  You will receive a letter within 10 days, Mike.” 

He wept and cried like a baby himself.  

I had to leave but prayed for all the men including Mike as he continued to cry and weep bitter tears of regret. 

The next time I arrived for my Bible Study. Two weeks had passed since this Word came to Mike, from the Lord, through me.   

Mike spoke about his only daughter, in front of the other 10 men this day. 

 

With tears flowing down his face, he did his best to utter the words that told the story of his daughter. 

 

“When my daughter was three years, I killed her mother.  I shot my wife to death in front of my little girl.  I was angry and out of control.  I did not want to do what I did, but I did, and that little girl who I traumatized that day in 1976.  She will turn 20 next week men.” 

 

Mike went on to say that when he got this Word from the Lord two weeks ago, he initially believed, yet it was so specific, that he doubted the Lord for the next several days. 

 

He stopped. 

 

He reached into his blue jacket and pulled out a letter he had received.  He got the letter a week ago, postmarked the very same day this Word came to him in our Bible Study. 

 

He read it out loud to all of us at the table we were sitting at. 

 

“Dear Daddy, I miss you.  I do not remember too much about that horrible day my mom died.  I have a fractured memory of that event and was too young to understand all the details.  I am a Christian, Daddy.  The Lord told me to write you a letter and forgive you and ask you to please be my Daddy again.  Please?” 

 

Mike had to stop and weep, as his brothers in Christ surrounded him and held on to him weeping too but rejoicing as well.  

This miracle happened, exactly how it was spoken two weeks ago.   

 

Mike finished his daughter's letter.  

“Daddy, may I call you Daddy?  I hope we can have communication together and let my Savior Jesus heal us together.  If you write me back, I will be convinced for sure that it was Jesus who told me to write to you, Daddy.  P.S., I love you and I want to be a part of your life.  I know you were given a very long sentence when that happened, but I am okay Daddy.  I have been living with my family who took me in back then, and I am living for Jesus.  I hope you understand my heart.  I am not afraid of you, Daddy.  I love you, because Jesus loves me.  I hope you get to know Jesus like me.  Love, your daughter.” 

 

This brigade of men in that room broke.  All their spiritual weapons were put down.  

All the tears from Mike became a cleansing flood, poured out on a table that day.  All the men, myself included wept and glorified Jesus for His marvelous works.  

His timing.  His perfect timing. 

 

This self-sustaining lifer brigade of men loved one another, long before I came on the scene.  Their unity in the Spirit was strong and became even stronger that day Mike read his miracle letter.  

From a little girl, the essence of forgiveness, and the pure mercy of our Lord Jesus, was poured out that day in the little Bible study room at the Oregon State Prison. 

 

In 2006, my wife and I, and three other couples began LifeHouse Church located in Lake Oswego, Oregon. 

Eleven years from the day I was in that prison, ministering to Mike, we began this church for anyone and everyone who would come.  

“Love, Hope, Restoration, Healing and Forgiveness” was our theme. 

 

In 2007, after one year of being open, our church was given over to one of the founding couples as my wife and family began our plans to move to Houston, Texas.  We would be leaving in three months. 

 

Prior to leaving, Mike got out of prison and started coming to our church.  I continued to stay in touch with him after that miracle letter he read back in the early 1990’s. 

I had stopped going to the Oregon State Prison around the year 2000, but kept in touch with Mike via letters once a month. 

 

Now Mike is in our church and doing well, having been reconciled with his daughter over these many years.  She visited him in prison, and now he is becoming a part of her life in person after that horrible tragedy back in 1976. 

She is a grown woman now, and her and her father spend time together as much as time allows. 

 

One day, Mike was at work building cabinets in a cabinet shop in Portland, Oregon. 

He called me to tell me the story that unfolded this day at work.

 

“Pastor Joe, I was at work when my boss walked up to talk to me about a job I was working on.  As we were talking, my boss saw his ex-wife walk in and approach him.”

 

 Mike said she pulled out a gun a pointed it at him and pulled the trigger three times.  His body flew backwards and landed on the concrete floor of this manufacturing plant.  She was taken down by other employees, waiting for the police to arrive.  

 

“I was holding my bleeding boss in my arms, sitting on the floor watching him take his last breath.  Pastor Joe, I led him to Jesus Christ before he entered eternity.” 

 

I was floored talking to my friend and brother in the Lord on the phone. 

He came to church and told the story to the congregation, and it was a healing day for most of us.  

Especially for Mike. 

Mike told me in my office after the Sunday service, “Pastor, the Lord gave me a glimpse of my past as my boss was entering eternity, bleeding to death in my lap.  I saw the day when I killed my wife in front of my baby girl.  

The Lord spoke to me and said that the day I shot my wife, she, too, was bleeding to death, like my boss was. 

And while she was in the hospital dying, some nurse led her to Jesus Christ.  The Lord revealed to me this issue in my heart the day I took my wife’s life out of anger.” 

 

He went on to say that “Life and death is quick, compared to eternity.”  

 

Mike continued to come to our church until we left for Houston, and he remained faithful for several years after we moved. 

 

Mike.  

The Lifer.  

Part of a Brigade of men of God while in prison.  

He remained a man of God outside of prison.  A Comrade in arms in his brigade at the Oregon State Prison.  

He fought the good fight of faith, and he laid hold of eternal life in Jesus.  

From 1976 through 2007 completing a total of 31 years in prison, he finished his time. 

 

He fought his battles in prison on his knees in prayer.  

He was spared the death penalty.  

He was spared a life without a daughter because the Lord gave his daughter back to him, and his daughter had her prayer answered as well. 

 

Our fight is not in the natural army.  

Our battles do not really exist in the real world called life on earth.  

Our wars are fought in the Heavenly Realm. 

 

Just know, the Lifer Brigade that I was blessed to be a part of for a season of time, lived on.  

The ones doing life without parole continued to fight their battle on the battlefield of the Oregon State Prison.  The walls made of stone that surrounded this prison could not stop the Holy Ghost from arriving to heal and deliver men behind its ominous stature of concrete and stone.  

The razor wire can’t stop God.  

 

The time served and being served did not stop men from repentance and being born again. 

I had the honor to be a small part of this army of God called the LIFER BRIGADE. 

 

If you must fight a battle today, tomorrow or next week, remember this one thing from this story about Mike and his daughter. 

 

God is a God of Restoration, Reconciliation, and Mercy.  

 

Throw down your natural weapons of bitterness and unforgiveness.  

Do not harbor hand grenades of guilt and shame. 

 

If a little girl witnessed her Daddy kill her mother, and then forgave him, then what excuses do we really keep in our hearts, harboring the pain of our pasts?    

 

We must forgive the multitudes who have harmed us and killed our dreams?   

 

Psalm 90: 4-6, “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.  You carry them away like a flood; they are like a sleep.  In the morning, they are like grass which grows up: In the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and withers.” 

 

If you and I wake up in the morning, it is a privilege to wake up knowing Christ.  

He has already numbered our days anyway. 

 

Smell the coffee brewing in the morning.  Drink it and enjoy it. 

 

In the evening, smell the freshly cut grass from your next-door neighbor, and remember your restful sleep and the grass.  

It could very well be your last sleep and your final cup of Java Joe.  

 

Maybe, maybe not.  Only He knows. 

Both will fade away.  The coffee too. 

 

Mike and his daughter were a lost cause at one time.  

For over 30 years he paid the price for his sin. 

 

God loved him so much and his daughter so much so, that God Almighty decided to weave back the torn fabric of their tattered lives. 

 

He did it for them, and He will do it for you. 

 

What Army Brigade are you really in?  I hope it is a Lifer Brigade.

Fight your war in prayer. 

Not in prison.  Not in a jail.  But fight for the right of life.  

For His life, with parole.  

You and I have been pardoned because of Jesus and His Blood.

  

Join the Army.  

You are not too old.  You are not too young to join.  

No physical required.  No paperwork and no boot camp. 

It is His Army.  

The ARMY of the Lord.  

Jesus is our General.  

Obey His orders and you will live forevermore.  Amen. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

“Yes Boss. No Boss.”

It was the fall of 1976 when I arrived at the Ferguson Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.

Formally known as T.D.C., this Maximum-Security prison housed 2,300 felons like me, all there for some kind of violence attached to their crimes.  Everyone here is between the ages of 18-21.  

I was 20 when I arrived.   

 

Savage Drive, part of its address, should have been explained to us as we arrived at this prison so that we could prepare for all the savagery to come. 

This “Gladiator” farm was notorious and nefarious. 

 

Once situated in my cell, called 9 twenty B, and my inmate number of 262066, I looked at my surroundings in my house of redemption.  

More like a house of ill repute. 

Eight feet wide and nine feet long with a single stainless-steel toilet and sink, I looked at the two beds in the typical bunk-bed style. 

A thin, one-eighth of an inch thick blanket.  A soiled pillow with no pillowcase.  Not provided by the State of Texas.  If you wanted a pillowcase, then you had to order one from home, or buy one at the commissary.  

I was indigent financially and mentally.   

 

Zero balance in my mind.  

 

In fact, I believe I was overdrawn with a bunch of past due fees owed back to my brain that was fried from all the drugs I had been addicted to.  NO true source of income, either with real money, or brain cells. 

 

My first day picking (pulling) cotton balls from the spiney, sharp plants, was grueling and insane.  

My hands and fingertips began to bleed before I got to the end of my row of cotton.  This went on, day in and day out, from the end of September and through October. 

 

Blood and Cotton.  

Red, white but no blue, except for the blue skies and the eyes of Texas that were upon me from the Boss Man sitting atop his horse. 

He had a rifle with a scope laying across his lap and a shotgun in a leather holder with a quick draw release from the pouch it lay in.  One hand on the reigns of his disciplined horse, and the other poised on the trigger of his rifle. 

 

As I was approaching the finish line of my first 100 yards of cotton pulling, I was almost there, ready to begin another long row when he stopped me.  

He did not say “Excuse me, Convict, or may I interrupt your work for a moment, when you get time?” 

 

(Oh, I had time, alright.  Lots of time facing me daily). 

 

He hollered at me at the top of his lungs, “Boy, go back that 200 feet and get that cotton ball you missed, Convict!” 

 

I proceeded to lay my sack down which weighed around 120 pounds at that moment. 

He screamed at me and used the nose of his horse to bump me so hard I fell to the ground.  

“Get up, Boy, and go get that cotton ball and take your sack with you. Do you understand me, Convict?” 

 

I dragged my sack and picked up the lone cotton ball, then proceeded to pick faster so that I was not the last man to get to the end of my row. 

 

Punishment ruled this land.  

By the Boss Man, and the other convicted felons.  

 

If you were the last one to finish your row, the other psychos (convicts) pointed you out as “stuck out.”  Meaning you were now a target for their wrath in the shower, later in the evening. 

If you were stuck out, they would gang up on you in the shower and beat you, but not too much.  

Only bruising, not breaking your ribs so that you could go back into the fields the next day with bruised ribs and a black eye.  

No infirmary time for you. Only cotton. 

Harder to breathe with bruised ribs.

  

It taught you a lesson.  

Pick faster so you are not last to get to the finish line. 

 

The rule regarding your communication to the Boss Man was only two words.  

“‘Yes, Boss,’ or ‘No, Boss,’ and nothing in between.”  

 

Otherwise, the Boss was tougher on you than the shower bruising.  Believe me.  I learned from experience.  My black eyes lasted for six months. 

 

My hands and wrists and fingertips bled until callas formed.  Hard time.  

Blood time.  Cotton’s Blood. 

 

Hebrews 12:11… “No discipline seems at the time, but painful.  Later, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” 

 

Discipline, Texas Prison style.  

Painful, yes.  Rehabilitation, yes.  

Corrections in Texas were a Department.  

Department of Corrections with many facets, tools, and cruel and unusual punishment.  

This department was not a department store with cotton clothes and leather purses.  No perfume counter, either.  

It was a Department of Punishment to break a young man into submission.  

It worked.  Thoroughly and completely. 

Time ticked on, and once the cotton work was over in October, the weather changed. 

 

November was hog pen work.  

December was going back into the bare cotton fields and picking the prickly holders on the stems which held the seeds for new cotton planting. 

More bleeding.  

Hurt more in December with frozen hands that bled. 

 

I wanted to paint a picture of this insane punishment, so I can reveal a miracle from God. 

This, on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best miracle outside of my salvation in prison, is truly a 12.  

Told you I can’t do math.  LOL. 

 

 

In 2005 I did a tent revival in Madisonville, Texas next to a Walmart.  The man who mowed the field to prepare for the tent construction, was a well-known pastor in the area. 

He also was a volunteer minister at the Ferguson Unit.  I had preached at Ferguson since 2004, and it was challenging, remembering all my memories of doing time there back in 1976-1977.

 

He became my friend for future events too, and we reconnected in 2015 when I began to preach in the church he has in Madisonville. 

One day, he and I went to his tire shop he owned and had some work done on one of his vehicles. 

We went into his office to get something, and he pointed out a picture in a frame hanging on the wall in his office. 

It was a picture of him and his dad.  

Mr. Boss. 

Yes, Boss.  

His dad, unbeknownst to me, all these years that I have known this Pastor, was the field BOSS at Ferguson in 1976.  His career was from 1969 through 1988.  He had passed away into the arms of Jesus in 1989. 

 

His dad was the actual Boss Man in the field who pushed me down with his horse that day when I was pulling cotton in 1976 in the hot Texas sun.  

What are the odds of this?  

 

I fully recognized him in this picture I was staring at this day.  

Yes, he was a little older in the picture, but I remember his stern look of authority back while he rode his horse.  His 30-06 rifle with a scope with several notches carved into the wooden stock.  

Makes me glad I obeyed him.  I did not want him to point that rife at me. It was better to just say…

“‘Yes, Boss,’ and ‘No, Boss,’ and nothing in between.”

 

A hidden jewel for me.  

This man of God on his horse never showed any outward signs he was a Christian.  

He was, but he had a job to do in breaking the convicts in the field.  He had to pretend to be tough as nails, and give off the maximum, authoritative demeanor he could.  He demanded respect. 

We gave it to him or got shot for being stupid. 

 

Romans 13:7… “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.” 

 

This scripture emphasizes the obligation to give back to the State (Texas) what is due, including both financial obligations like taxes and customs, as well as respect and honor.  

Christians must uphold order and recognize the authority that God has established in human governmental agencies.  

Prison guards and Boss Men are State representatives. 

 

I did not know Jesus yet while in the cotton fields.  I came to know Him the next year in 1977 in May. 

 

Mr. Boss Man was cruel to me.  

I hated him for the words he said to me, which I can’t repeat here.  

He was trying to break me emotionally.  

It worked.

He was endeavoring to break me physically by picking cotton.  

That worked too. 

 

What truly broke in me during the field work, was my will being turned over to a Boss Man on a horse. 

 

When Jesus Christ became my ultimate Boss, I understood forgiveness.  

I forgave many.  I forgave the Boss Man.  

He was doing his job.  I was trying to do mine. 

A picture in a tire shop office.  A father and his son.  

One, a Pastor.  The other, a Boss Man. 

 

I will remember, forever, the face of the Boss Man who corrected me.  He made me run back and get that cotton ball with my heavy sack on my back. 

I will remember his words to me, “Boy, go back that 200 feet and get that cotton ball you missed, Convict!” 

He won the battle.  I won my freedom, eventually. 

 

Now, my ultimate Boss Man, is Jesus.  

I will run anywhere He asks me to run.  

I will do; whatever He tells me to do.  I will say everything, and anything He allows me to say on His behalf.   

For me, it is “Yes, Boss.”  

Not “No, Boss” anymore.  

I learned the hard way. 

 

It was best for me to learn, so that humility would remain in my heart. 

 

I bear the scars today, some 48 years later from those cotton fields. 

I am in fields all the time now.  

I am in prisons a lot.  

I am not in the cotton fields anymore when I visit these prisons.  

I am in the harvest fields of souls.   

 

Thank you, Mr. Boss, from 1976.  

I appreciate you humbling me back then.  

It stuck.  

Just like those prickly thorns of the cotton I picked.  

I don’t bleed anymore.  

Jesus bled for me, so I don’t have to any longer. 

Cotton.  

 

“‘Yes, Boss. ‘No, Boss.’ And nothing in between.”

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins

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