When I came home from prison I started “Open Your Eyes Prison Ministry.” The reason God told me to start this ministry was to teach Bible truths like the Sabbath and the truth about the pagan trinity doctrine. I was encouraged by the love shown to me by Garth and his wife Ann who I met through writing to a local church while in prison. Garth visited me seven times in my last year and a half and supported me in every way possible. The last two years after being off my one-year parole, I was blessed to be able to take the five-hour trip from Long Island to upstate New York near Syracuse and to be able to speak at their church.
I spent twenty years in the grips of the devil, addicted to drugs, trying to kill the pain of my father’s death, who died when I was sixteen years old. After being clean for four years I relapsed. Slowly, over time, I fell away from my ministry work and fell away from my weekly meeting, Celebrate Recovery (a twelve-step, Christ-based program). I fell away from going to church and reading my Bible. I thank God for Proverbs 24:16, which says, “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.” I spent the year of 2013 in relapse, the Holy Spirit nudging at me, and I knew that I could not continue in sin.
I called Garth and his wife Ann and came clean with them. Garth told me the Holy Spirit was telling him I needed to get up there to visit and spend time with them. They own a cabin on Panther Lake. It was October, which is off season, so I decided to go there to spend three days and two nights by myself with no human contact anywhere around, so I could peacefully commune with God in Bible reading and prayer. Three days and two nights I spent on the back deck overlooking the lake, reading my Bible and praying.
The third day came, and I knew Garth and Ann would be coming soon to pick me up. This whole time God did not speak to me. I became upset and I started to speak out loud to God as I sat on the back deck with my NKJV Bible open. It was a calm day, not a ripple on the lake, not a leaf blowing in the wind. I said to God, “Why have you not answered me? What am I going to do with my life? Maybe I should just go back to the old me and sell drugs to support my habit.” Then I said out loud to God, “I know God, What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul.” Just as I spoke that scripture a wind came out of nowhere and the pages in my Bible started to go back and forth like crazy. As this was happening I said out loud, “Okay God, are you going to show me something?”
At this point, when I finished saying this to God, the wind was flipping my Bible pages for a good ten seconds, then the wind stopped just as suddenly as it started and I looked down at my Bible to find highlighted in bright orange, Matthew 16:26 which says, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”
I had highlighted that passage many months ago. I knew once again that God had spoken to me and again God showed me He is real. I am happy to say I am back on fire for God. And “Open Your Eyes Prison Ministry” now has over forty men and women in prisons all over the U.S. whom God has blessed me to minister to. You can contact me by email at: preachersmith10@yahoo.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=100000145079368.
May God bless you and all those whom you love.
