AMAZING STORY
Raised to be a Criminal
By Debbie White
The 700 Club
CBN.com - “I was raised in a criminal environment. My dad was a criminal. He was always in and out of jail.”
The Medley family had no Rhodes Scholars or aspiring doctors or lawyers. They were criminals, born and bred: and proud of it. Young George Medley took his job seriously. “I thought it was cool to get high and party and sell drugs to make fast money. My dad gave me the green light to do it. I was even more motivated to sell to make him happy. Greed is what drove me. I thought having plenty of money would be the source of my happiness.”
There was criminal activity inside the Medley home as well. George was sexually abused by his father. In his teens, George escaped to the streets. “I made money off the backs of other people’s addiction by selling them drugs. I didn’t have a conscience about it.”
George’s crimes escalated from drug possession and distribution to car and home invasions, then robbery, assault, forgery, parole violations and false impersonation. “I took pride in that everything I did was illegal.”
As a teenager, George fell prey to the same trap he set for others. “Then that’s what started driving me was the drug addiction.”
With George addicted to his own merchandise, profits began to dwindle. Paranoia engulfed him. That’s when the police outsmarted him. He’d had jail and bail before, but this time, his arrest led to the penitentiary. But George says there was no remorse; just resolve to become a better criminal. “I read every book I could get my hands on about criminals, the mafia, I wanted to a king pin drug dealer.”
After his release from prison, George met and married Irene…under an alias. Several years later, Irene found out the whole truth. She’d married a drug addicted criminal. “He had been arrested dozens of times probably over thirty.”
There would be more arrests. As George thumbs through his arrest record, he says, “This doesn’t count all the alias I’ve been arrested under. This doesn’t count my juvenile record.”
Irene says, “…and I bailed him out each time and prayed that this time would be different.” Irene was a Christian. She prayed for twelve more years that George would change. For twelve more years, her husband lied, connived, stole and cheated. He spent days in drug induced stupors.”
“I knew he was living in that misery of being addicted,” Irene says, “and God gave me mercy towards him. Sometimes he would turn to me and say, ‘Irene, I don’t want to live like this anymore.’”
When George was in jail and drug profits dried up, 98 lb Irene took their small tow truck and transported junk cars . She traveled all over Denver to food banks. “My budget was about 30 bucks a month for food.”
During George’s rare moments of lucidity, he did some self reflection. “I remember just empty feelings thinking, this is my lot in life, a drug dealer? It was a living hell, looking over your shoulder, always afraid, always paranoid…”
Several months later, George was arrested again. This time, he didn’t read crime novels in prison. “I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror and I realized that I was the one with the problem and somebody left a tract on the floor of the jail cell. I read it and thought about it.”
Then, a prison deputy made a bold move. “He says, ‘What your problem is, you’ve never submitted to God.’ I thinking, ‘Phttt, are you kidding me?’ 3 days later, I was thinking about what he said, I opened up the bible to Matthew 6:33, never read the Bible before, and God started reminding me of all the crooked things that I did. I hurt a lot of people and I knew my soul was in jeopardy and I cried out to God and asked Him to forgive me and He did.”
In the barren cell of a maximum security prison, this cold hearted criminal became a child of God. “He just gave me a brand new life from just total despair to hope and confidence.”
Irene saw a radical change in George. “He literally made him new cause his brain was fried. Anybody who was around it could see it.”
Eight months later, George walked out of prison doors for the last time.
Today, nine years later, the once greedy ex-con runs a multimillion dollar auto recycling business. And along the way, he turned almost half of one of his warehouses into a church and food pantry. All he wants to do is help others find what he found. "He has definitely provided for us financially to use those resources to help people and win souls for the kingdom of God.”
“I haven’t run into the person yet who was as evil as I was. I was greedy for money and would do anything to get it. But God broke that spirit of green and replaced it with a spirit of generosity. You just trust God, He will never ever put you to shame by trusting Him. I’ve never regretted trusting in the Lord!”
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