AMAZING STORY
Cell Mates with Jesus
By Tim Smith
The 700 Club
CBN.com -Some call them journals. Some call them diaries. Whatever we choose to call them, they are, for better or worse, a record of our lives. John Skipworth has chronicled his life well. His spiritual journey began at Vacation Bible School. I understood, that God had a Son, and that He died for me, and that I could be forgiven of my sins.”
John tried to grow in his new faith, but that didn’t last long. “I believe everybody believed in God, but as far as a Biblical belief that produces an action, I don’t believe anybody in our household had that. I don’t want to blame anybody, but I just didn’t follow through with what I said at 12 years old.”
John’s parents had divorced when he was two years old. When his mother and stepfather divorced years later, John decided to live with his stepfather. “So at 16 years old, I became the designated driver. I drove my stepfather with a broken heart, after my Mom left him. He went deeper in the bottle, and I drove him every night of my life.”
John had freedom at his stepfather’s - freedom to do anything he wanted. “I went from drinking beer at 15, 16 years old - at 17, I started smoking marijuana, started smoking pot, with guys out at parties. And then, immediately, ran into somebody that was doing cocaine, and 90 days later, I was an IV drug addict, sticking needles in my arm, shooting up drugs. It was an internal void in me, looking for somewhere to belong.”
John the addict soon became John the dealer. “I may be selling pot, but I was using as much meth in one day as I could make in a week selling pot, so that cycle went from using and selling and trafficking drugs to using drugs very quickly.”
During one drug deal, things went bad very quickly. The sellers met John and the other buyers at a hotel room. “We were ready to expedite the deal – ‘Let’s get it over with. Get the drugs bought. Get them out of here, before something really bad happens.’ One thing led to another and a fight broke out. I ran over to a bed, and grabbed a pillowcase off a bed. Everybody’s fighting, and they were trying to get out of the door. And I grabbed a guy – one guy, I did not know him at the time - when he was trying to run out the door, with a pillowcase. And I drug him back in the room. And my buddies immediately ran to the door, locked the door, and we got the guy down on the floor of the hotel room, and gave him a beating that was pretty severe.”
The young man, JP, was beaten until he was unconscious. John and his buddies panicked, and they wrapped up JP in a sheet and drove to the woods and left the body there. JP got up and started fighting again. “So I hit him and knocked him down and got my friend free from him. And walking away, I looked at my friend, and just said, ‘Cut his throat.’ And before either of us knew what happened, both on drugs, both out of our minds, I’m standing there 10 feet from him, and all of the sudden, blood, all up one side of me. We were both covered in blood, and we went to the hotel room. We were living in a make-believe, tough guy, kind of a sub-conscious, blurry world, that at that moment became very real.”
The next morning, a pastor was working behind his church.“And he was setting up chairs next to that canal, for Sunrise Service, for Easter Sunday morning. And he heard JP gurgling and moaning. He found JP. When he found JP with his throat cut, he notified the authorities. The authorities showed up and when the friends were traveling, they saw all of the emergency services and they found out that was their friend. They saw the white bedsheet.”
“The authorities said, ‘Do you know him?’
And they said, ‘Yeah, we know him.’
They said, ‘where did this happen?’
They said, ‘A fight happened at this hotel room’.
And 20 minutes later the Bozier City PD was at the door of our hotel room, and they arrested everybody in the room.”
John went to jail for 73 days. His addiction and crimes escalated. He was in and out of jail for four years. After a high speed chase in 2002, John got 20 years in prison because he was a third strike felon.
“I laid down on the floor, and I was crying. I was broken. I just started telling God how disappointed I was with myself, how disappointed I was with my life. How I was sorry for hurting my Mom, my Dad, all that shame. I was sorry for hurting that guy in that hotel room. I was sorry for being a drub addict, and a thief and a liar. It seemed like just a few minutes. And it seems just as real today. I just lay there, and I heard the click, click of the electronic door, and they said, ‘Church call.’”
“And I remember getting up out of my cell, and I walked down to church. This little pastor, he came so faithfully and he always opened his service and said, ‘Does anybody want to give a testimony?’ People would get up and say, ‘I’m going home.’ or ‘My mama got healed of cancer.’ I walked up, and there’s probably 150-200 there, rapists, murderers, thugs, gangbangers, killers.
“I walked up there and said, ‘I just want you to know, that today, I went to court, and I found out that I’m a habitual offendor, and that I’m going to receive a nulti-bill, and I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life in prison for the mistakes I made.’ And I pointed, and I said, ‘But right up there in that jail cell a minute ago, God just saved me, and I’m going to live the rest of my life for God, even if I spend it in prison, cleaning showers.’”
John was allowed to enroll at Overcomers Training Center, a halfway house. In 2003, the Overcomers group was allowed to go to church. While waiting for his ride back to prison, John recognized a familiar face.
“I looked down the corridor there. I saw a gentleman, kind of limping, walking on a cane, and he was getting closer and closer. And the closer he got I started to see a visible scar on his neck. Immediately, I realized it was JP. And he walked up to me, and he stuck out his hand, and the weight of all that responsibility just gripped me. It was on me. It was not a time to be a tough guy. I just broke down and started crying. He said, ‘I forgive you, John. I love you. I’m glad you’re here; God’s about to change your life. God’s going to use you to do great things.’ And he grabbed me and he hugged me. That night he said, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ It was Easter Sunday, five years to the day that the pastor had found him on Resurrection morning.”
John later found out that JP’s parents had been praying for John for years. After completing his time with Overcomers, the judge gave John seven years instead of the 20 that he was expecting. John has been out of prison for three years now. He met Brooke at church in 2009 and they married a year later.
“I know he had a past,” says Brooke, “but I’ve never seen him that way. Even hearing his story a million times, it’s hard for me to believe it, because I just know who he is, after Christ.”
Today, John is the pastor at Thibodeaux First Assembly of God. He continues to write about his journey, and how God continues to work in his life.
“The largest thing that has changed in me is my identity,” says John. “Who I am. And who I am flows out of who I am in Christ. And slowly, year by year, more of that is beginning to come out of me.”
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