Cody's testimony of addiction, brokenness, and finding JESUS behind bars!

Lord, we just thank you for this opportunity Father God just to be here in your presence as one family worshiping your name. Lord we thank you for your grace, for your mercy. We thank you that we serve a God that is in the business of second chances. Lord I thank you for the many chances that you've given me over the course of my life and I know there's men in here right now Father God that need another chance and you're willing, you are able and you're calling them out saying that you're ready to do a work in their life, a rebirth in their life. Maybe for some of us the second or the third or the fourth or the hundredth time. But Lord today I just pray that we will fully surrender once and for all. That we will make you the Lord of our life. We know you hold our future, we know you'll hold our family and we pray all these things in Jesus mighty name. Amen. Hey you guys could go ahead and take a seat. Hey we're really excited about being here with you all. I'm Jake Bodine, I'm the founder of God Behind Bars and it's an honor to be here in the state of Mississippi. This is our second time ever in the state of Mississippi getting to worship with you guys and we pray that is the second time of many to come. We've got an amazing, amazing day planned for y'all. We're gonna get back into more worship but before we go into that I'm gonna call up one of y'all's very own Cody Cole and he's gonna share his story of rebirth. I don't know about y'all man but who's having fun? I know I'm having fun. I'd love to get up here and praise the Lord. I want to thank these guys for coming out here and for giving us the opportunity to be able to come and worship God. So I want to share a little bit. They told me I only get five minutes so I got to wrap this up really fast. So whenever I was younger, my mom and dad got divorced. My real dad was strung out on drugs, heroin addict, shooting up, got addicted to methadone, never really had anything to do with me and my little brother. They got divorced whenever I was five. My mom, we lived around different places in Alabama, Mississippi, moved around a lot and then whenever I was eight my mom got remarried to my stepdad. I was always trying to prove something to everybody because I didn't have a father figure, right? I was always, I was always trying

to fit in with the crowd. I was always trying to be the best at everything that I tried to do to try to be important to everybody else, right? I was always trying to get that affirmation that I never got from my father, right? Well I was the wild child out of the family. I was partying, doing drugs, anything you could think of, right? I was out there. I really was. I was completely lost. I didn't have any direction. My family would have to drag me to go to church. My aunt and them were heavily involved in church. My mom and them were involved in church. I just, I hated to go because every time I sat where you're sitting right now, the Holy Spirit would eat me alive because I knew what I was doing was wrong, right? Well it took me going to jail, getting my case dismissed, catching a burglary charge, which is what I'm here on right now, bonding out, going to Texas, selling drugs, catching a state charge over in Texas for selling cocaine, bonded out, then caught a fed charge whenever my wife was six months pregnant. I got completely ripped away from everything that I've ever known and I had nowhere else to turn and I remember whenever I got in the county jail, I was laying in my bed and I was praying and I was just asking God to help me get through these detoxes and these guys down right below me were having prayer call under my rack and I was sitting there in my mind, I was like, I need to join these guys and I didn't. The Holy Spirit was convicting me again to come to God and I didn't, I didn't listen. But that night I laid in my bed and I opened my Bible and whenever I opened my Bible, I was crying my eyes out, just wanting to get back home. I had a lot of time over my head. I didn't know how much time I was gonna get in affairs. I had up to 55 years in the state of Mississippi, up to 99 years in the state of Texas and I opened my Bible and Jonah 3, 6 was the very first round. I just flipped through it and opened it up and it said, and God had saw how they had turned from their evil ways and he relented from the disaster that he had promised and in that moment I just felt this overwhelming sense of peace come over me and everything was gonna be alright and I started praying and I got in my Bible and I started studying and I started getting close to God again and separated myself away from everybody and everything, right? Let me tell you, I got

sentenced in the feds, they gave me the lowest sentence that you could get because I got sentenced in the feds first, which was my last charge I caught. I went back to the state of Texas and they gave me probation to run together with my fed time. I didn't have to do the 99 years in the state. They gave me probation. Then I get out. I get out and I'm in Mississippi. I get involved in ministry. I started my own business whenever I was out there. I was preaching on social media. I was leading the men's ministry at church. God had completely turned my life around, doing Bible studies with young adults two or three times a week. I found out I had to come back to prison on my own charges from Mississippi. I cried out to God. I've been out for two years. Then I got married to my wife. We got a house. She's pregnant, six months pregnant again. I find out I have to come back to prison. I'm crying out on my pond levy and I'm asking God, I'm like, God, why do I got to go back to prison? I'm doing everything that you want me to do. The only thing he told me, he said, there's one person that I need you to reach. In my relationship with God, I told God, I said, if that's what you want me to do, I'm going to have to do it. There's nothing I can do about that. God is a miracle working God, man. If he can take me whenever I was strung out on cocaine and fentanyl, my wife strung out

and he can turn our lives around, he can do it for each and every one of you and that's what he's going to do today.