God’s Hot Pursuit of an Armed Bank Robber Part 2
Wise Counsel
I was released from prison in April of 2009, during the heart of the recession, when no one, let alone a former inmate, could find work. But within months, another grace arrived: I found a position at a leading printer of Supreme Court briefs in Omaha, helping attorneys perfect their briefs.
When Annie and I got engaged, we decided that we wanted my friend, pastor Marty Barnhart, to officiate the ceremony. God bless him, Marty wouldn’t agree to do so until we had gone through his premarital counseling.
Our first counseling session was, in a word, memorable. Instead of discussing marriage, Marty asked what we believed about Jesus. When he talked about grace, that free gift of salvation, I listened, especially when he said that I could be forgiven. “Yeah, even you, Shon,” he said.
The next day I couldn’t escape the feeling that God had been pursuing me for a long time and that if I’d just abandon my stubbornness and selfishness, and hand everything over to him, I would find redemption.
What does it mean to be redeemed? And how do you redeem yourself after robbing five banks?
The answer is, you don’t. The answer is that you need some help.
In Ephesians 1:7–8, Paul writes that in Christ “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” To put it differently, because of our sins, none of us—and surely no former prisoner like me—can be redeemed on our own. We need the gospel of grace, which says that each of us matters and has worth because we’re made in the image of God. Grace says we are not defined by our failures and our faults, but by a love without merit or condition.
God’s grace was enough to redeem me.
Surrender
Nearly five years have passed since I made the most important decision of my life: to surrender to this grace. Annie and I got married, and she too became a believer. We were baptized together at Christ Community Church in Omaha. We had a son whom we named Mark, after my father, a man of faith who passed away after a long battle with cancer while I was still incarcerated. And a few years later we had a baby girl, whom we named Grace.
We moved from Nebraska to Seattle so I could attend the University of Washington Law School on a full-ride scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. During this time, I’ve volunteered and served toward a goal of ending mass incarceration in the United States. I’m motivated by the belief that prisoners are not beyond the grasp of God’s redemption. And we’ve been nourished by our church, Mars Hill in Seattle, where we have met Christians who live out their beliefs with grace and compassion.
After I graduate this spring, we will move to Washington, D.C., and I will begin clerking for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
To say we have been blessed doesn’t begin to cover it.
Through it all, from the amazing to the mundane, God loved us. Through it all, God has given us a purpose. For me that purpose revolves around repentance, loving my wife and children, sharing the grace I’ve been given, and using my legal knowledge to assist those who cannot afford a decent attorney.
Looking back over the course of my life, I can see that although I rarely returned the favor, God hotly pursued me.
Jim Redwood is a pseudonym.
Originally posted on http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/april/gods-hot-pursuit-of-armed-bank-robber.html