He is now in a prison wing for drug abusers where he will be forced to reduce his dependence on drugs. He is safer than he ever was left to his own devices on the outside. Most important he is, for the first time in a long time, facing up to the consequences of his actions. He had been protected and cushioned from them so long that he felt complacent – invincible even. People who feel like that tend not to cry to God for mercy. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. He needed his bubble of pride to be burst and to be brought low, and that is what is happening now. We pray that God will continue this work to the salvation of his soul.

Two weeks ago a close member of my family was sentenced to a three and a half year prison sentence for drugs related offences. Although it wasn’t a complete surprise, nevertheless the news when it came was still naturally shocking and distressing. As I’ve had some time to process things I thought I’d write a little about some of the things the Lord has been teaching me over these weeks.

1. A newfound appreciation of the sovereign wisdom of God. For years we have been praying for this family member to be converted, and our prayer has always been, ‘Lord, do whatever it takes to save him.’ In the last five or ten years, as we’ve watched him go from bad to worse and seen his stubborn unwillingness to change, it’s become increasingly clear that unless God graciously stopped him in his tracks by conversion, only something like a prison sentence would be enough to get him off the road of self-destruction he was hurtling down. And so, ever since he was charged with these offences back in March and the likelihood of a prison sentence loomed, we haven’t really been praying that he would be acquitted, but rather that God would do what was best for him. A prison sentence might seem like the worst possible thing that could happen to a young man in his thirties, but to be allowed to continue in the life he was living would have been a far more terrible sentence.

In the days after his sentencing I would keep trying to imagine the horror of being locked in a small cell, deprived of liberty and family and friends. When I went for a walk or cycled in the countryside, when I drove to the shops or sat down to a meal with my family, I thought about how wretched it would be not to be able to do any of those things. And then it occurred to me that he’d been living for years in a kind of voluntary prison. He had chosen to surround himself with violent people, he had cut himself off from his family, he hadn’t taken advantage of his liberty but had allowed his world to shrink to the confines of a dingy apartment.

After several drug-related brushes with death over the last few years, it was only going to be a matter of time before this young man, this image-bearer of the living God who had so much potential, would be completely destroyed.

And so, having prayed for years that God would do whatever it took to humble him and bring him to repentance and faith, having been praying earnestly that God would deliver him from his miserable life of addiction and debt and fear, we see this sentence not so much as the climax in a crescendo of miseries, but as God’s gracious answer to our prayers. He is now in a wing for drug abusers where he will be forced to reduce his dependence on drugs. He is safer than he ever was left to his own devices on the outside. Most important he is, for the first time in a long time, facing up to the consequences of his actions. He had been protected and cushioned from them so long that he felt complacent – invincible even. People who feel like that tend not to cry to God for mercy. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. He needed his bubble of pride to be burst and to be brought low, and that is what is happening now. We pray that God will continue this work to the salvation of his soul.

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