AMAZING STORY
The Ultimate Wealth
By Rob Hull
The 700 Club
CBN.com - “Hustling is my life, period. I’m going to do it till I die, you know,” Recalls Alphonza Mabry. “I’m not in it to be the gangster of the year; I’m in it to be the ultimate hustler of the year. I want to get paid, period.”
Alphonza was drawn to the streets as a young boy, despite his Christian grandmother’s efforts to raise him in the church. “She’d dress me up on Sunday. I remember Wednesday night was prayer meeting. So she tried to really keep me plugged in, you know, to where I wouldn’t go astray like my older cousins did.”
But when Alphohnza’s drug dealing uncle started giving him money, Alphonza was hooked. “He’s got a nice car, got the chains on, you know. He had pages and everything like that. He ain’t struggling. And for him to give me, 10 years old, $50? So, how you do that?”
He figured out the money came from selling drugs, and he wanted in. By the age of 14 he was selling marijuana. “Money was really—was a necessity—I had to have it. I could feel the desire coming for it. I built my confidence up because you can’t tell me nothing, you know? I got more money than you got. What can you do?”
Through his teens he spent time in and out of prison for robbery and parole violations. “I was on the path of destruction; jail, prison, hustling, chasing cheddar, you know. Where I come from, that’s what you do. I can’t be scared of no jail time. When that time came up for me to do prison time, I just said, ‘Look, it’s just part of the game.’”
Alphonza says prison made him a better criminal. In his early 20s he decided to take his dealing to the next level and sell crack. “My anger, my frustration, and my hunger was all combined. I had to look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘What am I going to do?’ And I said, ‘Money on my mind, so I’m going to go and get it.’ And I went and got it hard. I didn’t care about no individuals, no homeless, nothing, I’m about to get paid. I’m going to sacrifice my whole life, because this is what I feel like I have to do. And it paid off tremendously.”
He says he was making $1,300 a day selling marijuana and crack cocaine, but when a rival drug dealer was shot, Alphonza became the prime suspect. His drug empire disappeared. “When an individual gets shot, now everybody pointing the fingers at you. Now all of a sudden your face is on the TV screen, ‘Alphonza Cheron Mabry wanted for premeditated 1st degree attempted murder.’ So what did I profit? Everything gone. Gone. Gone.”
He was arrested and spent two and a half years in prison awaiting trial. In desperation, he called his grandmother. She told him to call on Jesus. “She said ‘I want you to read Psalm 91, Psalm 23 and 112. That’s what you need to read. That’s what the Lord told me to tell you to read. You tell them, son, you tell them you want to repent. Go do it.’ So I’m like, ‘Jesus! What you mean? They trying to give me twenty-five to life. Ain’t nobody trying to hear that.’ Click. Hung up the phone. She got the nerve to tell me about God right now. I’ve been in here with a bunch of gorillas and orangutans and stuff like that, and you’re talking about God and the DA trying to give me life—I ain’t been thinking about Him. And you’re telling me to call on this Man Jesus? Now I know He real, but He forced me to hustle my whole entire life.’”
Back in his cell Alphonza prayed and put his life in God’s hands. “I felt something on me so strong that I just had to break down. I told God about the frustration. Why I felt like I had to hustle, why I felt like I had to grind. I basically gave Him all my excuses. You feel me? But then in the end, I just say, you know, ‘Jesus, just save me, Man. I can’t do this, Man. Just give me an opportunity, Man. All I need’s an opportunity. Just show me how to do it the right way, cause this is all I know, Man. Drugs, a connect, living by the gun.’”
“As I was confessing things, things I was dealing with, where my mindset was at. I could feel it when I was done. So much weight was taken off of me, you know. I could take a fresh deep breath, like it was about to be a new beginning. But the part was now I got to trust Him. Either I’m going home, or I’m going down the river for 40 plus years. ‘But, I’m trusting You, Man.’”
Just a few days later the jury delivered their verdict. Not guilty.
Alphonza was set free. He says it was Jesus who brought him through and continues to guide him today. “Jesus took a wretched man like me, Jesus now. Jesus took me out (and) cleaned me up. Despite my faults, despite what I’ve done. I didn’t know the truth. I didn’t know there was a better way. He’s pruning me, He’s growing me. And He wants me to be successful. Why? Because I’m a son of God. You feel me? I’m a son of God.”
Alphonza now says he is thankful for the years his grandmother spent praying for him. “The power of prayer, it changes all things, man. It changes all things. She prayed for eight years strong. Now she understands if that phone rings at two o’clock in the morning, I ain’t dead, I ain’t in jail. She sleeps good at night on my behalf. She sleeps real good.”
Today he is a financial strategist with the church coalition; helping churches manage their money. “You don’t have to sell ‘cain. You don’t have to pump pounds. You don’t have to do all of that nonsense. It’s a better way regardless of your background. It don’t matter. If you step out on faith in the unknown, in the unseen, and you’re trusting in Jesus, He can’t fail you.”
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