God's New Assignment for Anthony

CBN.com -Anthony Johnson always admired his older brother. By his early 20s, he followed in his brother’s footsteps by becoming a drug dealer and convicted felon.

“When I started selling drugs, some of my aspirations were to be in the glamorous life, to be able to wear the nice leather jackets, the Gucci, the Louis Viton. I come from a family of five and my mom didn’t have the money to get us the latest.”

Anthony’s older brother showed him the ropes of the drug business, and soon they were big names on the streets, but deep down, Anthony knew there was more to life than hustling.

“Sometimes I would ponder my life. All kinds of things would go through my mind, like wanting something better out of life, knowing there was something better but not really knowing what is was.”

Anthony was good at selling cocaine and made lots of money, but once he started using up his inventory, all his money went back into feeding his habit. His expensive coke binges left no money for rent and he ended up homeless.

“I realized it was an addiction when I started withdrawals in the morning and wanted to get high all day.  When I wanted to rob and steal to get the drugs, that’s when I knew it got to my limit or went further than I had imagined.”
Coming down from a high one night, Anthony cried out to the God he remembered from his childhood church experiences.

“I was really crying, ‘Lord, I’m tired of living like this. I’m tired of getting high! I’m tired of the drugs and not having any money in my pocket. I’m tired of this lifestyle.’ But I didn’t know how to get past it. All I knew was that I wanted something different.”

His binge came to a screeching halt when he was arrested for cocaine possession and six charges of driving with a suspended license. During the first few months of his incarceration, Anthony met a jail chaplain who asked him a question he’d never though about.

“He asked me, ‘Where would you go if you died today?’ He started telling me how I could be a better person and how I could live a holy life, things I’ve never heard. Nobody had ever told me that. Me being a tough guy that was just different. I received Jesus that day.”

Anthony wanted to please God, but when he was released from his six-month sentence, he made the mistake of going back to his old friends. Just a week later, he was back in jail. This time he served a month for driving on a suspended license and resisting arrest.

“I really felt bad and scared at the same time. Like God was not playing with me. This is serious and I need to take my life seriously. I was afraid to face the chaplain because I knew the chaplain was there and a lot of the guys I ministered to and encouraged. I really felt ashamed because I felt like I let myself down. I let my family down. I told my baby’s mother that I wasn’t going back to jail. That really hurt me and I know it hurt her to see me go back and do the very thing I said I wasn’t going to do.”

After his month in jail, Anthony went to live with his sister, far from the influence of his old neighborhood and friends. He got a job as a janitor and began to attend church. Within a year the judge in Anthony’s pending drug case dismissed all charges against him because he saw that he was a changed man.

“I had to lose all of who I thought I was in the streets. I was trying to hold on to that part of my life, and serve God. I really had to surrender all to God.  I believe that last month in jail really dealt with me to release who I thought I was to God.”

Another motivator was his young daughter, Ashante.

“She was two years old and she was growing and I really wanted to be a father to her, I really wanted to be responsible. I really wanted a family.”

Anthony married his girlfriend Atina once he got out of jail.  That was 16 years ago!   He also graduated from seminary and is a pastor and chaplain at the same jail where he was incarcerated.

“I say going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me because that’s where change happened for me. God gave me an opportunity to really look over my life and really see the wrong that I’ve done, see the people I’ve hurt and really make a decision in my heart that I really need to do something different. I need to do something better. I believe that God has really set me up to be something special. I believe everybody has an assignment on this earth, and we just have to find out what it is.”