Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage as well as highlight
God's goodness and modern-day miracles.
We are your hosts, Josh and Shelly Hankins.
Today we have with us a very special guest.
The Holy Spirit has led him to us, and you're going to be blown away by what he has to say.
And with that, we welcome Jim Sid to the show, and we're going to ask him to open up with
a little prayer and then we'll get things rolling.
Shelly and Josh, thank you so much for having me and giving me this opportunity.
We will open with Dear Lord, thank you for your opportunity to witness to your powerful
grace and mercy.
You tell us, Dear Lord, we know in Luke the Holy Spirit will give us the words at the
time that we need.
We ask today that this testimony and this conversation land softly on the ears of the
listeners in an effort to provide hope and salvation to those who are seeking it.
We ask this, Dear Lord, in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
So where would you like to start, Jim?
Well, I guess I'll start just to get myself a little momentum with where I come from.
So I'm a Western Pennsylvania small steel town valley, born and raised about an hour
north of here, Shenangle Valley, Sharon Farrell, Hermitage area, led a, had a wonderful, wonderful
childhood.
My father worked for Westinghouse.
My mother was a nurse and we lived in one of those communities where it was just one
matchbox house after another, after another, after another.
The neighborhood was filled with children and it was just a wonderful, wonderful childhood
for me.
I have two sisters, Mary Kay and Beth, and we were typical siblings, two sisters against
one brother growing up, but we are so tight and connected right now.
I just love them dearly.
So my childhood was essentially full of love and activity, uneventful with regards to darkness
or damages or anything like that.
I had a very wonderful childhood.
So okay, high school, my issue became socially using drugs and alcohol, which is such a common
story, but it was social use.
I went through high school.
I actually went to a small school in the middle of West Pennsylvania, law came in state to
play football.
I got very discouraged with my studies.
Didn't feel like doing it after a year.
So I enlisted in the United States Navy.
I was a Navy corpsman stationed with the Marines in Camp Lejeune.
So a Navy corpsman is essentially the same as an Army medic, medic stationed with the
Marines.
I did a lot of traveling, you know, Mediterranean cruises, carib cruises.
All the while though, experimenting with drugs and really getting to the point where my drug
use was damaging to my life.
And I would go through periods of times when I had it in check and then go through periods
of times where I was just simply out of control.
But this was a time pre-drug testing in the military.
So I was able to skate through without having to worry.
Matter of fact, the day that I was discharged, I was walking out on the compound and it was
the first muster ever for compound drug testing the day I left.
So lucky.
Or blessed.
Oh, blessed for sure.
And that's going to become evident as I get further along into this story here.
The Lord has been very, very gracious with me in my life.
I have done and experienced so many things that should have brought my life to an early
end and work could have.
At any rate, I've been in business my entire life.
Okay.
So I led this double lifestyle.
I had a dual life.
I went through some surgeries and things in my younger years, like in my early 20s, back
surgery, knee surgery, et cetera, and started taking painkillers to manage the pain.
And it became something that transitioned from pain relief to I kind of like this, right?
I like how this makes me feel.
I like how it kind of relieves some of the pressures that I was feeling in my life.
And over the years, and I mean for a solid 20 years, I was an opiate addict and not
just taking a couple of pills here and there.
I was heavily into the Oxycontin and fentanyl taking doses because of my tolerance at the
time that would kill three, four people.
That's a long time too.
It's a long time.
I functioned in business for a period of time and it just got to the point where my decision-making
became very skewed.
My priorities changed.
I also have to tell you that not only was I not walking with God, but I denied him.
He continued to embrace me throughout this and my denial.
At some point in time in the 2000s, that was it, I got into criminality.
And I began trafficking in narcotics.
I left my job.
I took a little consulting job here and there so that I can be really where I wanted to
be, which was in the darkness.
That's where I wanted to be.
I thought that's where you thrive.
Like dirt.
And I was feeling a lot of shame.
I was experiencing a lot of guilt.
I had a son and I was feeling separation, but it didn't seem to stop me.
Matter of fact, not only did it not seem to stop me, it did not stop me from just discontinued
behavior.
So I was set up.
I'll use those words.
Thankfully, thankfully now I say this by a confidential informant and the Pennsylvania
State Police Drug Task Force arrested me trafficking in cocaine.
And because there were some jurisdictional issues with the arrest, I was thinking I'm
getting off.
Right?
That's how I lived my life.
I'll get away with this.
I'll get away with that.
I'll get away with this.
But it became a federal case.
So they turned it over to the feds.
And at the time they were saying, listen, all you have to do is give us a name, give us
an activity, give us this, give us that, someone we can go after with your testimony behind
it.
And I did not do that.
I just refused to do that.
I did offer, honestly.
And this is just an example of how really fragmented this war on drugs has been for so many years.
I said, listen, I drove back and forth to Nogales, Mexico and brought drugs across the
border.
I know the network.
I can teach you and tell you how that is.
And they said, no, that's not in our jurisdiction.
So I went to trial and I wound up with a 130 months federal prison sentence.
So that's 10 years, 10 months.
Here's where my God story takes off.
It's always been there, but here's where it takes off.
I was in Allegheny County jail.
They took me out of the federal courtroom in handcuffs and a suit and I was in the holding
cell in Allegheny County jail.
It was surreal.
They took me upstairs to an observation pod to make sure that there were no suicidal tendencies
or anything like that.
When I went through intake and they asked me about my drug use, was there any drug use?
Is there anything we should be concerned about with regards to withdrawal, et cetera, et
cetera?
I said, no, don't worry about me.
I'm going to be fine.
So for those of us who have been through withdrawal before from an opiate, especially the massive
amounts that I was taking, it is you would rather be, I would have rather been dead than
to go through it.
So I was sitting on the floor in severe withdrawal in a jail cell in Allegheny County, just not
knowing what was going to happen.
My head felt like it was going to split open.
I was eternally sick to my stomach.
I couldn't get, first of all, the bed's only four feet away from the toilet anyways in
these cells, but I couldn't get any more two feet away.
I stayed on the floor.
It was that bad.
And one day I was in the cell by myself and all of a sudden they assigned me a cellmate.
So this fella came walking in and he took one look at me and he says, brother, you're
in a bad way.
So I'm here.
I'm here for you.
You want to talk about, I've been there, right?
And at the time, to be honest with you, I was just wishing he would disappear.
I mean, I didn't want, I didn't even want to speak a word.
I didn't want to hear anything.
I didn't want to speak anything.
Now how long was it until he came in?
I was in there by myself for two days.
On the third day, Jasper was his name and I had to sell.
And it was literally a matter of minutes before he sat down and pulled out the little Gideon's
Bible that they issued to us when we were assigned to sell and just started reading,
reading scripture.
And once again, I was really in no condition to interact with anyone at this time, but
Jasper continued to read scripture and then he began to interpret scripture as it pertained
to his life, which mimics mine very closely.
And at some point in time, I finally got up in my bunk and I would look over and he would
be at the little metal table we have in the jail cell reading and lifting his head and
then reading and lifting his head.
And I never knew how to get into a relationship with God through scripture or any other means,
but he was reading and meditating on the word.
And I started feeling like I needed to, what does he have?
Where is this coming from?
He's here with me in a prison cell.
He came from the Badlands in Philadelphia.
For anyone who knows what that is, it's North Philly and it's a nasty, rough place.
He had a father who was serving life term for homicidal, two brothers who were killed.
So he lived that life.
And I started talking to him.
I started asking him, tell me what you're doing.
Tell me what you're doing.
I was born Catholic.
I believed in God, but I'd never had a relationship.
I never knew that.
That's key.
It's key.
And I was not walking with the Lord, obviously.
You heard my beginning of the story.
So we begin reading scripture together.
And listen, I start feeling better, just feeling of calm and peace came over me.
And we continued to talk.
And you know, after another couple of days, I said, Jasper, I want this.
Like I want, I want what you have.
I want this relationship.
And we prayed together and I accepted the Lord at that moment as my savior.
And the beauty of this is I was in a place of turmoil, a very dark place in this jail
cell.
And I felt a peace that I had never felt before.
It was overwhelming.
And I began to pray in the way that Jasper prayed, how he taught me to build relationship
with God.
And I prayed for restoration.
I prayed for redemption.
I prayed for reconnection to all the people who I've damaged in their lives with my actions.
I prayed for new connection.
And I began to pray for others, which was very strange to me.
You know, it just was something new, but it was something that I knew I'm supposed to
do.
And slowly in this place, now I was transferred at some point after my sentencing hearing to
a federal institution over in Ohio Elkton.
And it was a higher security level.
I had a long time, so they can't put you at a lower security level.
I continued to experience this peace and this restoration and the redemption was coming.
And I began to develop a new connection with my son, who by the way, my son, Nate, is 30
years old.
And we adopted him and brought him home when he was one day old.
And we had always been so close.
And I was feeling so much guilt over what I had done.
And we reconnected.
And he was so merciful to me, this little guy.
But I left him at his very formidable time.
He was 15 years old.
You need a father in your life.
And I was gone until he was 23 almost.
But we stayed close and we visited and we did all these things.
Then I relate my time in prison to a, I often say if I ever wrote a book, the title would
be razor wire and rainbows, because that's what it was.
It was beauty.
It was peace in my relationship with the Lord.
It's a lot of really difficult things taking place around me.
It is what you think it is.
Okay.
But you don't have to live there while you're there.
And I became connected to so many good men who were walking with Christ like I was.
And it became a loving, spiritually fulfilled place to be.
So fast forward to 26.
I went in in 28 in 2008.
I came home in 2016.
The end of the year was the end of my sentence.
And my prayer began to change.
I said, I said, dear Lord, I only pray for one thing.
I pray that your will be done in my life.
That's what I want now.
Use me.
And I can only imagine, you know, that it was then that he sat back and said, now I'm
going to show you what I can do.
And slowly and deliberately, I felt this tapestry was being woven in my life from so many different
places, prayers, things were, he was answering prayers that I wasn't praying.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Okay.
100%.
Yeah.
So the Lord was answering prayers that I never prayed.
When I came home, I went to work for an reentry initiative down on the South side in Pittsburgh
in a warehouse.
And we helped men and women coming home from incarceration, find employment, get some stability,
connect with some folks who can really help them, stuff like that.
So here's a prayer that I never prayed that God answered for me.
I was in the warehouse one day and this woman came in with two council people from Clareton,
Pennsylvania.
And the fellow I was working with, Dan, came over and introduced her to me, said, hey,
this is Joyce.
She is trying to put something together to help people.
Some type of a halfway house, a reentry home, a three-quarter home, whatever the case may
be.
And I was in the council people who are in support of that and the community of Clareton.
So I said, hey, I want to be involved.
Let me help with this.
I could recall some of my business acumen and maybe make some things happen for her.
So we connected.
We had a few meetings.
We would meet and have coffee.
Joyce is a retired state parole agent, 25 and a half years, 22 of which were spent in
Clareton.
And Joyce would become my wife.
So God's sense of humor, right?
The ex-con and retired state parole agent.
I mean, that's how he works.
He put us together and we began this journey and in overtime fell in love.
But all the while we began working on what eventually become the cornerstone residence
for veterans in Clareton, Pennsylvania, which we spent five years in court trying to get
an occupancy permit.
And all the way to the state supreme court.
Here's God's unanswered prayer that turns out to be perfect timing.
We prayed all the way through that, can we please have resolution for this?
And God said, yeah, but not till I'm ready.
So for five years we fought and in the meantime, we had a fire that burnt right up through
the middle of it just after we had renovated it.
So we had to start all over again and we did this on our own dime.
It was just really a God mission that we knew we were going to be provided for.
Finally, the state supreme court just less than a year ago ruled in our favor and that
was the end of it.
And we also have the had the place completely renovated.
And I'm happy to say that we have veterans in there now who we are helping and I'll be
going to visit them this afternoon when I leave here.
Here's a retired state parole agent Joyce.
Now, I know folks who have come from service like that.
And unfortunately dealing with that damage in the population like that, they're jaded
or it's very, they're very tainted.
They just want nothing to do with it.
She came home.
She came out of that wanting to, I have more to do.
So we give all the glory to God for where we are right now with regards to cornerstone
residents.
So when we were going through this, I thought, well, I should probably pray for some provision
here because this is kind of taxing.
And so my prayer changed.
I said, dear Lord, you have us on a mission.
We need provision so that we can sustain this.
And he told me, you got to get back in a business.
This is your responsibility.
You are responsible for this.
And so at 60, I went back into business.
So we have a local roofing company tri-link and he has been so merciful and so provisional
in our lives.
We want for nothing because of the Lord's intervention.
We don't have a lot, but we want for nothing.
And that's beautiful.
So we're very encouraged with where things are going with cornerstone.
Another episode in my life that could only be explained by God or by God's intervention
is I told you I adopted Nate and brought him home when he was a day old.
So when I came home from my incarceration, I said, hey, Nate came down and lived with
us.
I said, let's do this 23 and me.
Let's find out what your lineage is.
So we did it.
And ironically enough, his mimics mine very closely.
So fast forward a couple years down the road, Joyce calls me.
She was visiting her sister up in Canada.
And she told me a couple stories about people who connected the family and relatives through
23 and me.
And I said, well, that's crazy because I got Lebanese on one side of my family.
We have Italian and Irish on the other side.
We have huge.
But I don't have any relatives on this thing.
So she walked me through how to make it public.
So I did.
I hit the button.
The next morning when I got up and looked at it, I had 1900-some relatives across the
country.
First, second, third cousins.
At the top of the list, I have a son, biological son, who I never knew about.
I dated a girl when I first came over from the Navy, she got pregnant and she never
told anyone.
She went and gave birth and put him up for adoption.
So he was adopted by a family in Cleveland.
And we almost immediately began to communicate.
His message was, I'm looking for my biological parents.
So we connected.
We met four years now, downtown Pittsburgh.
He came in town.
I met his parents, wonderful people.
His name is Nate.
Both parents, myself and my first wife and his parents, named our children Nathan because
it means gift from God.
So I got to tell you, I have my two Nates.
So we call them Nate PA and Nate Ohio.
So Nate PA just got married.
Nate Ohio is getting married in May.
They are best men at each other's wedding.
Far out.
Awesome.
So come on now.
Everybody just loves on everybody.
And my stepdaughter, Megan, we had a little conversation about back and forth.
I adore her.
And then Nate PA cascaded his wife and Nate Ohio, Lisa, his future wife.
I just adore her.
So we play golf together.
We go out together.
We eat dinner.
We just have, it's just a wonderful, wonderful event in my life.
So you know, for a second, I thought you were going to say that the biological kid was the
one you adopted and had no idea.
That would really be the only other twist that you could add to this story.
That's for sure where he's going with that.
So that's my story.
All the way through my life, God has been such an all the way through from the, from
the very beginning.
He's been instrumental in the fact that when I was turning from him, he was chasing me
down.
And when I was in that prison cell, he attacked me.
It's like you're not going anywhere.
I got you down.
That's it.
I've had enough.
I'm putting you here.
See your run now.
Pay attention, you know, and he said to me, he said, look, you know, you're a bullheaded,
you're stubborn, you're thick-skulled.
You don't recognize these blessings.
I keep putting in your life.
So now you're going to trip over them.
And that's what he, and he put them right at my feet.
And you know, my connection now with men of God in my life, I will give locking arms,
men a plug, Leo Wisniewski, very instrumental in my life.
It's just a group of Christian men who gather and worship and glorify God.
That's about all we do.
Is there something wrong with that?
No, there's nothing wrong with that.
We live for it.
So there you have it.
You know, going back to when you said you were in a dark place and you had bandaged your
son essentially to be in this dark place because you thrived in the darkness, you know, the
mushroom treatment.
And you said you really, you didn't want to do that, but at the same time, the addiction
was so prevalent.
And I think that's important to note because I've heard so many people that don't know
the grip of addiction say things like, well, you've got a kid.
Why can't you just do this for your kid?
Why don't you know better?
You know, you've got somebody who's been Narcan in front of their kid three times, right?
And so one of these times it's not going to work, you know, and that's not motivation
enough to stop the addiction.
And I don't think people understand just the grip that addiction has.
And the last guest that we had, we talked about addiction and recovery and how difficult
it is to find recovery from addiction without Jesus.
To me, it's impossible, not just difficult because I didn't feel like I abandoned my
son, but I did, but I didn't feel like it.
So as addicts, we justify everything that we do.
We justify our behavior.
We justify our druggies.
We justify our criminality.
We justify everything.
We justify pain towards others.
There's no accountability when you're active in addiction.
There's absolutely none.
Yeah.
Because then you have to admit that you have a problem.
Of course you do.
And I've seen guys admit that they have a problem over and over and over again.
It's that powerful.
So they admit, I have a problem.
Let's get you to treatment.
Let's take care of this and see if we can help you restore yourself and get back into
some pro-social living.
And two months later, I get a phone call from the same guy.
I have a problem.
Yes, you do.
Let's try to get you into it.
It's that.
I used to think that I could do it myself.
I would go and rent a hotel room for four or five days in the hopes that I could detox
myself, white knuckle detox, and it never worked.
Third day in, I'm on the phone.
I got to get something for this illness.
Yeah, addiction is a powerful, powerful thing.
It destroys families.
It destroys lives.
Oh, thank you so much for sharing.
I thank you for the courage it takes to share that story because I know that the Emmy likes
to use shame and guilt and fear to keep us from telling the things that need said.
And I know that when our sin is brought into the light, that the enemy has no place to
hide because he loves his shadows.
He loves the dark places.
And I appreciate that you were willing to say this on a podcast where potentially many
people can hear this and know about resources.
And I hope that they feel uplifted that they know that they're not alone, right?
Or if they have a family member, they have a better idea of how to approach this situation
for that family member because, you know, I'm an EMT and I work with all of addiction.
And it is an ugly thing.
And you would be surprised how many people can keep it a secret from their family.
Well, you might not be so.
I really wouldn't.
But I, but you and the listeners might be surprised to know how easy they can keep some
of the stuff hidden from their family.
Yes.
It lurks in dark corners.
The funny thing that you mentioned that, Josh, is I thought I was fooling everybody, but
the only one I was fooling was myself.
Because once you get to a certain point, once I got to a certain point with my addiction
and with my behavior, it was evident to all those around me.
I just lived in denial.
So and that's a denial.
It leads to isolation, which leads to really that's where the damage starts is when you're
isolating.
And did you serve the entirety of your sentence or did you have my original sentence was 130
months.
The mandatory minimum in my category with the federal system is 120 months, which is
10 years.
At one point, the Congress enacted something that says you can't sentence over mandatory
minimums for certain offenses.
And mine was one.
They dropped it down all the way down to 120 months.
So of that 120 months, I did an intensive community drug treatment for a year.
And I actually served as a mentor to the community while I did that time there.
And I received a year off my sentence.
So essentially what was a 10 year, 10 month sentence reduced to 120 months.
I got down to eight and a half years with good time and then another year off for my
drug treatment.
So seven and a half years, actually closer to eight is what I ended up serving.
It's still a long time, but better than it's a long time.
And I'll tell you, when you spend that amount of time incarcerated, and this is something
that is really important to understand, when men and women come home from lengthy incarcerations,
they I'll speak for myself.
I felt like I had the scar letter.
Even though people did not know me or for those who did not know me, I felt in some way less
substantial than society, even though I was trying to be pro-social in my actions and in
my and what I what I had done.
And that's a very, very common thing for folks coming home from incarceration.
And it's actually one of the things that creates this high rate of recidivism, which is reoffending
is self worth.
Where's my value to anyone who would want to put me to work or where's my value?
So they revert back into criminal behavior and 60 some percent 60 some percent reoffenders,
recidivism, that's high.
It's really high.
Yeah, that's high.
And it's the national average.
How far in your sentence before you fully embraced God?
Two weeks, two weeks.
Yes.
So you spent essentially almost eight years in prison.
Yes.
Like Peter.
Yes.
Learning about Jesus, loving on Jesus and sharing Jesus with others.
Here's my God story from Scripture.
I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound.
And in every circumstance, I've learned a secret of plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
I can do all things to him who strengthens me.
That's my life.
Philippians.
Yeah.
That's my life.
Yes.
And we shared, oh my gosh, when you're in there in such close proximity to so many men who
have experienced the same thing that you're experiencing and worse, the relationship.
I'm still in touch with a lot of these men.
Lots of them.
Just like we're old military buddies, my old veteran, but it's that type of a camaraderie
when you find the right, when God's in the center of it.
So yes, that's what we did the whole time.
That's awesome.
I'm glad that you do that.
We did a lot of push-ups too.
And pull-ups.
What else are you going to do?
Not much.
Played softball, basketball, you know, anything to keep you occupied.
Yeah, they don't give you a whole lot of stuff.
No, but they do want you to stay occupied in there just to keep you, you know, idle
hands.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I've heard that phrase, idle hands are the devil's workshop.
Yes.
And they cause problems in prison.
Idle hands.
The guys look for other things to do.
You can find out just how creative people can be.
Amen.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
We really appreciate your story.
We really appreciate your testimony.
I love to hear about Jesus.
I'd love to hear about Jesus reaching people and lowest points.
And I hope that it encourages other people that have similar experiences or, you know,
maybe not identical, but somewhere along the lines where they feel like the least of
these, right?
And I've said this before and I'll say it again, but I feel that you can only love
Jesus as much as you love the least of these.
And so I think we need to really lean into the people that feel marginalized, whether
they are or not, is irrelevant, right?
What if they feel it and help spread the love of Jesus to not be ashamed of the gospel,
to lift people up, to encourage people and let them know that there is a better way and
that way is through the life of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
So I really appreciate your story.
I really appreciate being on here.
I appreciate your bravery through it all, despite the fact that it wasn't bravery.
Did it put you in it?
No, it was not.
No, but it's definitely, it's definitely helps.
I believe in your story.
I believe that the courage that God has put you, you don't give you a spirit of timidness,
but a boldness, right?
And here you are boldly proclaiming what he's done for you, despite what you tried to sabotage
him in doing.
Did I ever?
Oh boy, I'll say.
Well, it's been such a pleasure.
Thank you.
When you think you're down and out, God's not done with you yet.
Yes.
I was, yeah, please, anyone who's in the type of situation that we're talking about with
regards to addiction or damage or any type of physical abuse, whatever the case may be,
seek help, seek God.
And there is hope.
There is, I'm living proof that he will work in your life.
Amen.
It's so good.
And then you have greater relationships because of Jesus.
Yes.
Amen, you do.
So good.
Thank you for coming on and sharing that with us.
It was my pleasure.
Thank you.
If this episode has been a blessing to you, we ask that you share it with somebody so
it can be an encouragement to others.
And also, we have a fundraising campaign to help us with the audio editing expenses, and
that's on gifsango.com, and we look out God's goodness podcast, and you can make your donation
there.
And thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.