“I TRIED EVERYTHING… EVERYTHING. IT’S NOT GONNA WORK.”
Inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola Prison, Jake Bodine sits down with Charles Chandler for an honest conversation about prison, fatherhood, forgiveness, identity, and finding Jesus while serving a life sentence.
Charles didn’t grow up believing his life would end up here. His parents served in the military, his family provided for him, and Charles openly admits that he made his life much harder than it needed to be.
Growing up, Charles struggled with the absence of his father, who was working to provide for their family. As a kid, Charles didn’t understand the sacrifice. He only understood that everyone else’s dad seemed to be there and his wasn’t.
That created a void.
Charles says he tried money, drugs, women, acceptance, and eventually life in the streets to fill it. Nothing worked. His choices ultimately led him to Louisiana State Penitentiary with a life sentence.
Inside Angola, Charles began discovering something that completely changed how he saw himself. Instead of allowing his sentence, circumstances, or the opinions of other people to determine his identity, he began asking a different question:
“WHO DOES GOD SAY I AM?”
Charles says experiencing the love of God changed everything. The void he had spent his entire life trying to fill finally made sense.
But one of the most powerful parts of Charles’s story is what happened with his family. ❤️
For years, Charles carried resentment toward his father for not being there when he was young. Then Charles became a father himself.
During a recent God Behind Bars Father Son event inside Angola Prison, Charles had an honest conversation with his son about the years his incarceration had taken from their relationship. Charles told his son that if he was angry with him, he would understand.
Instead, his son responded with grace.
They cried. They prayed. They talked about Jesus.
Through that conversation, Charles began seeing his own father differently. The father he once resented had actually been sacrificing to provide for him.
In this episode of the God Behind Bars Podcast, Jake and Charles talk about receiving a life sentence, prison culture, people pleasing, finding your identity in Christ, experiencing the love of God, fatherhood, resentment, forgiveness, and discovering purpose while incarcerated.
Charles calls Angola the “home of a million masks.” After years of changing himself to fit the people around him, he says he finally discovered who he really is through Jesus.
Charles is still serving his sentence, but his sentence no longer gets to define his identity.
His past doesn’t define him.
Other people don’t define him.
Jesus does. ❤️
🎙️ THE GOD BEHIND BARS PODCAST
Join Jake Bodine for honest conversations from inside prisons about Jesus, redemption, family, incarceration, forgiveness, and the life changing power of God.
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