He Put Me In Jail to Save Me – Spiritual Story by John M Lukamto

Full Story Text

When my wife lost her job in 2002, she lost her confidence to find a new job and stayed with me in Batam. Since then, our family relied on my salary alone. At this time, with whatever money can buy in a vice place like Batam, my wife and I went deeper into drug addictions. I resorted to drugs in order to find peace. We started with ecstasy pills, where I found I could talk in peace and empathy with my wife, but it was only temporary, as we continued and upgraded to a more dangerous drug like ICE, where we were heavily addicted. Drugs made the situation worse. I lived in an unreal world, and when the drug’s effects subdued, the violence intensified.

Consumed by drugs for about 3 years, I ignored the parental responsibility to our 5 children. They lived in poverty and obtained help from a social welfare organization, CDC, relatives, and in-laws. Our maid had to work to take care of our children without being paid for about 3 years. Under the influence of drugs and in the circle of wicked friends, I was also involved in manslaughters in Batam. I felt no remorse then, because the blood belonged to the dark society anyway. But remained deep in my heart was the guilt for the victims and the innocent family left behind.

To feed my drug addiction I sold everything I had and became officially bankrupt in 2005. I lost my job and planned to smuggle drugs into Singapore. I purchased 3 packs at 7 grams or total of 21 grams of ICE crystal in Batam, and carried them with me by ferry to Singapore together with my wife. However, through a betrayal of some friends in the drug circle, I was caught by the Singapore authorities at the Tanah Merah ferry terminal in Singapore on my way back from Batam. While under detention, my father died in Surabaya, and I had no chance to pay my last respect.

My life seemed to have collapsed when I was detained at Queenstown Remand Prison (QRP) in Nov 2006. My 2nd son got me an affordable lawyer who was his own lecturer (my son studied law diploma at an external university with the help of a Catholic church fund). The lawyer told me my minimum sentence by law would be 5 years and 5 strokes of rotan, because the drug in my possession had been weighed by HSA (Singapore Health Science Authority) to be 18 grams of class A drugs, and worse still I was considered trafficking the drugs from Batam (Indonesia) to Singapore. The law states death penalty for trafficking in 20 grams or more of class A drugs, and I was only short of 2 grams to the death penalty. The best sentence he could bargain with the prosecutor would be 7 years with 5 strokes. That was the best he could do. I was really devastated, depressed and tried to commit suicide in QRP. Then came the court order to put me in IMH mental hospital for evaluation. I was warded for 3 weeks in IMH (mental hospital) and released back under medication to QRP with a report.

It came at the right time. God made Himself known to me through a person by the name of Lim in QRP. He built faith and hope in me. He assured me that God loves me, and was waiting for me to come back to Him through this hard way. He told me that it was not coincidence that I met him in Singapore prison, and it was not coincidence that drugs were the only subject of my arrest instead of the other crimes I had committed, like murder, and it was not coincidence that I was caught by Singapore justice system and not Batam’s, which might be more unbearable. It was all God’s love, plan, and work of mercy towards me.

Lim gave me my first Christian book called “healing your heart from the painful memory.” I confessed all my sins through Lim without hesitation, because he assured me that for what Jesus Christ has done, no sin is so great that it cannot be forgiven, and he read to me the sinner’s prayer. Lim always prayed for me, my wife, and my children, and assured me to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first and leave the rest to Him, as God would take care of my family at home, that I should not worry now, as God would provide all my family’s needs through His blessing. What I should do was only to surrender myself to Him, concentrate on God, and be as close as possible with Him while I was in prison. Lim’s most hopeful statement was: “with God, nothing is impossible, He will show His miracle when we trust Him.”

This was the first time I experienced some peace and hope of miracle in my life. I started reading Bibles and Christian books. The most memorable verses that God touched me with in QRP prison was the story of Joseph, in which God assured me that “although they meant harm to you, but I will make it work for the good of you.” Since then I always looked forward to prison’s yard time just to be able to listen to Lim’s preaching of parables in the Bible together with a group of 4-6 inmates, the same people always together, and always ending the gathering when yard time was over with prayers together. Lim always prayed specifically for me and my family every time. Coincidentally, every time the prison changed cell-rooms for me, somehow I always had a good Christian inmate to accompany me, sharing God’s word with me.

I remember vividly the following event, which has been the anchor of my faith to God. It was one very day, about a week before my final hearing for sentence to be passed. I had one inmate in my cell-room, a very young man about 17 years old but behaving like a 5-year-old child, and he had a disfigured face. I remembered meeting him during my treatment in IMH, where I was told by the warden to bathe this boy and change the diaper for him. Here, he was said to have committed a mild crime, charged with burning his neighbor’s laundry and molesting a girl by touching her. He was pending transfer to IMH again for mental treatment. He never talked to anyone but only mumbled to himself in Hokkien dialect. I shared my food rations from my wife with him because I pitied him, for he had no one to visit him. I did not talk much with him because I knew it was useless to talk to him, as well as my fear from looking at his face that he might get violent.

That night he suddenly woke me up in the middle of the night and said in English, clearly, that I should not worry because my sentence would only be a while, and that I was there because God wanted me to discover my purpose in life. Then he hugged me. I cried like a child in his hug because I was touched by such hopeful news, although I did not actually know what was meant by “purpose.” But I surely knew that God had spoken to help me like a father through this young man, who would never have spoken any sensible words to anyone. Yet he could speak with me like this. I kept saying thank you to him. He was transferred out the next morning.

This experience gave me a stronger peace and faith in my prayer until the actual sentence day. I told my wife through the glass partition during her visit at QRP before the sentencing day that God spoke to me through that young retarded man that my sentence would only be a while. I saw her red eyes. I didn’t know if that meant she believed me or not, or thought I had turned crazy, but I was certainly calm and confident when I sat at the courtroom bench as the sentence was read.

The young man told me a shorter term, but the judge passed the sentence as 9 months and 3 weeks with no rotan caning. I had some confusion for a while because I was so convinced of God’s message, but still I felt very happy and relieved because it was impossibly light compared to what I had been told. Then my lawyer approached me and said, “Congratulations, you would only serve 6 months and 2 weeks after remission.” That was the striking convincing moment for me of God’s miracle and grace. God did not just make a miracle by passing an impossibly light sentence for my heavy crime, but He actually let me know in advance that it was He who did it.

After that I was transferred from QRP to other prisons. Since then I had been telling this testimony of God’s miracle and grace to any Christian brothers I met throughout serving my remaining sentence, and I shared with many the hope of a miracle. I believe it had given them more faith to be close to God. And truly, I found all drug offenders with similar cases like mine in both prisons whom I met were all way above 5 years sentence with permanent bruises caused by rotan caning. They were all surprised by my short sentence. Those who were non-believers reasoned that it was my IMH report or a more lenient chief justice. But the truth which I know was that God worked things out. However it happened, I know God had spoken to me that it was Him who did it.

At this moment in Admiralty prison, serving almost halfway through the total term, I was still having a lot of questions in my mind about what that young retarded boy said about “finding my purpose in life.” I imagined perhaps God wanted to use me greatly on earth, like being a great preacher or pastor to transform many people. Until I met an inmate by the name of Jabez. He was an Indian Christian who liked to have fellowship with other inmates during yard time. He suddenly passed me a book by Rick Warren titled The Purpose Driven Life. He asked me to read just one section a day for 40 days, and no rushing. Then I realized my purpose in life was to come back to the Father like the prodigal son in the Bible. It may not have been the grand imagination I had beforehand, but it was still the greatest thing I ever did in my life.

My wife somehow made it on her own while I was in prison. She could live clean from drugs and had a good job that could support all the children’s needs. She was even able to move to a bigger 5-room HDB flat while I was in prison. She was getting more job offers with better pay. She got a job interview in Shanghai, China. However, her preference to work in China disturbed my mind, as I thought she wanted to avoid me after my release and lead a life of her own far from me. I felt depressed and hopeless.

Then God strengthened my faith again as this Christian brother, Jabez, passed me a letter quoting Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and future.” I believed it was a message from God, because I never told this brother about my marriage life and my recent intention to give up my marriage when released from prison, and yet he could write after that verse that God wanted me not to leave my wife, because she and the children needed me, and God wanted me to love them like Jesus Christ loves me. The letter also contained the phone number of Brother Francis Sim and asked me to contact this brother upon my release. Brother Francis has since become like my spiritual father.

On 19 May 2007, I was released from prison after serving exactly 6 months and 2 weeks. It was the day I breathed freedom, the first time I appreciated life in my life. A life of knowing there is God who loves me so dearly.

To keep faith in prison is much easier than outside prison, where the real world is. After the release from prison in May 2007, I had deep depression. The reality hurt: I could not have my passport because I was under police urine supervision for the next 2 years, and I could not find jobs even at a lower level because of my background record as an ex-convict as well as a bankrupt. My relationship with my wife was still getting nowhere. Although I had much stronger patience in me after prison, I still felt low self-esteem and suppressed emotion because I could not communicate with my wife at all. I felt rejected by everyone. Even my own mother and siblings still thought I was a drug addict, and my siblings put a cold shoulder on me. My first son accused me of stealing my wife’s money and said I was a useless person, banging table and chair at me. I resisted my anger. I could only cry. I felt it was my own sin of dishonoring my parents and my violent acts against my wife in the past that I had to suffer the curse of a permanent prisoner now. I felt self-pity and wanted to commit suicide.

You see, I could only imagine the love of God and Jesus. But I could not see nor feel it. And I felt God had distanced Himself from me and left me with a shattered life. So it was hard for me to sustain my faith in the real world, although I believed strongly that God had touched me in prison. Still, my faith was shaken by the bitterness of life. I drowned myself in alcohol and cigarettes to forget reality.

But through Brother Francis Sim, I could feel Jesus’ love again, because Brother Francis never gave up showing his persistence and perseverance to guide and advise me through sharing God’s word. He showed me care and taught me to persevere with Jesus in my heart. He never gave up and spent his own time and money for me. Finally, he brought me to the Encounter weekend of FCBC (Faith Community Baptist Church). To come to the Encounter itself brought a heavy struggle inside me. I even had nightmares and uneasy feelings, like my soul being pulled in two opposite directions in my dreams. I almost gave up the Encounter and asked for the next session. But Brother Francis still never gave up on me.

I made it to the Encounter out of God’s will. Because there, I received a more complete healing. In the Encounter, Pastor Vincent Teo and Brother Francis delivered me, lifted my emotional baggage caused by a damaged soul, and erased my guilt-ridden burden. I had full confession and repentance, and I received forgiveness from the Lord during the encounter. They also prayed for deliverance from my alcohol and cigarette addiction, and prayed for breaking all curses in my family line. I felt mentally light, felt the joy of forgiveness, and for the first time I felt no self-pity anymore. I felt confident about my future life walking with Jesus in my heart.

Also, for the first time, I could feel confident to shower my wife with love and feel the joy of just expressing my love to her, without worrying whether or not she would return me the same love. The words that touched me there were this: how are we going to fulfill God’s greatest commandment, to love Him and love one another, if we cannot even express our love to our wife who is just next to us? It was wonderful to feel like I was a newly born person of confidence; my old self had completely died, put to death on the cross.

But, to tell the truth, Satan has and would try harder to pull me back after the encounter, as within the next week after the encounter, Satan disturbed me with flashes of the past again to make me feel depressed. Satan whispered in my mind to touch cigarettes and alcohol again, to alleviate the sorrow. He whispered rationalizations. I may stumble and I may fall, but I believe and know for sure that Jesus Christ will never let me go, because He is not done yet with me. He will always hold my hands and bring me back to stand up every time I fall and ask for sincere forgiveness. My faith may be as small as a mustard seed, but I intend to plant that seed deep in my heart.

I discovered myself that those things of the past which might have been enjoyable to be indulged with are now so distasteful and remorseful, and this makes me more confident to avoid them. They will never bring me peace and happiness. Only meditating on God’s words and Jesus’ unfailing love will bring peace and joy to me.

Currently, God has shown blessing to restore my life slowly but surely. Miraculously my urine supervision was revoked within only 9 months after my prison release instead of 2 years, with the help of a letter of recommendation from a church in Jakarta. This is certainly a very rare case. Then my passport was returned to me and I can now travel in and out of Singapore. Although I was still unable to find a permanent job, my wife has a substantial earning power so that all my family’s needs can be fully provided, and we can even put aside savings every month now. And best of all, I can now communicate with my wife especially by sharing Bible knowledge and reading Christian books together. My relationship with her is somehow in the restoration process as we walk together in Christ. I thank and praise the Lord.

My life had been in constant turbulence, darkness and never at peace before I found God. It went a long way from cradle to yard, until the most hopeless moment in my life where I had nothing and nowhere to run nor turn to, but to admit that I was hopeless and submit myself to the God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, Jesus Christ, for my only source of help and hope. This is my true testimony of life, however private it may be to me, but I believe God wanted me to write it out, and I will do it out of my deepest gratitude for what God has done in my life, for His true glory and greatness. Furthermore, my past is dead now, and I am a newly born person in Christ.

I grew up in Surabaya, Indonesia, where I was the eldest son of a well-to-do businessman and we prayed to ancestors and many Chinese gods. In 1982 when I was 20 years old, my father sent me to study in Singapore where three years later I met and married my wife. After marriage, I realized we both had a completely opposing set of personality and values. I did not know how to resolve our differences, as I was young, naïve, idealistic, impatient, short-tempered, and stubborn. I tried to dominate her in words and physical violence to gain her submission.

Strained relationships also developed with my parents and siblings. I was under the impression they were against my wife and I fought with them to be at her side. I banged the table at my father and displayed my anger to all my siblings. My father then asked me to leave his house in 1991 and he actually cursed me that I would one day suffer the consequences of my wrong decisions. I was young and proud to admit my wrongs. However, my father still gave me a sum of capital to start my own business, with a condition that I would have no future legal rights to his inheritance and property. I agreed and left the house with my wife and 5 children then.

We rented a small house and started a Singapore flavor family restaurant in Surabaya in 1992. Within 2 years it went bankrupt. I lost all the capital and had only enough money to buy air tickets for my wife, a maid, and 5 children to migrate back to Singapore in 1994. We all stayed in my mother-in-law’s house. My wife and I started life all over again from working as junior office assistants, and at the same time we were taking night classes to get our degrees. Within 5 years, we owned our first HDB house, and my wife and I made it to the top corporate ladder. I was a financial controller in one reputable MNC and was posted to Batam (Indonesia), while my wife, a senior manager of one MNC, stayed in Singapore. The distance of Batam to Singapore is only 45 minutes by ferry.

This spiritual story was written by John M. Lukamto.

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Summary of the Story

This testimony tells the story of a man whose life slowly unravels through addiction, violence, financial collapse, and spiritual emptiness. What begins as a search for relief through drugs becomes a years-long descent that damages his marriage, neglects his children, destroys his finances, and leads him into grave wrongdoing. By the time he is arrested in Singapore for drug trafficking, his life is already in ruins, and prison feels less like an interruption than the final collapse of everything.

Inside prison, however, something unexpected begins. Through fellow inmates like Lim and Jabez, through Christian books, prayer, Scripture, and moments he experiences as miraculous, hope begins entering where despair had taken over. He comes to believe that God is not abandoning him through prison, but meeting him there. The sentence he receives feels to him like a mercy beyond explanation, and that moment becomes an anchor for his growing faith.

But the story does not end with release from prison. It goes on to tell the harder truth: restoration is slow. Depression, shame, temptation, family strain, and a shattered sense of self all remain. What changes is not that life instantly becomes easy, but that he begins walking it differently, supported by Christian mentors, spiritual community, deeper surrender, and a gradually restored relationship with hope, purpose, and love.

What Is the Spiritual Meaning of This Testimony?

The spiritual meaning of this testimony is that no life is too broken for redemption, and that grace often enters not when a person still feels strong, but when they finally reach the end of themselves. This story does not present transformation as self-improvement. It presents it as surrender… the moment when a person who has exhausted every false refuge finally admits that they cannot save themselves.

That is what makes the testimony spiritually powerful. The narrator does not encounter grace while he is outwardly successful or morally stable. He meets it in prison, after addiction, violence, guilt, and collapse have stripped away the illusion of control. In that sense, the story carries one of the oldest spiritual truths there is: sometimes the lowest point becomes the place where truth can finally get in.

The story also reveals that redemption is not sentimental. It does not erase consequence. Prison still happens. His father still dies while he is detained. His family still suffers from what he has done. His past remains real. But grace enters without waiting for life to become tidy first. It meets him in the middle of consequence, not after it has all been cleaned up.

This is why the testimony feels so human. It honors both miracle and process. There are moments of astonishing hope, but there is also relapse of emotion, temptation, depression, humiliation, and long rebuilding. Spiritually, that matters. Real redemption often includes both a sudden shift in direction and a slow learning of how to live from that new direction.

At its deepest level, the story is about being found. The narrator runs through drugs, rage, ambition, collapse, prison, and despair, and still grace reaches him. That is the heart of the testimony. Not that he became impressive, but that he was not beyond mercy.

Redemption in the Midst of Ruin

One of the strongest themes in this testimony is that transformation begins at the lowest point, not after life has already turned around. The narrator’s life is not mildly troubled when grace begins entering it. It is shattered. He has lost moral clarity, parental responsibility, financial stability, and any sense of inward peace. He is no longer managing a hard season. He is living inside ruin.

This matters because many people imagine redemption as something for those who are still mostly intact, those who have made mistakes but can still steer their way back through effort or discipline. This story says otherwise. It says grace can arrive when a person is bankrupt not only in money, but in self-trust, dignity, and hope.

Spiritually, this is crucial. The narrator reaches a point where he cannot maintain the illusion that he is still in control. That collapse becomes the opening. Rock bottom is not glorified here, but it becomes the place where surrender becomes possible. When everything false has failed, a person may become capable of receiving something real.

The story’s power lies in the fact that ruin is not the end of the plot. It is the ground from which a different life begins. Not instantly, and not painlessly, but truly. That is one of the deepest spiritual lessons in the testimony: the place where a life seems most over may also be the place where grace begins doing its quietest and most irreversible work.

What Prison Represents in the Story

Prison is literal in this story, but it is also symbolic. On one level, it is the direct consequence of crime, addiction, and destructive choices. But on another level, it becomes the visible form of a deeper imprisonment that has already been shaping the narrator’s life for years. Addiction, violence, guilt, rage, and despair were already their own kind of prison long before the cell door closed.

This is what makes prison such a spiritually charged setting in the testimony. It is both consequence and interruption. It stops the outward momentum of destruction, but it also forces confrontation. In the outside world, a person can keep numbing, fleeing, or distracting themselves. In prison, many of those escape routes are stripped away. That does not automatically produce awakening, but it can make truth harder to avoid.

The story also shows prison as a paradoxical place of mercy. That sounds strange, but it is how the narrator understands it. He comes to believe that prison, severe as it is, became the place where God finally got his attention in a way nothing else had. What looked like total collapse became the very place where hope first entered with clarity.

In that sense, prison symbolizes reckoning and revelation. It is where outer confinement exposes inner chains, and where the possibility of another kind of freedom begins to emerge. The bars are real, but so is the strange opening they create for repentance, truth, and surrender.

Grace, Community, and the People Who Helped Carry Him

One of the most moving aspects of this testimony is how often grace arrives through people. Lim, Jabez, Brother Francis, Pastor Vincent Teo, the Christian inmates, the church communities… none of them save the narrator in a simplistic sense, but each one becomes part of the human shape grace takes in his life.

This matters because spiritual transformation is often imagined as a private breakthrough. In this story, it is anything but private. The narrator is carried by words, prayers, letters, books, presence, visits, fellowship, correction, encouragement, and practical love. Hope enters through relationship. Grace becomes visible in the persistence of people who do not abandon him when he is still unstable, ashamed, and hard to help.

Lim is especially important because he is the first person to interpret the narrator’s prison experience not only as punishment, but as mercy. Jabez brings clarity around purpose. Brother Francis becomes a long-term presence when life after prison proves harder than the dramatic conversion moment. The pastors help name forgiveness, repentance, and deliverance more fully. Each person contributes a different form of spiritual companionship.

This is one of the testimony’s most powerful lessons: grace is often communal. People become part of the bridge back to life. They help carry what a shattered person cannot yet carry alone. And in doing so, they show that redemption is rarely only an individual story. It is also a story about who refused to let someone disappear entirely into their worst chapter.

Purpose, Restoration, and the Slow Work of Change

One of the most honest things about this testimony is that it does not stop at prison release or spiritual breakthrough. It keeps going into the days after, and that is where many stories become most real. The narrator comes out of prison expecting freedom, but meets depression, rejection, humiliation, and deep emotional instability. The miracle did not erase the aftermath. It only changed how he could begin to walk through it.

This matters because restoration is often slower than conversion. A person can have a real encounter with grace and still struggle with addiction urges, family damage, self-hatred, practical instability, and old patterns of thinking. The story tells the truth about that. It does not make faith look easy. It makes it look sustaining.

The theme of purpose also shifts in an important way. At first, the narrator imagines purpose in grand terms, perhaps becoming a major preacher or public figure. Later, through The Purpose Driven Life, that understanding softens into something simpler and more profound: his purpose begins with returning to the Father, like the prodigal son. That is a spiritually significant correction. Purpose is not first about scale. It is about relationship, return, and alignment.

The restoration of his marriage, family communication, inner life, and practical circumstances is gradual, imperfect, and still unfinished. But that slowness is not a weakness in the story. It is part of its truth. Real change often comes both suddenly and slowly. Something decisive shifts, and then a long rebuilding begins. This testimony honors both.

Key Spiritual Lessons and Takeaways

1. No one is beyond redemption.
   The testimony insists that even a life deeply marked by addiction, violence, guilt, and collapse is not beyond the reach of grace.
2. Rock bottom can become the beginning of surrender.
   The point of total collapse becomes the place where the narrator finally stops running and begins to yield.
3. Grace often comes through other people.
   Encouragement, prayer, community, books, mentors, and spiritual friendship all become channels of mercy in the story.
4. Miracles do not erase the need for ongoing healing.
   Even after astonishing moments of hope and intervention, the slow work of emotional, relational, and spiritual restoration still remains.
5. Real transformation is both sudden and gradual.
   A decisive inner turning happens, but the rebuilding of a life unfolds over time.
6. Purpose may be simpler and holier than ambition imagines.
   The narrator learns that purpose begins not with greatness in the eyes of others, but with returning to God and learning to live differently.

Reflection Questions

This testimony does not ask for polished reflection. It asks for honesty. It touches shame, collapse, mercy, relapse, hope, and the long road of becoming someone new. These questions are here to help you meet that story in a way that is human and real.

1. What part of this testimony hits you most deeply, and why?
2. Have you ever reached a point where your usual ways of coping completely failed you?
3. What does this story reveal to you about the difference between collapse and surrender?
4. Who has played a Lim, Jabez, or Brother Francis role in your own life?
5. Where might grace already be reaching you through people, even if life still feels unfinished?
6. How do you relate to the idea that purpose may begin not with ambition, but with return?
7. What old guilt, shame, or identity are you still carrying that may need confession, healing, or release?
8. Have you expected healing to be faster or cleaner than it really is?
9. What does this story teach you about the kind of patience real restoration requires?
10. If this testimony stirred one honest next step in your life, what might that step be?

FAQ