Chains To Changed
“It was like going through the fire,” McDermott says, “but I came out and I don’t even smell like smoke.”
A conversation between Connor McDermott, guest; Devaughn and Rosa Williamson, hosts.
Connor McDermott, a Tulsa, Oklahoma, native, first stepped on the rocky road of drugs in eighth grade. Weed became a regular presence in ninth grade. In his second year of high school, drugs became the dominant force in McDermott’s life.
Sophomore year of high school, McDermott attended a youth church camp, Young Life Camp, in Colorado. He and his friends smuggled drugs with them into the camp.
One night while teenage McDermott was playing pool in a camp facility, a man approached McDermott.
The man, known as Mr. Shell, told McDermott everything about his life and the things of his heart —things McDermott had never spoken aloud before.
“God had to be real,” McDermott said after his encounter with “the first man of faith” he had ever interacted with.
McDermott sharing on Faith Ignite’s Podcast.
DW: Since you started drugs [as a teenager], how have they affected your life moving forward?
McDermott had stopped going to class in school: senior year he attended class approximately 37 times, according to McDermott.
Mr. Shell, who had never been to McDermott’s house, came one day and warned McDermott of his path if he did not change his destructive, drug-filled, lifestyle. Mr. Shell spoke to the 17-year-old McDermott that prison was ahead of him — he was admitted into prison at age 21.
“It [drugs] made me believe that’s just who I was,” McDermott explains.
DW: What was your time in prison like?
McDermott was used to the jail scene: he had been in and out of Tulsa’s county jail more than 15 times, he explains.
“I thought that God had just given me that one chance and it was over,” McDermott says.
He started to operate inside the drug circle again, dealing drugs within the prison — soon he found himself in solitary confinement as punishment for what he was sent to prison in the first place: drugs.
“I just need hope,” McDermott recalls saying in his cell as a prayer to God.
When McDermott was “shipped” to the Lexington prison, he wanted to turn his life around. He remembers the sense of “anointing” within the prison. It was made up of 80% Christians who remained to develop the church made up of inmates.
McDermott’s heart was transformed.
McDermott playing baseball in prison.
July 3rd, 2018, after midnight, three days before his release from prison, McDermott played worship music on his cell radio.
He says he awoke from his sleep because he sensed the Holy Spirit in his cell.
From weeping to rejoicing, McDermott finally understood that “who the Son sets free, is free indeed (John 8:36).”
“I’ve prepared a place for you in OKC [Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]” declares McDermott as he speaks of what the Holy Spirit told him in that jail cell.
When he was released, the church that was connected with the church group within prison, wrote to McDermott and became his community in OKC.
“I don’t have to fix my past, I just have to fix my eyes on Christ,” McDermott says.
DW: What has changed since your release date?
McDermott saw Mr. Shell again through the workings of the Holy Spirit — Mr. Shell became McDermott’s mentor.
“I wasted years of my life, but God restored it in the twinkling of an eye,” McDermott marvels, “It was like going through the fire, but I came out and I don’t even smell like smoke.”
McDermott speaking to inmates.
DW: What advice would you give your younger self?
“Obedience and submission are everything,” says McDermott. He explains that he went to jail because of the rebelliousness in his life. The rebelliousness produced sin: drugs.
“I was in the place of darkness, but I believed that God could take me to a place of light,” McDermott continues, “I knew not to ask God how because I wouldn’t understand it.”
DW: What would be the thing you would deposit into our listeners to stir up faith?
“In the Bible, it says ‘have faith’ — just have it,” McDermott continues to encourage that faith is not earned, it is given by God.”
Connor McDermott who once committed 16 felonies and spent prison time in solitary confinement, is now a businessman with a Christ-like community surrounding him with blessings upon blessings. McDermott still meets weekly with Mr. Shell and continues to proclaim his radical testimony of redemption and faith to those around him.
