God's story, your life.

Unfolding short stories.

My name's Tony Burkey Bile, and I'd just like to speak about being a broken man who God is finding a way to use.

Absolutely, we all know what brokenness looks like in

our families. We've all got brokenness. I just want to speak how God's using me in the

Living Free ministry came to Living Free about eight years ago, and now I'm a living free representative.

God's open doors through Living Free for me to do ministry inside the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute.

I can see firsthand what broken men are like because I was one and he's using me to minister to these

prisoners. He's given me the opportunity to be the father and 100% of these prisoners. Their

commonality is that they have a broken father relationship. And some of them know

God as their father, and some of them don't, but he's given me the opportunity to give them a

glimpse of the love of a father. And I'm forever grateful for that. I just really want to

encourage Christian men to be the man that God would have you to be. God is the master at taking

what the devil meant for bad and making it into something good. And I just encourage dads everywhere

to put themselves out there and be open to God using you in your family and to minister to

broken people. Our family experienced the divorce, and at that moment and time, we were all tore up, fragmented,

a lot of negative feelings and thoughts, and didn't really know how to function as a divorced

family.

My son took it harder than maybe even I did.

He rebelled, didn't do well in school. I knew every principal and every dean at his school on a

first name basis. So fast forward a few years to adulthood, his actions spoke volumes about his feelings.

I didn't know how to handle that as a dad.

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