Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk, featuring psychologist and bestselling author Dr. James Dobson. I'm Roger Marsh. Today, we're going to hear the conclusion of a powerful conversation featuring Matthew Mayer, a former professional soccer player who drove drunk, took a man's life, and served nearly five years in prison.

But what happened inside those walls is a story of faith spreading in the darkest of places. We're also going to hear from Matthew's wife, Sarah, whose journey to find him began with a dream she just couldn't shake. Here now is their conversation with Dr. James Dobson on today's edition of Family Talk.

Dr. James Dobson: You went from this idol—sports heroes become idols to people—and you went from that lofty position to a convict.

Matthew Mayer: Correct. Inmate at the state, 314525E, is my state SBI number. I entered into the facility and there was immediate attention given to me because of who I was. They watched it on the news. They saw the forgiveness scene unfold before their very eyes. So there were a lot of people coming up to me, embracing me, giving me favor immediately, especially from the inmate population.

There were a lot of soccer fans, so that idolization did not stop. But I chose not to use it the way I did in the past. I chose to use it as influence and influence these men based on what God has done in my life. It was so early on that I grasped that. Then there was favor from corrections officers, but there was also animosity and hate from both parties alike, inmates envious—

Dr. James Dobson: Did you start trying to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Matthew Mayer: It took a while. I got my bearings and I went to all the church services. I would start each day in the Word of God. I learned quick that the lights in the dormitory would flood the entire environment by 6:00 AM. At 6:00 AM, these lights would shoot on like a spotlight.

I learned that if you waited until those lights woke you up, then you were playing catch-up because hell woke up when those lights clicked on. People were rubbing the darkness out of their eyes and then they're walking in misery, they're walking in bitterness, they're walking in anger. All the fights would happen in the morning over a sink, over spit, over brushing your teeth, over the chow line.

I learned quick that if I wait to get up when they are getting up, then I'm going to lose in this environment. So I began to wake up before the lights and I began to start my day in the Word of God and allowed Him to renew my spirit. So I'd start each day, and it's a funny story, Dr. Dobson, each day I would start at this table at the front of the housing unit and I'd be reading God's Word.

Over a while, I'm thinking I'm reading the Good Book of God's Word. He is good. Why don't I open this book up to my peers? So every day I'd say "Good morning" to every single person that would walk by this table. The first person that they're hearing from in the morning is this crazy young kid at this front table reading the Bible.

I'd turn to them and I would say, "Good morning." The first several guys would walk by and they would curse me. Many of them would get hostile. Over a while, the men in the beginning that were fighting it, they're now over my shoulder. I feel somebody over my shoulder as I'm reading the Word of God. I would turn around and look at them and the guy would be smiling. He'd be waiting for me to say "Good morning" to him. I would say, "Good morning." He’d be like, "Good morning, Matt."

I realized that those two simple words were showing the light of Jesus Christ in an otherwise dark environment. Before long, the entire environment now, all of my tier-mates are saying "Good morning" to one another. The guard would come in, we'd be saying "Good morning" to the guard. We were slowly flipping the culture around.

I say "we" because it was another inmate that I spent the first 14 months of my time with. He had a lot of notoriety to himself. He was a former NBA All-Star. His name is Jason Williams, and he was a New Jersey Net in the 90s. He ended up in the same facility as me and we linked up with one another and began a Bible study.

It turned into opening the Word every morning to linking up with Jason Williams, to opening up the Bible with him, to inviting our tier-mates. Four of them showing up for a Bible study, eight of them, 16 of them, 24, then over 30 out of 38 guys on a housing unit gathering to pray, hold hands, and learn the Word of God.

But here's the reality. When you're doing things like that in that type of place, it's not looked upon favorably, especially from those in authority. You would think that that type of influence would make their job easier, and it did, but it also exposes the fact that certain people aren't doing their job. They did not like the influence that Jason and I had together.

One particular supervisor found it necessary to split us up. She went to the warden and told him that these two inmates have too much influence together amongst the general population. We did. They wound up moving me to the worst housing unit in the entire prison. It was upstairs, 7 East was the tier.

The reason why that's a big deal is because every fight, every code, every negative thing you heard about something in prison was happening upstairs. It was darker, colder, gang clientele upstairs, a lot of violent inmates upstairs. I moved into my bunk bed and I wrestled with God.

I heard God saying, "Take root wherever I've planted you." So I woke up and I began what was known as the 7 East Bible Study. Slowly but surely, Dr. Dobson, the Word of God cannot return void. One would come, four would come, seven would come, 15 would come, 20 some would come. Now we have this new Bible study that was responsible for changing the culture of an otherwise contrary housing unit.

Dr. James Dobson: What a story. Let's now go to your introduction to Sarah, who is here with us. She has been sitting very quietly while you've told your story. Sarah, you have heard this story many times, haven't you? Does it still move you to hear it?

Sarah Mayer: Absolutely. I'm more on the back end of things. Matt and I were brought together while he was still incarcerated.

Dr. James Dobson: How did that come about? How do you get acquainted with somebody who is later to be your husband when you can't even go see him?

Sarah Mayer: There was a relationship established beforehand just through our mothers. When Matt went away to prison, my mom kept encouraging me and my sisters to write Matt Mayer. She really just felt bad for him and wanted us to be a voice of encouragement. I would every now and then and just get good godly advice.

Dr. James Dobson: You went on to be with Youth With A Mission.

Sarah Mayer: I was at University of Memphis and I remember coming into my winter break there. God was really putting it on my heart that I was supposed to leave and go do mission work with Youth With A Mission. About the time I was getting ready to leave, I'm really searching for my purpose.

During this season getting ready to go on the mission field, I remember waking up from this crazy dream. I was coming home off the airplane from my mission trip and I was entering a wedding and I was marrying that guy in prison, Matt Mayer, that my mom talks about all the time.

Dr. James Dobson: Whom you didn't even know.

Sarah Mayer: Whom I really didn't know. I say that, and I'm not the type that would have dreams about stuff like that. I kind of brushed it off and laughed about it. I said, "Hey mom, isn't that crazy? Isn't that funny? I was marrying Matt Mayer in my dream." My whole season overseas was a season of God really speaking into my heart, "You're called to be this man's wife."

For a young lady, I feel like we live in a society that's very much about being an independent woman and being this and that. God was putting it on my heart that you are called to walk with this man. You're called to do ministry with him. So the next two years was kind of a season of me fighting it, but here I sit with him.

Dr. James Dobson: Now you wrote him a letter.

Sarah Mayer: We started writing back and forth while I was overseas, just getting to know each other's hearts. I think it's really rare that you're able to take away the physical aspect of things and just get to know each other on paper, which was really beautiful. When we sat down when I went to visit him in prison, everything else just kind of melted together, like all the quirky things that make him Matt. But it was beautiful to get to know his heart.

Dr. James Dobson: And what did you say to him when you wrote him?

Sarah Mayer: Oh, I wasn't like, "Hey, I'm this crazy girl that had a dream and I'm going to marry you." I tried to be as low-key as I could.

Dr. James Dobson: You'd have scared him to death if you had said that.

Matthew Mayer: Dr. Dobson, if this sounds crazy, that's because it is crazy.

Dr. James Dobson: And you wrote back.

Matthew Mayer: I would write back. I would encourage her. I was receiving 20 to 25 letters a day in prison. People from all over the world were writing me and encouraging me or asking me for counsel. They only came to know my story via online. My website was active. My story was on there. I was writing a daily blog.

That's why her mother said, "Write him, he's got good advice," because she was reading my thoughts from prison online. When the letter from her came in, my response was just exactly that, just minister to these people. To be dead honest, she was just another letter that came in until I heard of this dream.

My mother was the one that told me about the dream. So I'm calling home and she goes, "Do you know Sarah Peterson?" I'm like, "Yeah, is everything okay?" She says, "Yeah, she had this dream and in the dream she's marrying you." My response was, "Yeah, that's real cute, mom. What else do you have for me?" In that position, that just didn't land well. I had shut down everything that was going on outside of those walls and I was focused on what God was doing with me there. I knew that I was there for a season and I wanted to get everything out of it.

Dr. James Dobson: Now Sarah, how did you get to China from there? How does that fit into the story?

Sarah Mayer: China was on the map before Matt came into the situation. It was after the dream, because it wasn't like, "Okay, I had this dream, I'm going to marry Matt." It was like me, like a bucking stallion fighting God with this, like, "Are you crazy, God?"

Dr. James Dobson: So you went to China at that time. How long were you there?

Sarah Mayer: My first trip was six months. I was doing my discipleship training school. I ended up going back there for short-term trips and continued to study with the University of the Nations.

Dr. James Dobson: When was the first time you met face-to-face?

Sarah Mayer: I went to visit him as soon as I came home, in June of 2012.

Dr. James Dobson: How soon after that did you get out of prison?

Matthew Mayer: I still had two years left to do. Obviously, being in a small community and people finding out, "Sarah Peterson's talking to Matt Mayer. Wait, how did this happen? When did this happen?" Then the rumor mill kicking up and people saying some really negative and hateful things against her, against me. But we all believed it. Her family being Christ-centered, my family, they supported us.

I think the turn of events was us calling an agreement and then saying, "Do we believe that God has called us to this? If so, we're going to be sensitive to it, but let's also honor it." We chose to actually get engaged.

Dr. James Dobson: So you guys fell in love in that odd situation. You're in prison, she's dreaming dreams, and a relationship developed. And then you got out of prison.

Matthew Mayer: I got out August 3rd, 2014, and we were married November 8th, 2014. That was against a lot of people's opinions of "Hold off, you guys don't know each other that well." But they didn't know how well we did know each other via pen and paper and these visits. I'm stripped of everything. I'm in what I call grave clothes.

Sarah Mayer: Those prison visits were the most vulnerable. When you go in as a visitor, you're not allowed to wear your little cute outfit. You've got to wear stuff that looks like a potato sack. He’s already in prison, Dr. Dobson. He’s already been labeled a convict, a felon, and all that came with his story—the humiliation and just the shame. So there was no holding back from him. God had taken him through so much that this is what he was, this is who He's called him to be, and this is what he's going to do and be.

I think the same thing applied with her was she already spoke this dream out, God's already confirmed it, and here we sit. So it was such genuine and authentic conversation back and forth and we were able to fall in love with each other's hearts.

Sarah Mayer: I felt like in the beginning stages, I was a waitress coming home from mission trips and I would have all these crazy comments said to me. When he first proposed to me, he proposed with this little string ring and it was made of prison garb or uniform.

Matthew Mayer: You ready for this one, Dr. Dobson? Because she's wearing this string ring around town and she's flaunting it off to people. "Look at my ring!" Everybody was like, "Is this girl crazy?" One of my older brothers, Michael, he got wind of it and said, "There's no way that my brother's future bride is going to be walking around this town wearing a string ring." So he went out to our jeweler and bought this beautiful engagement ring.

This is an alleged story, I cannot be held accountable to the rest of this story. But my mom says this was the first crime she has ever committed in her entire life. Her mother and my mother came in and they sat in a certain way and I asked to open up in prayer for the visit. My mother hands me the ring. I pray and their eyes are closed and I say "Amen." Then I give this speech.

Sarah's looking at me like, "Why are you saying all this?" I talk about my mom's here, she gave me life, and your mom's here, she gave you life, and what a great witness to have before us. Our moms are crying and she's like, "What is going on right now?" As quickly as you can possibly imagine, I slipped the real ring on her finger as reaffirmation of the question I already asked her, the commitment we already made.

She puts her hand in the air and is not discreet about it whatsoever. She's got this ring on her finger. She thinks it's fake. She's looking at it and I'm just sitting there like nothing happened. We continued the visit. One of the guards saw. She came up to me afterward and said, "Mayer, did you just get engaged in that visit?" I said, "No, ma'am." She goes, "She did not come in with a ring on her finger." I said, "You got me."

That was not too long after the first several visits. Everything happened so quick. If I can be completely honest, I would say the first year of us being engaged like that, it was cool. I felt like I was in the center of God's will for my life. About a year into it, I started doubting. "This dream wasn't real." I started to let go of Matt. We had to make that decision when he came home—did we still want this?

I just felt like I needed to throw this out there because there was a heavy season. It wasn't this peachy-keen, "Oh, God gave me a dream and we just floated down the aisle." It was very real and raw. I remember there were nights where I would be wrestling with God and there would be nothing I could do. I can't go see Matt and I can't go hold him. I would just drive an hour and a half to the prison and I would just sit out there and just wrestle with God. That season, I look back at it now and I'm sitting across the table from Matt and I just think, "Wow, thank You, Lord, for reaffirming what You did." That dream was from Him and it was real.

Dr. James Dobson: Okay, Matthew, you've now served your term and you're being released. What's God saying to you now?

Matthew Mayer: There was a calling on my life. It was affirmed by so many men of God, so many people along the way, just saying, "There's a calling on your life, son." I know everybody's called as a Christian, but there was a specific calling on my life. So teaching the Bible study, teaching in the church in prison, and then coming out and just watching God open up doors that no man can shut nor man could open.

September comes around, school starts. I'm back into the public schools, secular colleges, speaking about my story, talking about decisions, highlighting integrity, accountability, sharing where I was and the stories that were birthed in that time. People were just amazed at being able to do this. I think the story was birthed even before I went to prison when I spoke out.

There were people waiting for me to get out to see, "What's he going to do next? Is he going to share from this experience?" God made it so clear. I was funded by State Farm Insurance, which was unheard of for them to go out on the line and fund somebody like me. I go into schools all over the place and share my story at churches.

Pretty much full-time with a church in New Jersey, I'm the director of the student ministry. I oversee the entire student ministry. I would always sum up the one word that God has really driven into my heart, and it's influence. Just influencing people with who He is and what He's able to do for the person who allows Him.

Dr. James Dobson: Your athletic career is over.

Matthew Mayer: Athletically done. It's been leveraged, obviously. God has not thrown a single thing away from my past. I wrote several manuscripts while I was away. This was the eighth and we decided to make it the first publication. There's a huge story behind that.

One of the guys that I met in there upstairs in that ugly Tier 7, he was a Saul of Tarsus—hater of Christians, hater of Muslims, hater of faith. He was a 330-pound man who could back up his verbalization of hate with the physical representation of it. I was already on the tier for about four days when he hobbled on. He's a former mob enforcer for an Italian crime family in New York City. Everybody knew who he was.

I didn't know that all this time that I'm serving him and encouraging him and he's listening to me teach the Bible study from a distance, that he's watching me with scrutiny. He’s watching me and hoping—and he told me this—"I was hoping you would fail. I was hoping you would curse. I was hoping that you would do something that I could point at you and say, 'You're a hypocrite just like everybody else that carries that book.'"

He said to me with tears in his eyes, "But you didn't give me that opportunity." That was kind of what drove "You may be the only Bible somebody reads" home. It wasn't me teaching the Bible study; that wasn't what he was impressed with. What was attractive was he saw Jesus in me outside of the ministry moments. He gave his life to the Lord. So I say this was a guy that was a soldier for the Godfather, literally, and is now a soldier for God the Father. His transformation and his radical redemption story is unbelievable. His name always comes out when I'm telling my story because I believe God put him in that bed, God moved me upstairs like chess, to be an influence on this guy.

Dr. James Dobson: So in essence, you're in full-time ministry. Your greatest purpose is to serve the Lord. There's no looking back and the Lord has taken tragedy and turned it into triumph. And He gets all the glory. Any last thing you want to say to the family who lost their father and husband?

Matthew Mayer: Of course. What is often not told unless it's asked is there is this relationship between me and that family to this day. When they took me out of the courtroom, my family requested to see their family and they all held hands and prayed in a side room and they exchanged contact numbers.

My mother struck up a relationship with one of his daughters, and her name is Somali. They would email each other, they would Facebook each other, and she would ask, "How's Matt doing?" I would send letters to my mother to send to them. So there was this relationship that was birthed through this tragedy and it was maintained all throughout that incarceration.

They publicly said, "We support Matt Mayer and his message. Our daddy would not want us to hold him back." Most recently, the son who forgave me in court, Nune, he got caught up in his own legal trouble and he found himself in a hard spot. He told his family the only person that he could relate to, the only person that he would want to hear from, is me.

Most recently, my mother's been writing him and encouraging him and sending in my blog posts to him. He wrote my mother a letter just thanking her for the encouragement, for the hope, and planting the seed that has led him to meet Jesus Christ. So you're seeing redemption at its truest, miraculous form. Don't deserve it, but God is in the business of doing it. I would say to them that as long as God has allowed me these platforms, their father's name will be honored. My Father in Heaven's name will be honored.

Dr. James Dobson: Do you come into the public schools and Christian schools and are given the opportunity to tell your story?

Matthew Mayer: Yes. Public schools, private schools, secular, organizational, churches, just telling my story with what God has done in my life. The impact of the story even in a public school, it's a message that you leave saying, "Whoa." A lot of the kids will say, "I could go down that same exact path," and "I thank you."

I get a lot of people hugging me because they went through tragedy and they never had the person that's either the offender or the perpetrator ask for forgiveness. A lot of parents give me these huge hugs with tears and say, "Thank you for offering the accountability, because we didn't get that from the person that did this." Here I am receiving hugs in people's circumstances that I don't deserve nor know, because of the simple fact that I stood up in it and said, "God, have Your way. Make much of Yourself through me."

Roger Marsh: Matthew and Sarah Mayer's story is proof that God doesn't waste anything. You've been listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, featuring Dr. Dobson's conversation with Matthew Mayer, author of the book, *You May Be the Only Bible Somebody Reads*. To hear today's program again or to go back and listen to Part 1 of this broadcast, visit jdfi.net.

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