Out of the Darkness
Jasper Jones
My name is Jasper K. Jones, and I am from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. I was born on May 6th, 1941, in a small community called “Farm Station” in Upper Peridot. Today we call it Chinatown. I was born at home, the second child of my mother and father. I had an older sister, but she passed away while I was still very young. I started going to school on the reservation when I was six years old. After the ninth grade, I went to boarding school in Nevada and graduated from the Stewart Indian School. There were no further educational opportunities back on the reservation, so I left San Carlos for Chicago to attend technical trade school through the government relocation program.
It was there that I met and married my wife, Theresa. She was from the Navajo Reservation. She had also graduated from Stewart Indian School and was enrolled in a nursing program. So we established our home there in Chicago, feeling very far away from our reservation roots.
As a young man living in the big city for the first time, I wasn’t prepared for the sinful way of life all around me. I thought of myself as a self-made man, so I lived like everybody else did. Nobody spoke up to say that the way I was living was wrong.
Before long, I became dependent on alcohol. I was trapped and didn’t even know it. It did a lot of damage to my life and my marriage from 1960 all the way to 1974. I lived a self-centered life, working a lot of jobs. My family wasn’t that close to me. My children barely knew me. I wasn’t getting proper rest, and my body was a wreck. My hand would shake. My eyes and my nose were running all the time. I had a headache that I had learned to live with. When I breathed, my throat and lungs would hurt. I tried rehab programs, but they didn’t help me. I was lost. I was being driven by sin and by Satan.
No one had ever shared with me the ancient warning of Proverbs 23:29-35. I lacked any conviction about what I was up against. For 14 years, my sin nature controlled me—slowly destroying me and my family—and I couldn’t find a way out.
After being away from the reservation for many years, our family returned to Arizona. I was again surrounded by my culture. I had grown up in the old Apache traditions and teachings. I had listened to everything the elders told me—who I was, how I was born, who my people were, and what we believed. In our Apache way, there were things that we feared and things that controlled us. I grew up believing that there was a spiritual world, with spiritual conflict. There was a hopeless feeling of being caught in spiritual oppression and not knowing a way out.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. –Ephesians 6:12
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. –Colossians 2:8
I felt like I had grown up in a world that was filled with the traditions of men. There are many churches on the reservation, and I had a lot of confusion about religion. There was a basic idea in my head about Christianity, but there was no practical understanding of the Bible.
I think God had a plan in our family moving back to Arizona, because I met a man named Joe Gumba. He was a Kiowa Apache from Oklahoma, and he spent eight months witnessing to me. He told me that I needed Jesus Christ. I was not looking for Jesus. I was not searching for Jesus. But it was starting to feel like Jesus was searching for me (Jeremiah 31:3). Something about returning to my tribal land helped me to finally realize that I was lost and in bondage to sin. Joe Gumba shared the hope that I needed:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. –John 3:16
He explained that God loved the world—and that I am included in that world. I had to learn what it even means to be loved, and that God loves me! It was a kind of love that I didn’t know anything about. It isn’t part of our Apache tradition, and there isn’t even a word for it in our language. It isn’t something that we display. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a new life in the love of God. But God’s Holy Spirit began to give me an understanding of the wisdom Joe shared with me from his worn-out Bible.
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. –Romans 10:17
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one…there is none that seeketh after God. –Romans 3:10-11
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. –Romans 3:23
For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. –Romans 5:6
But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. –Romans 5:8
But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. –Romans 6:22-23
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus… –Romans 8:1
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come…shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 8:38-39
For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. –Romans 10:12-13
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. –Romans 12:1-2
These verses in Romans (which has become my favorite Book of the Bible!) have changed my thinking and have changed my life. Unconditional love—that was new to me. I had never thought to even look for it, but God gave it to me. God convicted me of my sin against Him, and I repented. I thought about my sin differently because I could see it from God’s perspective now. God changed my mind and my heart to align with His Word. God’s love changed my life!
I finally understood that Jesus was the only way out of the darkness I was drowning in. I realized that only Jesus could remove fear from my life. I knelt on the carpet with Joe and prayed a simple, genuine sinner’s prayer. As I prayed, I broke down crying—asking Jesus to be my Savior. When I stood up off the carpet, I felt that something was different within me. I kneeled down as a sinner, but I stood up as a born-again believer!
The Lord Jesus Christ came into my life that day. I was thirty-three years old. It took me a few days to realize what was happening in my life. I sensed God’s power as His Holy Spirit did a work inside of me (Ephesians 5:18). I was delivered from the things that I was in bondage to, and Jesus Christ made me part of His family. Jesus died for my sin so that He could set me free from sin. That kind of love still overwhelms me!
For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. –II Corinthians 5:21
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. –John 8:36
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. –II Corinthians 5:17
My life has been changed—not by tradition or by churches of men, but by the Word of the living God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). This covers every aspect of my life. I was lost, but Jesus is the Way. I was confused, but Jesus is the Truth. I was slowly dying, but Jesus is the Life. When I discovered this verse, I approached it humbly —like a trusting child. I read it over and over until it became part of me.
God didn’t just give me a way out; He gave me a new way of life. Jesus is the Author of my life, and I no longer live in fear (I John 4:16-19). I know that I will go to Heaven because of what Jesus did on the cross. It isn’t through good works or going to church. It isn’t through practicing traditions. It is through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. –John 3:36
Jesus came from Heaven to seek and to save the lost—that was me (Luke 19:10). He came to free those in bondage— that was me (Romans 8:15). He came to give truth to the confused—that was me (I Corinthians 14:33). He came to defeat sin and bring new life (Romans 6:4). That is me!
Jesus set me free from the bondage of addiction, from the confusion of worldly philosophy, and from the darkness of tradition. I am now a child of God—this is my testimony. God’s Word brought the light of Truth into my darkened soul (I John 1:5).
When I accepted Jesus Christ, God set me free from the grip of alcohol and all that came along with it. My wife was just as surprised as I was. She prayed, “I want what Jasper has. I see the change in his life. I want that change for myself too.” That is how my wife accepted Christ—one month after I did. God changed her life too. Then our children began noticing a difference in our home. There was happiness and laughter in the house once again, but true happiness this time—true joy and unconditional love.
Joe Gumba always counseled me from the Word of God. He wisely said, “Now that you are born-again spiritually, you need to grow spiritually in a Bible-teaching church. You need to be baptized as a public profession of your faith in Christ.” I had memories of being sprinkled with water as a small child. It was like a ritual. It didn’t do anything or really mean anything to me. But when I accepted Jesus Christ, I determined to serve in a Bible-preaching church and to be baptized by immersion to identify publicly as a follower of Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20). I wasn’t just joining a church; I was joining the family of God (John 1:12-13).
I soon felt God leading me to get more training so that I could understand His Word better and share my faith (II Timothy 2:15). So in 1975, I enrolled at Indian Bible College in Flagstaff, AZ—completing my four-year degree. I pastored a church in Flagstaff and ministered on the Navajo Reservation for twenty-two years before returning to San Carlos to minister among my own people.
I share my story with you because God can do for you and your family what He did for mine. He can break the grip that Satan has on your heart and on your home. There is a way out of the darkness, and His name is Jesus!
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. –II Timothy 2:25-26
Jasper loved to preach God’s Word in his Apache language—both in the local church and over the radio. We are strengthened by his example and look forward to reuniting with him in the presence of our Savior. –The Jones Family
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(Copyright Today’s Native 2025)