Rev. Ricky and Tanya Boler, pastors of White Plains Holiness Assembly, could not understand why their son, Corey Nathaniel Boler, left his Christian roots as a teenager and became a slave to the demon of drug and alcohol abuse. But, through prayer, faith in God, and the godly principles instilled in their son in childhood, they were able to see him transform to become a man dedicated to God and leading other people out of similar deadly bondages from which he has been freed.
Born Oct. 2, 1986, Corey grew up in Conehatta. He attended school in several school systems but graduated from Newton County High School in 2005.
Corey and his younger sister Aislin were reared in a structured lifestyle, sheltered from the outside world. His family upheld the standards of Pentecostal beliefs and regular church attendance.
He would tell himself, “I will never be like that.” He explained, “I didn’t like it. The world was more attractive to me growing up.”
At 14 years old, Corey found pain pills in the family medicine cabinet, tried a couple, and liked the feeling he got. He started drinking alcohol when he was 16, and the chains were let loose “when I got some wheels under me.” “They trusted me, and I took their trust for granted.” By the time Corey graduated high school he was using hard illicit drugs and had a DUI offense.
While a student at East Central Community College, where his mother was an English professor, Corey overdosed on fentanyl. Finding him unconscious with blue lips, his parents rushed him to the emergency room where the medical staff had to shock his heart back to life and resuscitate him.
Waking up in ICU, he says, “I felt like I was at the gates of hell.” He dropped out of college and his parents sent him to a large, secular rehabilitation center in Nevada. After six months there, he returned home but was back on drugs within the first week.
At age 21, Corey joined the U.S. Marine Corps, thinking he would learn how to become a person of discipline. He found addiction is not a respecter of person or position. After only one year of service, he was discharged to avoid a court-martial which would result in prison time.
Several months later, Corey went to the Home of Grace, a nationally known Christ-centered addiction recovery program on the Mississippi Coast, trying to “get my mama and daddy off my back.” He was dismissed from the program for having a cell phone.
More years passed by, and he says, “I did everything I could to be as evil as I could. I told God to leave me alone and I would leave God alone.” He went there again in 2013 and says, “I faked it all the way through.” He graduated but was back on drugs and alcohol within the month. By 2014 he says he was so “strung out” and lonely that he had resorted to selling drugs to feed his habit and always have people around him.
Corey explained that, despite his condition, he realized the presence of God had left him. He became afraid that God had abandoned him and given him over to “a reprobate mind,” as spoken of in Romans 1:28. Corey recalled he was 6 feet, 1 inch and weighed 160 pounds.
“I looked dead. I had heard my daddy say, ‘You cannot straddle the fence. You cannot serve two masters. You will love one and hate the other.’ I knew that. I tried for a long time. I was miserable.”
One September day in 2015 he approached his parents while they were in their usual evening spot on the porch swing. He told them to call the sheriff and have him picked up so he could get clean. He knew he would not last long and would soon die without help. His parents decided to send him back to the Home of Grace for a third time.
Corey says, “I was seeking God for real this time,” but at seven weeks into the program he had not yet felt God’s presence. Remembering the example of his family and church people, he went on a three-day fast, eating breakfasts only on those days. On the second day of fasting, a Christian biker from the Soldiers of the Cross came to speak at evening chapel. At the end of the service Corey says he was moved and went to the altar to pray. He says, “I wanted what Mama and Daddy had, what I had run from all my life.”
He finally got up, disappointed, to go back to his seat. That night a speaker was there from a Christian biker gang, Soldiers of the Cross. Corey said, “That bearded man, wearing a biker vest and a do-rag covering his long pony-tailed hair told me, ‘Son, God told me to tell you He has something for you.’”
He took Corey by the shoulders, dropped his head on Corey’s chest, and prayed strong and hard for him. “My hands went up to glory and tears began to flow. God came back into my heart.”
After completing the program, Corey moved into a transitional house run by Temple Baptist Church in Moss Point, called the Victor House. During this time he met Ashley Coe at Temple Baptist Church. Corey says, “Ashley is the only reason I stayed on the Coast. I had every intention to go back home. She told me the most attractive thing about me was that I was a godly man.”
They were married Dec. 31, 2016, and have three sons: Lathan, 8, Andrew, 11, and Taylor, 18.
After leaving the Victor House, Corey began employment at the Home of Grace as evening/night shift security. He is now on staff as the disciplinary counselor for the men’s campus and oversees approximately 120 men who are seeking help for addiction recovery. Having completed a course offered by William Carey on the Coast for Mississippi Addiction Professionals, he is now a student at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and plans to continue studying Psychology: Biblical Counseling through Liberty University. He is on the vice principal’s list and expects to complete his degree in a year and a half.
Corey told me, “I’ve got something stronger than the drugs. I’m going on three years without it. I’m not going back to it. You’ve never seen prouder parents and grandparents. I’ve got the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues. That’s what they have been trying to show me all my life. I’m saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost!”
You may contact me at lagnesrussell@gmail.com or 601-635-0077.
