My Testimony

by John Greene

Born in 1952 in Lebanon, New Hampshire to a woman who a couple of months previously had been tossed down the stairs in hopes to rid her of the problem she had, a baby! I was born in difficult times, but the Lord had a hand upon my life! He knew that I would some day repent of my sins and accept Him into my life, a glorious experience since 9/1/80!!

My father who had tossed my mom down the stairs had divorced her, a drunk that would not change. My mom then remarried to a man who would adopt me and whose name I bear, Greene! He was a Navy man, so we moved from New Hampshire to Rhode Island, to Virginia, to Maine, to Antigua, to New Hampshire and a divorce. He too, was an alcoholic!

Well, the story is true, sin begets sin, and my life was a mess! There was no God as my mom would say, "I won't teach you anything about God. You'll get old enough and make your own decisions." How tragic, a family that grows up, an American family, a family in the USA, a Christian nation (At least that's what we are brainwashed to believe, and so many nations are told this!). I was extremely shy, stood afar in relationships. I started to smoke at 14 with the guys I hung around with. At 16, I was drinking beer and whiskey! My mouth was a cesspool and my thoughts extremely evil. I did alright in school and remained in the background for the most part until I got out with the guys! I started stealing the family car after midnight to go places, to drink and smoke and stupid stunts. This led to stealing some of the guys family cars as well. I got real good at knowing how much gas was in the tank and how much to buy so that it wasn't noticed.

Now I started to develop a need to fit in more, and do what everyone else was doing. I started on marijuana and hash, and this stayed that way for a while. I got so fed up with my life and the attitudes that I constantly faced with my mom that I decided to run away from home at 17 on her birthday! At this point, my mom had been married again for a couple of years, a man who was loving until he was mad, then he would toss you across the room. My stint from home lasted about 3+ weeks ending in St Louis, Missouri. I had an aunt there, had called home, and my mom sent busfare to get back. She said almost nothing about it. My school grades went from A's to B+'s and a stern warning from the principal. Right, I really cared!

I had started part-time work at age 14 in a hospital cafeteria doing dishes and the like. I quit there and I graduated about the same time. I went to work in a small restaurant where I got worse! I decided to get real interested in women, and maintain my life of drugs and alcohol. I was convinced that I would be drafted as the first year of the draft in 1969, I had a number near 365, I forget exactly! But the year I graduated, I also turned 18 and was eligible. My number was in the 10's and I decided to enter the Air Force.

Women, drugs, alcohol, and a restaurant crowd led me to doing stupid things with the car. I would drive my family car which had a 440 with four barrel carburator. It would bury the speedometer as I did a few times! It was heavy and would sit and burn rubber on the take off. The night before I was to be inducted into the Air Force, I was drunk and drugged. I decided to lay some rubber for old times sake. I left about 175 feet and the police caught me. I usually had run the state line to avoid trouble all the other times, but drunk out of my mind, I didn't even know where I was. I was going to be arrested. Somehow, after learning that the Air Force had a signed agreement on me, he followed me home letting me go.

I was at Lackland in San Antonio, and among a crowd that was far worse than I had been with in school! Now I would begin my trek of serious alcoholism. I volunteered for Viet Nam and computers. They assigned me to Accounting and Finance because it was a higher level of ability and they needed people in it. They gave me a choice, get discharged and be drafted by the Army or stay on and be in a field that was looking for good people. Hah, they hadn't a clue in the world about me! I went the Shephard AFB for training and then stationed at Torrejon AB, outside Madrid. Talk about sin, I was about to get buried deep!!

I was now consuming a couple of six-packs a day and half a fifth of alcohol. When I didn't drink I smoked hashish laced with opium from Turkey. The crowd I hung with was mean and vicious, and I was still a little kid in a big body. I had enlisted at 6' 1" and 178lbs, I was now in Spain just a few months later (5+) and I was 6' 4" and 225lbs! I had bulked up and the wear and tear taking place on my body with my attitudes made me look a bit mean, like the crowd I was with. Just prior to Spain while on leave, my dad who had adopted me died of a massive heart trauma. This bothered a little but not much. I just had a serious attitude and I would stomp on those who bothered me. I was still shy, but now mean.

I started drinking wine in Spain by the case. I would finish a case very other day, and I would be violent when drunk on wine. I had to have several roommates as I was hard to get along with. One day a guy told me about Jesus. Before you get too happy, you must know that I not only laughed at him, but I tore him apart verbally. It was so bad how I messed his mind up that a few months later he shaved his head, and I know now that he had joined a cult.

At my age, the size of my frame, I could play sports, something that I didn't so very well as a teen because I grew so awkwardly in those growth spurts. I got into playing baseball for the base team until I cam up with a sore arm. I pitched and now knew that I needed to cool it. I started with softball and was good. I batted for 3 years over .600 from both sides of the plate with power. I pitched, played right field and first base. People tolerated me because I was good. We played beer games every weekend. If you get a hit, you drank a beer on the way. The losing time had to buy a 55 gallon drum of beer for the winners. Now you know why I was tolerated. This led to many evil relationships. I moved to downtown Madrid with some guys and the evil continued.

One night about 1 or so in the morning, I and another guy was on our way back to the base and needed to stop in the town where the base was for some beer, more beer. After leaving the bar, I passed out in the gutter. My friend didn't know what was going on, a La Guadia Civil officer saw me and came over kicking me in my side to wake me up. I looked up at his machine gun staring at me. I knew my life was getting real bad and I didn't know what to do, why would anyone care, it was a mess! These guys shoot first and if there are any alive afterwards, they would ask questions. I ended up leaving Torrejon early on a proration of my time and went to Dover AFB in Delaware.

I got into more drugs, more women, more attitudes. I even went AWOL, made a phone call and had my records changed after the Article 15 from the base commander who fined me and red-lined me from staff sergeant. I would have been staff in my first tour, but as in all that I did, it was wrong. They did guarantee me staff if I re-enlisted. I said no and went my merry way to collect Un-employment for 6 months. The world owed me, and I would be paid.

I partied and was drunk or high most of the time. I would work as an assistant manager of a motel after my Un-employment ran out. I worked with quite a crew of people, mostly women who had problems in attitude and complicated lives just like mine. I was bowling and for the most part those in my family knew nothing about me. They didn't much care, and who could blame them. I was entangling my life up in drugs and alcohol mixed with other complicated lives. I never knew when I would be home or if I would come home. I was in such bondage and I knew I was bad, but hadn't a clue in the world about what or whether to do anything about it. I had though about suicide a few times, but after a fellow bowler had committed suicide, I saw what happened to those lives.

I started dating someone from my sister's past who had written me when I was in Spain. I ended up marrying this person. She knew I was a drunk and did many drugs, but that's what she liked. I was now working as department manager for JC Penney when my future business partner came in and talked with me. He discussed a networking business which I later found out to be Amway and started my own distributorship. Some of the books and tapes talked about right priorities, right relationships, and off course I would be rich. They would mention the reason they were successful was Jesus. This really started me thinking. My wife and I went with others to Charlotte, NC for a special weekend and that Sunday my friend asked me to go to the church service. I did and I committed my life to Jesus!!

Wow, I was set free from drugs and alcohol right then and there!! I had no desire for either! I couldn't believe that Jesus would love me enough after all I had done to Him! I confessed every sin that He brought to mind and I gave them to Him. My mouth was cleaned up and I knew I had been changed!! I remember one of the speakers that Sunday saying to go to church, one that preached the Word!!

Once home, I went to the only church I knew, the one I got married in! I felt like I had walked into a mortuary! It was cold, the people old, and they had no life, no smiles, the life I felt was not in any of them! I remember about a year before this when a cute woman and a preacher for a husband came in and bought some clothes from me. That very Tuesday that followed the Sunday church debacle, in this man walks and right to me!! I looked at him and I asked, "Do you preach the Word of God in your church?" I found out later from him, years later that he was so shocked and surprised that he didn't know what to say. He told me he had a youth service that night and I was welcome to come and watch. I did with my wife. I started going to his church. I turned out to be a challenge for him. I asked question after question after question. He would respond with, "Let's look at the Word," or he would say, "What does the Bible say?" He was patient, his first pastorate, and I was his firstbig disciple!

I was also going to be a dad at the same time that this is happening. All the time frame is within months. I was married in the end of March of '79, started Amway in April of '80 when my daughter was born, and born again 9/1/80. This was too much! Jesus was changing my life! I put my hands on a study, I did it, I didn't care who put it together, if it was about the Word I wanted to know! My wife said to me, "John, you've changed and I don't like it! I want you to change back to the person I married or we will get divorced!" I didn't even think about it. I said that I loved Jesus, and she said good-bye!

My pastor was my counselor using the Word. I tried to re-court my wife, but she had already started other relationships that she had when we were married. She would tell me she wanted to go get bread at 5pm, and at 2am come home without the bread! The divorce was finalized in August of '82! It was just a few months before in April that I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I was asking the hard questions! Why? Why? Why? I could read the Word and the Spirit would guide me into the truth! I would pray for the sick and God healed them. God was doing the miraculous through me, but not in my life or so I thought! He called me to preach that same year and used me to help start a church from the church that I attended.

God had healed me of planter's warts on my left foot that year after I had heard a sermon on healing. I asked my pastor if it was true and he said it was but for me to go read the Word for myself. I did, and that night I laid my hands on my foot and asked for the Lord to heal them. I woke in the morning and they were gone! A few days later, I met an old high school friend who invited me to dinner. He and his wife told me about their church and were dogmatic in several areas, about speaking in tongues and about spiritual gifts. I thank the Lord that He loved me enough to show me in the Word about the truth before I talked with these people! I wasn't about to let these guys take away what I already had read in the Word and experienced in the physical realm! God's Word was true and every man is a liar!

Now I am in church, divorced, and called to the ministry! What a joke! The alienation was a bit much! People knew what they thought were Scriptures and had stereotyped me! God can't use sinners like me who get saved, and then are divorced, and that Spirit stuff was a bit much for those around me! My pastor made me a Sunday school teacher! I continued studying all the time that I had free! I even prayed! I had a spiritual mom who the Lord used to shape much of my understanding in relationships. This ride with the Lord was to get even faster!

Some of the 9 gifts of the Holy Spirit started operating through me. I didn't know what was happening at first, but the Word would help, my pastor was open and honest, and my spiritual mom was stable. I started taking ministry courses for becoming credentialed. After seeing all these miracles happening and my personal life a mess, I wondered if I was a bit looney! I went right on until the Lord tossed me a monkey wrench!!

On a Sunday morning, I was in the pulpit doing some things, my pastor was on vacation, and in walked a blonde with an older woman and little boy. At the greeting time, I shook her hand when I got to her. What was wacko was when she walked in, the Holy Spirit told me that she was my wife. When I shook her hand I felt a jolt of electricity! I found out months later that she did as well. I went home and had to do an in depth study on divorce. This denomination didn't accept men as ministers if they were remarried. I searched the Word, looked up words in the Greek, I looked for resources, and I got myself a little different understanding. Up to this point I had allowed man to tell me what the Word said, and at this point I started reading and seeing what it said to me. Some would say that I wanted to justify, but the truth is that I let man tell me what to believe up to '84! Now, I would read, study, read, study, and the results are astounding. My pastor would end up marrying us in May of '85! But not before I had tested the Lord to know whether I had believed man or I believed the Word,

The life I had in Christ was exciting and dramatic! As I had lived for the devil for 28+ years, I now was living for Jesus with that same zeal, all out, 100%! I asked the Lord to prove to me that I wasn't trying to justify myself with manipulated Scripture, but that He was actually showing me how to rightly divide the Word. One day I said, "Lord, if Elin is my wife than the pastor has to meet me at the post office and tell me that I had to go visit her and also tell me exactly where she lived!" That next day, a Saturday, I met him at the post office, he p[proceeded to ask me to visit with my spiritual mom and where she lived!

That was one of many tests. One of the final tests I asked the Lord, "If she is supposed to be my wife, she must ask me out!" I wouldn't tell anyone, and it must be from the Lord because only the two of us knew!! That Sunday, Elin asked me out to dinner at her house with her brother-in-law and sister! I was living a life so full of miracles it was incredible! So we set the date, and got married. We both were certain and so the date was right away!

I went into partners with a friend that had gotten me into Amway which I had left a few years earlier when the Lord started showing me the truth about the prosperity doctrine and many of the speakers at Amway functions. They weren't telling the truth of the Word! I asked the Lord if He wanted me to do it. One night, He let me know that He did! The bottom line was we closed the doors in '89! More than 1 million in business went out the window because of some severe attacks. However during the whole time several employees were saved, some delivered from demonic possession, some healed, some set free from smoking and alcohol!! It was one miracle after another. But I still questioned the Lord! He let me walk through the wilderness for 3+ years where He shaped me and molded my character! I helped a friend of my pioneer a church after being called by the Lord and telling my first pastor. That was a hard thing but Jesus had told us each step of the way!

The Lord kept growing me up, but I still listened to man too much. He wanted me to live and trust Him, and He alone!! After the business closed, on a Florida vacation the Lord told me I was moving south. On the way back to Vermont, my wife told me that the Lord told her she was moving south. One year later we moved to South Carolina! I then found out things the hard way about trusting the Lord! He wanted something and I should obey. I was licensed and ordained in May of '94! Since that time I have been an interim pastor twice, and I have preached to those the Lord has placed in front of me. He opens the doors, and I agreed to walk through and preach the Word He gives me after I prayed for that Word! The Lord has saved thousands since then, filled many with His Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, healed hundreds! It has been a blessed time in Christ!

The Lord has used me to bless and He has used me to minister! He is Lord and I will do what He says. I love Him more today than ever before! For those who would criticize me about remarriage, too bad!! For those who would criticize me for the Holy Spirt, too bad!! I have found the relationship with Jesus to be so real, so profound, so precious, and that He knows what He wrote in His Word better than man!! I believe God, today! I know where I cam from, and I know where I am going!! I will not let any demon, Satan or person stop me from obeying my Lord Jesus and believing what He has written in the Word!! He is sooo precious, and I love Him!!

It is my prayer and trust that this brief testimony will bless you and encourage you!! It is the truth with so much left out!! I only talked about a very few things!! If you want to correspond or talk to me, feel free to write me! John Greene