How does a young man who grew up in the church and loved his parents end up depressed and suicidal? Here is the testimony of Jeffrey Johnson, an eighth-generation Baptist pastor from Arkansas, who was lost and found. It is a story of a young man in deep depression whom the Lord rescued from his darkness. He is now pastor of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And so, Jason, we're going to hear another testimony today. You know, pastors and preachers are people. Yeah.

It's great to have them be personalized by learning a little about them. Yeah, we hope people who listen to their messages that we produce, will listen to these things and be encouraged, particularly parents, you know. So we have Jeff Johnson with us. Jeff Johnson is a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, and president of Grace Baptist Seminary there. And so we've asked him to come and tell the story of his life and how the Lord saved a sinner.

So, hey, Jeff. Hey guys, it's good to be with you. So glad you could do this. Okay, so tell us the story of your life. Yeah, okay.

Well, interesting enough, I am an eighth generation Baptist pastor. So I come from a long line of pastors on both sides of my father's. His father on the Johnson side, then my grandmother was a pool, and her maiden name of her mother was a gil. And the gils, John Gill, not the John Gill that we all know, but another John Gil that came over from Germany several in the 1800s was one of the first Baptist missionaries to the state of Arkansas. And so he's on that side of the family.

Then on the Johnson side of the family, I'm the eighth generation pastor. So that's quite remarkable. Now it does skip, to be honest, it skips my grandfather, But his two brothers were Baptist pastors. My dad's a Baptist pastor And of course in his great-grandpa all the way back were in the state of Arkansas Baptist pastors So we have a rich heritage That we come from and my father Don Johnson is the greatest influence of my life. My dad is one of the best preachers I've ever heard.

I grew up under his preaching, solid, powerful preaching. We grew up doing family worship when family worship wasn't cool. We grew up just solid, just with most wonderful Christian mother that you can imagine, sweet, gentle, loving to her husband, great mother to us, to me and my two older brothers. And so I was born by God's grace in a wonderful, tight-knit Christian home. At the time, my early period was, my dad was an Armenian Southern Baptist pastor, he was in the SBC early on, and then I remember when I was about 10 or so, where he came to the Doctrine of Grace.

That was a big moment in my life because I just couldn't agree with my dad on that. And it led to somewhat of a church split. But I remember I say all that to say that prior to that time, it was a traditional, every sermon had an altar call. And my dad was really good at doing those altar calls. Every eye bowed and, you know, every eye closed, every head bowed.

That's the way they would say it. So, and you were part of the church split. You didn't agree with your dad. So you started out as a church splitter. Well, I held my opinion secretly.

But I remember every night, almost every night we do family worship, I wanted to be saved. I prayed to be saved. I would walk the aisle every time that I had that opportunity. I would sit there and pray and pray to be saved. I don't remember when I wanted not to be saved.

I can't remember a time that said, I don't want to be a Christian, but I knew I wasn't a Christian. And it's sometimes hard when you, I have a boy named Christian who's 10 years old. I think he's in the same boat. I was just praised to be a Christian. And then after he prays, like, I don't know.

Well, I may be a Christian. I don't know if I'm a Christian. So that's that's a tough thing. And both my older brothers made professions that they turns out that they were false professions. And I didn't want to make a false profession.

I wanted to be genuinely converted. And it wasn't until my grandmother, I was staying with her for the weekend and she pulled me aside. She goes, why are you not a Christian? I said, well, I want to be. God won't save me.

It's basically my response. And she was not happy with that. She says the problem's not with God problems with you. And she explained to me kind of clearly what faith was. You know, faith, we think sometimes is an experience.

I was looking to be zapped with lightning or some type of transformational experience where it's like, oh, a voice from heaven would reassure me that God had saved me. I was looking for some emotional experience to confirm that God had saved me. And my grandma helped me understand that it was the work of Christ 2,000 years ago, and my faith wasn't faith in faith. I didn't have to experience something. It was more of a trusting the objectivity of the work of Christ.

And that all of a sudden made it seem so easy to me. Like this can't be that easy. How old were you at that time? You know, I don't know. I think around 12 or 13.

I was young. I was young, you know, old enough to know what to understand these things. But that's probably 12 or 13. And I remember after that being baptized, one asking to be baptized. And I walked with the Lord, it seemed like I walked with the Lord through my high school years.

I love my dad's preaching, I disagreed with them until I was a, I mean, I love my dad and my mom. And I knew that they were Christians. In fact, they were my one way. My dad was my idol or my hero. Best way to put it.

He was more of my hero, But it wasn't until I was a senior in high school that I was reading the book of Romans for myself. And I got to Romans 9 and I began to argue with Paul. And it was amazing. You would think I would buy by this age of my life, I would already be familiar with Romans nine. And I'm sure my dad talked about it every chance he can.

But for some reason, I didn't know what I was reading. I was I was, I come to Romans nine and didn't expect Paul to be taking my dad's side on this issue. And I'm like, what is Paul agreeing with my dad on this? And then I would have an objection and Paul knew my objection. It's like he knew my thoughts and he would answer that one.

And then I'd have another objection. It's like, well, why hold me accountable? Why hold the non-elect accountable? You know, we're but robots. And then he's Paul kind of foresaw that objection.

He answered that one. And when he answered that one, that's when I knew that I wasn't arguing with my dad or Paul, I was arguing with God. He says, who are you, old man? I'm like, Oh, my, who am I? That's me.

And that's when I surrendered, if you would, to the doctrines of God's sovereign grace and election. And I didn't understand it, but I said, I can't deny that's what the Bible is teaching us. And that's when it dawned on me that salvation is 100% grace, all grace. And all is going well, you know, I'm walking with the Lord, I'm growing spiritually, I have some type of tug to go into the ministry. Either I wanted to be a pastor or history teacher.

All that until I graduated high school and I started dating the wrong person. Anyway, this beautiful girl swept me off my feet. Did your dad approve of that? Yeah, kind of. He was not gung-ho, but he wasn't.

I mean, here I am, I'm turning into a man and he's, you know, he's cautiously watching, you know. And now this is, again, this is not, we didn't have this courtship model, You know, we did family worship, but it, you know, it wasn't quite the courtship model, you know, that we have today, but it was, nevertheless, you know, I'm pursuing this girl and she was a Methodist And nothing wrong with Methodists if they're Christians, but I don't think that she was a Christian. In fact, she wasn't a Christian, but in my mind she was. Of course she's a Christian. She claims to be.

And she's very pretty. And that led to this relationship developing and And I I don't want to if I use the word falling in love or falling and lust or falling into fatuation What do you want to call it? There's some form of strong affection I had for this girl that was very, very deep. And we dated for a whole year, my freshman year in college, And at the end of my freshman year of college, she breaks up with me. That was tragic.

And when that happened, I went I fell into depression. Well acted the fool. I kept on begging her to come back to me. I pursued her like a, like a, you know, desperate little kid pursuing her. And she kept on, you know, rejecting me.

And I got really depressed. And for the whole summer, 19 years old, just depressed as I could be, I could become suicidal, very suicidal. I lost 40 pounds. And at that time, I could lose 40 pounds now and be fine but when I was 160 pounds at the time, 6 foot, 160 pounds, I've gotten down to 120 or 130. Oh my my parents are very concerned about me.

I'm not eating. I'm not sleeping I can't hardly work Life is all mess for me I'm still reading the Bible, but obviously I'm not walking with God during this time. I wasn't walking with the Lord very well. And then I go off to move to Conway for my sophomore year of college. So I transfer to another college to the city I live in now.

And that was in 1996. And I happened to run into this previous girlfriend, starting to get over her, but not fully. And we run into each other. Next thing we know, we're dating again. Next thing we know, I'm not going to church at all.

I'm away from my parents. I went to this church, but they don't know me. I don't know them. And I was always a good kid. My parents think it's all as well with me.

But dating this girl, I make a lot of compromises with dating her. And we date the whole fresh sophomore year. And I remember visiting my parents and I felt the weight of guilt. You know that the Bible tells me I'm not to be unequally yoke. But at this point I thought I had to marry this girl, you know, I need to marry her.

But she's not a Christian. I tried to think that she was a Christian, but apparently at this time I can't deny it. She's not, you know, she'd go to, she would go to church and claim to be a Christian, but it's, I knew better. My theology was better. You know, I knew that she wasn't.

And so I have this conviction. I have to break up with her. And I remember telling God, I don't think I can, which is a scary thing to tell God. I don't think I can. And obviously, I know without the grace of God, I couldn't do it.

But the Bible says clearly, I had to, and I knew it, and my conscience was killing me. And one week later she breaks up with me, when all was going well. I mean, it wasn't, there was no signs of things going bad, but she breaks up with me with one week later and I knew it was God. I knew it wasn't her breaking it with me. It was God doing it for me, because I couldn't do it.

And I knew I couldn't, last time I acted the fool, pursued her. This time I'm like, I can't fight God. And I accepted her breakup. I said, fine, okay. And I never talked to her again.

It's like that's it and it was clean-cut God did this But it didn't mean I didn't fall into depression immediately. I I immediately fell into depression. I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep I couldn't When you when you're really really deeply depressed Is it's like your senses don't work. Nothing's enjoyable. You're extremely tired because you haven't slept, but you can't sleep.

But you can't be awake. It's miserable. There's nothing about it. All in life is miserable. There's no fun.

There's no excitement. There's no, it's like you're losing hope. Without hope you can't live. And it's like, I just went, life went really, really dark. Is all I could think about is how to kill myself.

I thought of various ways of doing it. I was suicidal before, but now I wasn't just suicidal. I didn't just want to die. I was at the point of like, how do I do it? How do I execute this?

And I could, I remember one time driving on the interstate and I had to fight the urge to drive off the interstate and hit the columns between the bridge. And I sat there and like, want to do it. I said, I don't know if this is the way I want to do it. And I'm away from people I care about, people who care about me. So I'm in college and no one knows I'm going through this.

It's kind of, I didn't talk about it until about three months or four months of dealing with this, finally I decided I would, I would kill myself with, or shooting myself, I'd shoot myself. And I waited till my roommates were gone. I waited till, it's like they're going to be out of town this weekend. I'll do it then. So I had the date plan.

I had the location. I was going to clean up my room, I paid all my bills, I set my life in order the best I could. And so I remember around midnight, I felt like I had one last thing to do. And I had my gun caught, you know, I had the bullet in the chamber. I had it right next to me.

And one last thing I needed to do, I needed to call my mom and, well, call my dad. My mom was with death. She couldn't hear, so I couldn't call her on the phone, but I could call dad. And I called dad and I told him, he knew I was struggling to some degree, but not to the extent. And I called him and said, dad, I'm at the end of my rope.

I can't have no other thing else I can do Hope y'all understand I said something like it's like my way of saying goodbye. Like I loved you. I don't want you to be disappointed. I love you guys. Don't it's not your fault.

It's no one's fault. That's just the way it is. And, and my dad said he understood. And I was so, I got to understand, I was so mentally discouraged and depressed when he said, I understood. I understand, Jeff, understand that was hit.

I interpret that to mean, yeah, you've got to kill the dead dog if he's hurting and miserable you got to take him out of his misery You know, we're gonna miss you dad son, but man, you can't live like this. We understand. It's like, you know assisted suicide I was so delusional. I think that's I was taking that as I got that out of the way. I can now die in peace if you would.

I can finish this off. But thankfully my dad, you know, after he said that, I guess there was a pause or something that allowed me to think all those things. He says, you understand, there's only one thing you can do, and that's go to the Lord until he hears you. He reminded me of the story of Jacob wrestling with God until he got blessed. He says, you cannot let God go until he blesses you.

That's the only option you have at this point. And it's crazy because I hear I'm a pastor son. I just forgot about God. I didn't think that God, I mean, I pray and ask God all these things to help me, but God's not listening to me. And finally I told my dad, I said, I'll do it.

I have no other choice. I'll do that. And it's like that gave me a little bit of hope, a little light of hope. Maybe there's another option. And I look back and I realized now I didn't want to die.

I just didn't want to live. I was scared of dying It's not like dying felt good or I see excited or this is gonna be fun. No, I didn't think it's gonna be fun I just couldn't stand living anymore But my dad gave me hope that maybe there's a plan B that there's maybe something else I could let me try that. And I got off the phone with my dad and I was so determined to get ahold of God. God, you got to hear me.

You got to hear me, God, I thought to myself and I prayed. It was midnight because I remember waking my dad up and I got off the phone. I remember pushing the gun away from me. I mean, it's not like I just, I mean, I didn't take the bullet out of the chamber. I just pushed it away from me.

And I was already on the ground. I was already sitting kind of like, you know, on my knees or something of that nature, my back against the wall. And I remember seeing the alarm clock next to my bed. And I remember it being 12 o'clock. And I remember just praying.

And my prayers were like this, Lord, bring this girl back to me. You know, bring her back. I can't live without her then it was like Lord help me get over this girl Magically make me not like her anymore magically make me happy that you know, we're broke up And I prayed all kinds of really silly prayers, but painful prayers for God to help me. And then three in the morning, God granted me repent repentance. And I said granted because I wasn't looking to repent.

I didn't really think about the need of repentance. But here for the whole last year, I kind of walked out of church, had a guilty conscience of some of the compromises. I still had this conscience throughout this time that said, man, you can't do this. I got drunk one time in my life, and it was during this time. And when I was drunk, I was miserable because I was like, this is sinful.

This is, this is evil. You know, if that makes sense. And so I had this, this weight of guilt. And then all of a sudden at three in the morning, I'm like, what am I doing? I'm about to face God, I'm about to die and I'm gonna face God and I started thinking of a B C D Of all these sins just come to my mind.

It's like I haven't I can't face God in this condition Why am I worried about this silly girl when I got bigger problems to deal with? And then I began just like cry out to God. Forgive me of this and I would just list it name it confess it. Confess it. And then it was like that sin got pushed aside, like God pushed that one aside.

And then the next another sin I would name and he pushed that one aside until I had nothing else. It's like the Rolodex. I went through everything I could think of. And there's, Of course, there's a billion more sins that I have no idea about, but the ones that were in my mind, all of them, it was empty. I'd have nothing more to confess.

And then when I got to that last one, I realized God forgave me. It was three in the morning. And it was it was amazing. I felt not only free. I was tired.

I was dead tired. And that's amazing feeling. When you're depressed, where you can sleep. I went straight to bed and slept like a baby For the first time in months and then when I woke up I woke up I remember distinctly pouring some cereal because I'm poor college to Honeynut Cheerios, I can distinctly remember tasting tasting honey We take it for granted you can taste food, but I could taste the honey and it tasted good. It's not bland stuff.

You have to just eat rice cakes just to sustain yourself I was like this is good and that is like that day. I was like God had saved my life. He kept me from killing myself He forgave me of all my sins. And, you know, of course, maybe that was my real conversion. And, you know, I go back and forth.

Maybe I wasn't regenerated until that day. And I didn't have a real profession of faith when I was 13. I, you know, I look back, maybe I was converted when I was 13 and had a year where God chastened me because of my sins. I do know, all I know is like I know at the age of 20 that God had saved me, you know, and that's when I felt called to the ministry. And within that week, I was, I was so zealous for God, I was, I was like a firecracker.

I could not not tell people about what God had done for me and how he saved my life. And I just wanted to preach. I kind of had this desire to preach before then, but at this point, it's like, no, this is what I'm going to give my life to. I have to give my life to that. So that's how I was called to preach.

And you know, that's, I think I've gone a long time without any questions here. But so what would you tell parents that have a son like you were during that season when your parents were concerned, they didn't know everything, but they knew all wasn't well. Yeah. Well, you know, I was, I had two older brothers that were rebellious. One of my brothers turned into a goth, you know, He looked like he was a vampire.

Of course, it tore up my parents. The music he was listening to, the behavior, he wasn't hiding it. Got into drugs. Of course, he's moved out of the house and kicked out of the house. It tore them up.

My older brother had another lifestyle, not like that, but he had his own terrible lifestyle and me I was I was walking with God all through my high school was keeping you know I was I was called the preacher boy when I was in high school. So I was always never in trouble. So when I went off to college, my parents never knew under the covers. They never knew. It was the last thing on their mind that I would be struggling with those types of sins.

It was just a different experience. So what the question is, what would I tell? I don't know what I would tell parents, although I have my own kids. And one of the things I want to maintain the best humanly possible is pray. My parents never quit praying for me, and my brothers prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed.

One of the things that I'm so thankful for is that I was able to call my dad up, And he was kind of my best friend. And if I don't think I would have had that relationship with my dad, I don't know. God could have used something else because God is sovereign. But I want to emulate my parents by and even more so about being a parent to my kids. But being someone that they can talk to, being able to talk to my my kids.

And that's, that's hard to do when you're kidding. I'm learning that's harder to do when your kids getting older and older So just maintaining those channels of communication and I think What happens sometimes with parents and I'm I'm not an expert on this So I'll say this one more say it humbly and and knowing that there's a variety of experiences is that there's a certain age where your kids have to reason their convictions. And you don't want to just have convictions on your kids that they think are dumb and unreasonable. And they can't wait to get to the age where they can shove those convictions off and do what they want to do. I want, I want my kids to be able to have convictions that are their convictions that I shaped.

And I helped guide them into those convictions. But it's their conscience convictions, not just some set of rules that are arbitrary or don't make sense to them. I think that's, I don't know, some things I'll hope to do for my children as they get older. Jeff, what scripture guided you after that time, or even during that time, what from the Word of God carried you along? You know, I believed ever since my high school day, I believe in the sovereignty of God.

And there was no accidents. You know, I came to that that doctrine on my own. It wasn't just like my parents just shoving it down my throat. And I have to believe it because they know it's something that I saw that the Bible taught. And I'm so thankful for that.

Because, You know, my early years, you know, after that experience when I was 20, I felt called to the ministry. I saw God's hand involved in my life and everything seemed supernatural to me. Like the hand of Providence seemed supernatural. And so I don't know if it was a single verse as much as it was a doctrinal conviction that kept me and stayed with me. And you're writing a book, you're about done with a book on the sovereignty of God, right?

Yeah, yeah. When you think that's gonna hit the press? I don't know. I'm hoping to get some endorsements for it. It's not a very big book.

It's a little small book. I wanted to write something that's an introduction to the doctrine of God's sovereignty. And I hope that it'll be a blessing to a lot of people. That was the thing that sustained me all through my 20s and up to the moment that God is sovereign. There's no sweeter thing to know.

And God has everything in control. What a blessing that is. Yeah. You don't go back and say, I wish you would never repeat your sins because you wouldn't be repentant if you would say I'd do them again But now that you're on the other side of them, you see even how your your own mistakes and sins God utilized Yeah for something more glorious and I would never if I could keep my kids from dating a girl, like, you know, don't make this mistake that I made. It could ruin your life.

I look back, I don't, I don't, I look back and I obviously I would wait till I met my wife, Letha. But you know, I see that how God used even what I meant for evil. I see how God meant that for good. No, that's great. What a blessing.

Jeff, thank you for sharing all those things. What a remarkable story of God's grace. Jason, what are your thoughts? No, I really appreciate just hearing how God breaks into different lives in in different ways, and it's just sweet to hear another story of God's goodness and perseverance, you know, bearing long with people, and then in their moment of greatest need breaking into that with just what they need. Amen.

Amen. Well, thank you, Jeff. So appreciate your testimony and I pray that it'll be a help to a lot of people. Yeah, thank you guys. Thank the Lord, really.

Thank the Lord for what He's done. Amen. And thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next Monday for our next session.

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