𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙇𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨: Jeremy Phillip
Jeremy Phillips had a minimal faith background in his family growing up. He didn’t even enter a church
until 4th grade, when he attended most of one summer with a friend whose mom was religious. This would constitute the entirety of Jeremy’s religious experience with God until his twenties.
Introduced to drugs and Satan worship by extended family members as a pre-teen, Jeremy went headlong into a life of drug and alcohol use and drug dealing, both a captive and leading into captivity. Life snowballed down a very long hill from there. Satan worship was presented to Jeremy as power to “do what you will” and he embraced it, not yet realizing that it ultimately led to eternal death.
By his mid-teens, Jeremy had a growing criminal record and faced prison time in juvenile detention. Still worshiping Satan at the altar of addiction and dealing, Jeremy opted to be in the custody of a relative in Texas and began his junior year of high school there. God used this locality change to reveal to Jeremy, through a local drug ring bust and some high school classmates, that Satan worship leads to terrible human abuses, including human sacrifice! Jeremy rejected Satan worship at the point, yet still held to the addictive lifestyle practices by which Satan holds millions captive.
Upon returning to Michigan as an adult, Jeremy resumed his friendships with the same groups he’d left as a teen, and the alcohol and drug use and partying continued. There was one change, however: Jeremy no longer carried a Satanic bible and promoted Satan as king. Praise God!
Jeremy lived this way into his mid-twenties and, along the way, married and had three daughters. One day, Jeremyrealized that he didn’t like the impact that drugs had on his daily life and decided that he was done with drug use. At that time, he didn’t know that God had given him the impression and the power to stop drug use, yet slowly, Jeremy began to think about God and wonder who He is. This attraction was magnified by a friend who gave his life to Jesus while in prison and, upon release, freely testified of Jesus’ work in his life, including freedom from drug addiction.
This clicked with Jeremy, as he had no explanation for why he could just walk away from drug addiction while all his friends remained captive. This friend significantly impacted Jeremy as he watched his friend live out his faith. Jeremy’s search to know God moved forward slowly as he resisted the hunger toward God that he felt. That resistance crumbled under the weight of life trials over a period of years that saw several relationships unravel, threats to his life, and a problem that he couldn’t solve with violence. Life felt out of control, yet the more Jeremy looked to God for help, the more God delivered him through the trials. Jeremy knew that God’s grace and power alone had delivered him and resolved the problem!
Now both hungry and reaching out for God, Jeremy began to study the Bible some, look for God in churches, and search for how to please God. During this searching outreach time, Jeremy discovered Strong Tower Radio one morning while driving to work and heard “Bible Answers Live.” Answers to his questions flowed from the radio, and he tuned in daily for more. Whether that program or others, Jeremy learned much about God, and as questions developed in his mind, often that week, he’d hear the answer on STR. Praise God!
Between road time and listening on the work site, Jeremy listened to STR for two years as his contracting work took him all over Michigan. Convicted to worship in a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church, he found one nearby and attended for most of a summer. Weekend commercial contracts out of town and inner conflicts caused him to pull away for nearly one year. Church members reached out to him with cards, phone calls, and visits to share their interest in his life and encourage him to return to fellowship. Jeremy’s hunger for God, truth, and Christian fellowship overcame both his desire to make money and his fear of being unworthy of a church family. He made the pivotal decision to no longer accept out-of-town contracts so that he could attend church regularly and begin those delayed Bible studies.
Trusting God to take care of the financial impact of that decision, Jeremy prioritized his relationship with Jesus above all areas of his life. He told his employees that “we won’t depend on man for money/work, we’re now depending on God.” His contracting company soon had more work than before, all near home, and that volume has continued to this day. God is faithful!
Jeremy began attending church regularly. One of his daughters and her fiancé soon began attending with him, and Bible studies followed. Jeremy wanted the world to know that he had chosen Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord and looked forward to baptism. That day of testimony was September 7, 2024, and Jeremy declared his allegiance to Jesus Christ and His everlasting gospel, also becoming a member of the Irons SDA Church. Praise God!
Jeremy still tunes in to STR daily, both on the road and on the job site, and the programs continue to nourish and strengthen his faith. The job site presents a regular witnessing opportunity to generate questions from the STR broadcast, and Jeremy hopes that others will begin or deepen their search for truth as he did. Praise God for changing lives through the broadcast of STR!
