The NEW John Simmons

 

The New John Simmons

 

I grew up in a two-parent family in St. Louis, Missouri. My grandmother used to take me to Sunday School and church, so I knew something about God early on. They were teaching me at the church how to pray and kept saying, just ask God for what you want because he answers prayer. 

 

One Sunday night when I was twelve, I had a project due at school the next day and I hadn’t done it. So, I prayed to God I would have Monday off. The next morning, I woke up and saw my clock and school had already started. My mom must have let me sleep in. I thought, Wow. Prayer works. Then she came in the room and explained that my father had passed away from a heart attack during the night. That event broke my relationship with God up and made me feel so guilty. I was thinking, if God is going to answer prayers like this, why would I want to pray? Why would I want to be involved with a God like that?

 

I carried that guilt about my dad's death around for decades. My relationship with the Lord was messed up and my mom was now a single mother and kind of let me go a little bit, and I got involved with some older kids and I was out a lot.

 

After high school I did a couple of years of community college and hated school, but I loved radio and became station manager at my high school. I went to a trade school and learned how to do radio and TV and got a job in radio in St. Louis, doing different things. Around this time, I turned twenty-one and went to Las Vegas for the first time. I had been playing poker online and had a couple of dollars, so I was playing these little tournaments but in Vegas the atmosphere and culture really drew me in. I was at the poker table for eight hours straight the first time I played there. I loved it!

 

I told my buddy when I got home, and he turned me onto the local St. Louis casinos. I had a full-time job at the radio station but then I found out I could work at the casino, so I quit the radio station, hoping that I could make a good living playing poker. I was working when I wanted to, gambling when I wanted to, living with a girl, had no real ambition, and no relationship with God whatever.

 

Eventually the money ran dry from gambling because I had no off switch. I would play until I lost it all. I was only twenty-two when I first filed bankruptcy. I had lost all the money I had saved and started using credit cards to fund my play. Then I went to pay day loans. It became overwhelming and I had to come clean to my family and friends. It was so hard seeing my mom in tears over me.

 

They all wanted me to get help, get fixed, but inside I didn’t feel like I needed to get fixed. I thought if I could just win, everything will be okay. I went to rehab and GA meetings at their insistence and let someone take care of my finances. I signed a DAP list so I couldn’t gamble in Missouri casinos anymore, but I could still work in one. I had a period of success cleaning up my act, but eventually I just drove out of state to gamble.

 

Then I got into sports betting and did that for like seven years, playing with money from bookies. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I made a lot of money dealing poker at the casino, which funded my habit, but I had no friends. I was lonely and isolated. When I was awake, I just thought about how to get money to pay different people and appease them for a while. The gambling really wasn’t about the money, I just felt good being there. I wanted to be a winner and looked up to, but that wasn’t happening.

 

Then I woke up one day and did some self-reflection. When I was younger, I wanted to be a pro wrestler, then in a band, then on the radio, and now I’m about thirty and I’ve done nothing. For the very first time I went to a rehab center on my own free will. I went half a dozen times before, but always at the urging of others. I stayed clean for thirty days and they gave me a pin and everyone applauded and for the first time in a long time I felt some positives. Then I made it ninety days clean, the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I didn’t want to stop in my mind, I just stopped in my body. It was a constant battle, but I got another pin and more applause.

 

My mentor at rehab told me that after ninety days, I wouldn’t get another pin for a year. I was like, "What? I needed that reinforcement." I couldn’t handle that. I asked him, “When will this go away?”

 

He replied, “It won’t ever go away, you just live a day at a time, a minute at a time.”

 

What a horrible thought! I couldn’t live like that. Struggling every day to stay clean. I’d rather gamble and live with the consequences than do that. So I sold everything I had and lost it all over an eight-day bender. When I was done, and everything was gone, I thought about how to kill myself. I thought about taking a bunch of pills, maybe smashing my car into a wall. I had a friend at the casino who jumped off a bridge. Maybe that was the way to do it. Sitting in my bedroom crying and at rock bottom, thinking about how to die, I finally cried out to God, “God, if you’re real show me a future and a hope for my life.”

 

Immediately, words appeared in my head. “The Kingdom of Heaven is upon you. The Kingdom of Heaven is upon you.” It kept repeating. I thought, okay, I’ve lost it. What did that even mean?!

 

But, I ran out of my bedroom and took my father’s Bible off the shelf. It was the one thing I had of his. And there it was as soon as I opened it, there was that verse. In Matthew. The words were jumping off the page and into my heart. I got on my knees and I could feel it. I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it was God.

 

He had allowed me to come to Him and know Him. It changed my life forever. It was September of 2012. After that I got into the Bible constantly, listening to Christian radio for messages, trying to soak it all in.

 

I had been depressed for ten years and now I was smiling and people at work started calling me the New John Simmons. My desire to gamble was just gone. I wasn't fighting it any more. God had just taken it away. I was a new John Simmons.

 

In October I went to my first church service. The pastor said, “If you’re a Christian, you need to be praying for a vision for your life because God has one for you.”

 

I started praying for that vision and I prayed it for six months. Then on March 22, 2013, at a church service, the pastor said, “Someone out there has been praying for a vision, and tomorrow it will happen.”

 

 I knew it was me! I was excited and woke up the next morning waiting. At 4 pm that day, I was driving to the casino, and I heard the same voice in my head again, “John today you’re going to start your ministry.” I was thinking, what’s a ministry? I was new to all this and had no idea. The only ministry I knew was helping direct traffic in our church parking lot.

 

Five hours later I was sitting at the casino, dealing cards and God started talking to me again, “John you’re going to start a ministry called Testimony House. It will be a Christian learning center.” What's a testimony? What's a Christian learning center? I had no idea, but I started scrambling looking for a pencil or something. I ended up writing it all down on my hand, even the logo.

 

I told my roommate at the time, a Christian guy, about this. He said, “This is from God, John. It’s bigger than you.”

 

Okay, I thought, I found my vision and I started the ministry, figuring it out as I went. Basically I shared my testimony and other people’s testimony. I wrote a couple of books, and someone from a radio station read one of my books and he invited me to work at the station. I got hired at a low-level job and within six months I was the first paid radio host they had in sixty years. I had two shows. I wanted to do livestreaming, but they weren’t excited about that, so Testimony House built a studio and we studied and watched videos and put together this ministry online to get God's message out. Now we do lots of youtube testimonies from people from all over. They’re powerful and they change lives. This is my life now and I’m so thankful for it.

 

I want everyone to have something to have faith for like I got from God. God has something planned for you. To walk in. Ask Him for it. Like I did. He will tell you.

 

 

John Simmons, St. Louis, MO

You can learn more about John and his ministry at www.testimonyhouse.org