Pastor Jeff’s Testimony

Jeff grew up in the country near Waukesha, Wisconsin.  He began a life as a musician at a young age - a path that took him into a destructive lifestyle of alcohol and drugs.  Jeff and his wife, Candy, were married in 1985 and moved to Southern California. They were planning to further his career in music but the Lord, in His mercy and grace, had other plans.

Jeff explains, “It was around 30 years of age that I can look back and see the Holy Spirit beginning to stir my heart.  For my 30th birthday I got a Bible, a strange gift indeed!  It was also at this time that Candy became pregnant with our first child.  I took my Bible and a sonogram picture of my son on tour through western United States and Canada.  My eyes were being opened to the evil of the music business I was involved in and the lifestyle I was subjecting my family to.  About halfway through that first tour we were in Casper, Wyoming at a party where I stayed all night and woke up the next day literally in the gutter.  I knew I couldn’t go on this way any longer. I flew home the next day and quit the music business, thinking I would become a responsible parent and husband.  Unfortunately, without Christ, the drinking and drug abuse continued as my means of filling the void that only Jesus Christ can fill.

After years of promoting and marketing rock bands I was able to apply the knowledge and hard work ethic I’d learned to start a gardening business. I soon had employees and was running 2 trucks and working 7 days a week.  I had been trying to read the Bible on and off.  It made absolutely no sense.  I had also been going to mass every week at the Catholic Church in an attempt to please God, but was still very much spiritually dead.  I’ll never forget the day I sat in my truck while it was drizzling out, trying to find music on my radio.  After going through the dial 3 or 4 times the only station coming in was some “religious” station.  So I was stuck there.  But as I listened to this person speak I found he was telling of how he, as a new Christian, had felt God was telling him to speak to someone in a restaurant. But he was drinking beer so he knew the person wouldn’t take him seriously. While he was sitting there God sent someone else in to speak to the person.  I had never heard anyone speak about the things of God like this before and began tuning in to this station more and more, listening to the different speakers.

Unknown to me, a friend of my wife’s had been witnessing to her and my wife had also been tuning in to KWVE (Calvary Chapel’s southern California station). When we discovered this we both sat down one night, January 6, 1993, and listened to a live broadcast from Costa Mesa with Greg Laurie.  At the invitation we bowed our heads and accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior right there in our kitchen.  Immediately God’s Word came alive to me and God gave me an insatiable hunger for His Word.  God also graciously took away my drug and alcohol habit overnight.

We continued to go to the Catholic Church for 3 months or so but my wife and I listened to teaching on KWVE from the moment we got up until we went to bed.  We came to Calvary Chapel Chino Valley the Sunday after Easter and made a public profession of faith at the end of service.  We began to attend every Bible study the church offered.  One Tuesday morning at a men’s study shortly after coming to Calvary Chapel Chino Valley, Pastor David used the illustration that I had heard those months before in my truck. The Holy Spirit reminded me of that day and showed me how He had orchestrated the events in my life to bring me there.”