Greg Outlaw’s Testimony

Hi, my name is Greg Outlaw. That’s right… OUTLAW… like a bad guy. And most people that knew me before Christ truly changed my life would agree that I was definitely an Outlaw! I accepted Christ when I was 12 years old and almost immediately starting serving. I even served as an assistant teacher in Vacation Bible School teaching 6 year old children when I was 13.

My father was one of the head deacons at our small church during this time. Shortly after my baptism, my father secretly starting drinking alcohol and eventually left my mother for another woman with whom he had been committing adultery. I remember feeling shocked and distraught – not understanding why this happened. I remember the ugliness of the hypocrisy in my father’s life and all the gossip in our small church. I remember bitterness and pain. I remember my mother’s pain. I remember feeling abandoned and cheated – by my earthly father. I remember falling away from my heavenly Father. I remember wanting to forget…

I look back now and just see this as an excuse to justify my behavior – the reason not to trust or believe in organized religion. I started drinking beer when I was 14 and being sexually promiscuous. I continued my self-destructive behavior, which led to 13 major car accidents. Trip after trip to the hospital emergency room, I continued to ignore God and hurt my family.

These painful injuries led me to an addiction of prescription opiates, hard alcohol, and illegal drugs. My continual abuse led to chronic pancreatitus, an incurable, terminal condition. You see, your pancreas secretes enzymes. These enzymes digest your food when you eat. When you have a very damaged pancreas from alcohol and dietary abuse, it does not function properly. For me, instead of digesting my food when I ate, the enzymes secreted improperly and actually digested my pancreas itself. – Eating me from the inside out – as you can imagine – this is excruciatingly painful.

Doctors attempted to control it with pain medication and told me not to drink alcohol anymore or eat any great quantity of fat in my diet. But when you are on a path of self destruction and do not care whether you live or die, you continue your own selfish life style to the detriment and disbelief of everyone around you. Each and every attack destroyed more and more of my pancreas. By my 14th or 15th attack even though I had finally quit drinking a few years earlier the damage was done. In November of 1999, the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for me. They basically assigned me a death sentence. This, in turn, led to heavy illegal drug use, which eventually came to a head on December 7, 1999. I called my brother-in-law to help me. He took me to Celebrate Recovery at Saddleback Church where I recommitted the remaining days or years of my life to the Lord. I began reading the Bible again and read it three times through in the year 2000. I prayed asking God for forgiveness and asking Him for a second chance.

I knew He had a purpose for my life when I first accepted Jesus Christ so long ago. I began to pray telling God that no matter how much time I had left on this earth, all I wanted to do was devote each and every day of it to serving Him.

In early 2000, I went into the hospital again and they began talking about putting me in a hospice-type situation. They assigned me to my second pain management clinic where the doctor prescribed morphine in pills and liquid. I was placed on TPN (total parenteral nutrition) where I was fed intravenously from home each night as I studied God’s Word and tried to sleep.

At this same time, our internet-based company was on the verge of being sold 4 times during the year 2000 for millions of dollars. Having become content with the idea of being terminally ill and dying in 4 to 5 years, I began to pray that the money from the sale would be provided so that my wife would be taken care of financially in the future. But each and every time, the proposed sale and/or assignment of my stock would fall through at the 11th hour, leading to disappointment again.

By March of 2001, I was taking 300mg of morphine a day and my life was slipping away. My wife and I were very disconnected and I felt I had no one but God. One Sunday at church, my wife suggested that I attend Saddleback’s Examine the Evidence class entitled “Creation vs. Evolution.” My wife knew I had always been an avid researcher and student with a passion for science. I had questions reconciling the biblical account of creation with the “supposed” scientific account of evolution. After two hours of hearing the hard evidence being explained to me mathematically on just how absolutely impossible it is to even get to the first cell using the evolutionary process, I felt God’s calling to volunteer my web marketing and positioning services to the ministry’s website free of charge. Ironically, this was at a time in my life when we were dirt poor and had no money for our bills, but I chose to put the Kingdom of God first! My wife thought I was nuts and believed that my pain medication had clouded my logical reasoning skills. In reality, it was the Holy Spirit!

Meanwhile, I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with some of the business decisions being made at the internet company. As a result, in May of 2001, I left the company and relinquished my investment of six years of hard work! I made a decision to depend on God’s power instead of my own; to lead every aspect of my life with God in mind first, regardless of the possible outcome.

After making the most difficult decision in my life, I suddenly noticed that my pain was totally gone. I began to wean myself off of morphine rather fast - 2.5 weeks, which my pain management doctor told me was impossible at the dosage I had been taking for so long.

Looking back over my life it seemed as if God was waiting for me to take a leap of faith – a firm commitment of trust in His power. When I cast off the shackles of the internet company without any sound logical business reasons, I forfeited my ability to support my family AND decided to live my life as God would have me live it – no matter what the consequences – In other words when I let go, God healed me spiritually and physically.

That is when I decided to live my life for God’s glory. I look back now and think what stupid decisions I made! I could have chosen to live for God’s glory at the beginning. Why did I have to feel like I was losing my life to finally find it? Why would He choose to use an alcoholic, drug addicted, prideful, selfish, and angry man like me? The only reason I can fathom is because He definitely gets all the glory. It is soooo not about me... It is All About GOD! And to Him alone goes all the Glory!

Revelation 5:12 - saying with a loud voice: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!"

You can visit Greg and his ministry at:  AllaboutGod.com