Air Force veteran Will Johnson survived the violent streets of LA, battled severe depression in Germany, and attempted suicide in Oman — only to find the window sealed shut.
This raw conversation covers growing up in gang territory, finding Christ in Germany, surviving suicide through divine intervention, experiencing miraculous healings during deployment, and discovering that true identity comes from Christ, not performance.
Will Johnson grew up in Panorama City in LA's San Fernando Valley, where his family's apartment complex deteriorated into gang territory. Drive-bys happened two or three times a week. Helicopters circled at night. Friends got arrested. Will watched it all. But his father — a Vietnam veteran medic who became a VA electrician for forty years — held the line with quiet wisdom and relentless presence. He told his sons: if anyone ever pressures you to join a gang, we're moving. He gave Will tricks to dress differently, to separate himself visually from the culture that consumed so many around him. The worst thing Will could imagine was letting his father down.
A high school play about Iwo Jima changed his trajectory. The dramatic lighting. The sacrifice on stage. Something stirred in him. He wanted to be part of something bigger than himself, and the Air Force offered that door. He walked through it. Germany was brutal — sub-zero winters working on aircraft engines until his hands bled, severe homesickness, days where he wept alone in his bunk and no one saw. He was a young man far from everything familiar, fighting a depression he barely had words for.
“I knew in that moment, what was going on, God was dealing with my soul. I knew that I didn’t have eternal security. I did not know if I were to die where I would go.”
During Easter service at Ramstein chapel, a music video of Jesus carrying the cross played on the screen. Something broke open in Will. He responded to the altar call. He tried to change — told his friends they needed to be doing something different. But without real community, without deep roots, he drifted back into worldly living. The spiritual moment was real, but it hadn't yet become a life. That would come later, through the darkest night of his life.
On deployment in Oman, after receiving an Article 15 following a painful season involving an unexpected pregnancy and a relationship that fell apart, Will hit rock bottom. He walked to the window of his fifth-floor hotel room with a decision made. The window was sealed shut. He stood there, stunned, and then tore the room apart. Into the noise of that collapse came a small knock at the door — a childhood friend from eighth grade he hadn't seen in years, who somehow knew Will wasn't okay, and stayed with him through the night. God had closed the window. And then God had sent a friend. What followed — a simple prayer choosing between two duty stations, four scattered cousins all landing at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, a prophetic dream fulfilled, tent revivals, radical salvation — reads like it couldn't possibly be accidental. Will met his wife at the very same deployment location where he had tried to end his life. He left the military just under ten years, choosing family when the math of military marriages became undeniable. He has never looked back.
You can overestimate every single thing in the world, but you cannot overestimate the cross.
But when I went to go jump out of the window, it was sealed shut. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like I can't even do this right.
Don't admit that you're miserable. You're already miserable, but if you admit to yourself that you're miserable, you got nowhere to go from there.
There is a real God that loves you and there's a treasure in the field that's above every other treasure. And I can satisfy more than any other treasure in this world.