By Morgan Miles –
Born to a poverty-stricken single mom when she was 16, Jason Perry was raised by his grandparents and other family members.
“My mom wanted to go off and party, so she gave me to my grandparents. That hurt,” Jason says on a Hope Report video. “I got traded around the family for a long time, that I would just irritate them and get shipped off to the next person and the next person. It completely destroyed me.”
His mother only wanted the best for him.
One winter, she hadn’t paid the gas bill and kept the kids warm by letting them sleep in front of an open electric stove.
His grandfather, who he says had been molested by Catholic priests in an orphanage in Newfoundland, Canada, poured his own bitter form of atheism into Jason. When he grew up, Jason ridiculed Christians for their “unscientific” faith.
He worked out at the gym and hung out with older dudes. With the muscular build, he lied his way into a bouncer job at a 21-and-older club and rented his own apartment by age 17. He was making good money, so he dropped out of school.
After a girlfriend broke his heart, Jason became the heartbreaker.
“This wound was there with me. I fell in love with this girl, but when that didn’t work out, my wound evolved, and I became the wound-er. I was never going to let anyone get the best of me from that end. I became the cheater, the liar, the manipulator. My goal was to inflict as much trauma as I could while making myself feel better with conquest and womanizing.”
Jason fell into criminality for the next three years. “Because I had no hope, there was nothing I wouldn’t do,” he says. “I was seeking temporary joys.”
At 20, he decided to reform. Because he was patriotic, he joined the Navy, aiming for the SEALs.
“I was still trying to fill the hole but this time with camaraderie,” he says. “In the SEALs, you’re a rock star. You’re a professional athlete traveling the world. I was pouring all this in and it wasn’t filling the hole inside of me. I was still a broken person. I was still going out and partying, trying to find happiness.”
Then his brother died of heroin. At the funeral, Jason was incensed. Where were all his friends?
“They’re all dead,” one of the few remaining friends told him. “An entire class was dead.”
The words sunk in slowly – and it changed Jason’s life. He was intent on saving the world while people were lost here in America. He decided to leave SEALs and become a cop. “I’m going to fight the war on drugs.”
By now, Jason was married but losing his marriage. He was diagnosed with cancer and went to Panama City to recover. He threw himself into the party life because he thought he was dying. When he was declared cancer-free, he only partied even more.
By a fluke, his wife brought him a book to check out: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Because it approached the topic of God from the side of science, he was open to it.
He finally surrendered control of his life to Jesus as his personal Savior and Lord, and was born again. “I remember my whole body was tingling,” he says of the time when he accepted Jesus.
Jason got on the SWAT team in Boston, fulfilling his pledge to bust drugs. But an autistic child obliged him to quit to have more time for the child. (He was not able to save his marriage.)
He became a personal bodyguard for a man worth $52 billion, a job he did six months of the year. During the other six months (one month on, one off), he ran a gym and gave free training to heroin addicts in an attempt to give them dignity and hope for something better in life.
Participating in an Operation Restored Warrior clinic, Jason finally experienced the inner healing of his wounds.
Jason remarried. Covid almost destroyed his gym. “I prayed the most dangerous prayer I could ever pray,” he says. “Send me where you will. If you want me to go to Africa, I will go to Africa.”
God opened doors for him to move to Tennessee, where he became a pastor and a mentor to men needing to find the hope and purpose that can only be found in Jesus Christ.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here.
Other articles about Navy SEALs: Remi Adeleke, David Goggins, Eddie Penney, Jason Redman, Shawn Ryan, Chad Williams and Army Rangers: Dave Eubank, Jeff Streucker and Tim Moynihan.
About this writer: Morgan Miles studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near Venice, CA.
