Church Of The Harvest | Sermon Podcast | Cleveland, TN · Word Of Life Ministries - Church of the Harvest

My Redemption Story - Maggie Woods

·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

After surgery, Maggie Woods describes “a three-year-old, an empty womb, and a giant bottle of painkillers.”

1. Church Of The Harvest | Sermon Podcast | Cleveland, TN centers this episode on Maggie Woods’s testimony, “My Redemption Story.” 2. Maggie Woods speaks as the guest and first-person storyteller, and she names Hank Davis and Rhonda Davis as pastors who stayed involved during her addiction. 3. The episode asks how a woman who gave her heart to Jesus at 17 could end up in active addiction and legal trouble. 4. Woods says she was a Lee College-educated Christian, a married ministry leader, and a mother of two daughters when her addiction escalated. 5. She says she was not raised in church, but she rode the church bus, went to the altar every Sunday, and wanted to be a nun as a child. 6. Woods says her first real encounter with Christ came at a Bible study on February 27, 1987, and that she felt called to ministry that night. 7. She says she came to Lee College in Cleveland after encouragement from a Church of God in Ohio. 8. She says she met Mark Woods at Lee, married him in 1994, and had her oldest daughter, Hillary, in 1995. 9. She says Church of the Harvest became their church home after they heard about it and saw Pastor Hank recognize new people with Polaroids. 10. Woods says a 1998 pregnancy loss, a surgery, and a large bottle of opiate painkillers marked the start of her dependence. 11. She says the day she took two pain pills on her deck and felt the sun hit her at the same time was the point where her chemistry changed. 12. Woods says her doctors later diagnosed endometriosis, adenomyosis, and fibroid tumors, which kept pain medicine in the picture. 13. She says pain management became a “whole different world” and that she began taking pills for every emotion, bad hair day, and stressful moment. 14. Woods says she spent six or seven years in pain management, ran out between visits, and started doctor shopping after learning the rules of the system. 15. She says she moved across Chattanooga, Bradley County, Hamilton County, Whitfield County, Kentucky, and Alabama while calling in her own prescriptions. 16. Woods says her first arrest came in 2009 at Walgreens in Hickson when undercover police caught her using fake information. 17. She says the arrests, jail stays, homelessness, and missed court dates made life smaller and pushed her family deeper into instability. 18. Woods says Hank Davis visited her during a 30-day lockdown in Bradley County Jail, and that church members helped her children with food and school rides. 19. The tone is confessional, conversational, and direct, with humor mixed into detailed storytelling and repeated direct address to the room. 20. Listeners who want testimony, recovery stories, and Church of God context will likely listen; listeners wanting a short, purely doctrinal sermon may skip.

As heard by us

A blunt redemption story about addiction, damage, and recovery.

Maggie Woods tells this as a hard won turn back toward faith, opening with Jeremiah 33:3 and moving through the slow slide into painkiller dependence.

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Why you'd press play

You want a testimony that starts messy and ends with God restoring what looked wrecked.

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