Matthew Miller

Hello, my name is Matthew Miller and I am a pastor of Grace Fellowship Church. I was born
in Phoenix, Arizona and raised in a charismatic church. But it was not until the age of
thirteen that God began to convict me of my sin. This conviction went on for several years,
and I began to realize that although I had grown up in church, knew a lot of scripture and
religious things, yet I was still not truly a Christian. I loved my sin and not Christ. I obeyed my
sinful desires, not Christ. I was still a slave to sin, and an enemy of God, and I began to
realize that if I died in this condition then I would be rightly condemned by God to Hell,
because that is all I deserve. This conviction went on for some years, but it finally came to a
critical point when I went to a youth conference with my church. At this conference God
began to convict me again and showed me my need for a new birth, a new heart, a radical
change that I could not produce on my own, but Christ had to do in me. I confessed my sin
to God and asked Jesus Christ to forgive me, save me and change me.

In the years that followed this I began to desire to understand the Bible better and to take
the Gospel to places it had never been. Pursuing this desire I went to a charismatic Bible
College in Texas where I met and married my wife, Diana. After finishing my Bachelor’s
Degree my family and I moved back to Phoenix where I started to attend Fuller Theological
Seminary. The study of Church History, along with listening to preachers like R. C. Sproul,
John MacArthur, John Piper and even older men like A.W. Tozer, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and
sermons by C.H. Spurgeon began to show me that Charismatic Christianity, especially the
Word of Faith movement, was not Biblical Christianity. This created a bit of a crisis in my life,
and my wife and I ended up leaving the Charismatic church and joining a Southern Baptist Church that practiced expository preaching.

After I finished seminary my family and I went to Japan to pastor Calvary Baptist Church in
Misawa. There I continued to study Reformed Theology and to implement healthy change in
the church. By God’s mercy and blessing He used the faithful exposition of his word to bring
healthy change to the church. The church was led to adopt multiple elders, and we saw
several American and Japanese confess faith in Christ, be baptized and join the membership
of the church. After six years in Japan I saw the stress that this overseas situation was
putting on my marriage and family so we decided to move back to the U.S. with a desire to
join a 1689 Reformed Baptist Church.

So in 2021 we moved to Grand Rapids Michigan (where my wife Diana was from) and we
joined the membership of Grace Immanuel Reformed Baptist Church. While working as a
truck driver we focused on our marriage and family and benefited from the Biblical teaching
and practice at our local church. Providentially God continued to open doors for preaching
occasionally and the elders at Grace Immanuel encouraged me to exercise this gift. This was
a time that God used for the spiritual growth and health of my family and for that reason I
am thankful to the Lord for this season.

Now God in his grace and providence has led us here to Grace Fellowship Church in
Gladwin, to teach and shepherd this rural Reformed Baptist congregation. And it is my
earnest prayer that God would use the expository preaching of his Word and the application
of his instructions to the church to fill us “with the fruit of righteousness that comes through
Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:11