Jono Blanshard

I must apologize upfront, if you came here for a quick 1 min read on how God has come into my life and rescued me and changed my life then this story is a bit long. Bottom line is I have gone from Christian to ratsafarian to drug addict to alcholic, all the while smoking, 33+ years of a lot of wrong and God came and took it all away and made me whole, the long story is below.

Growing up from when I was born until I left home my parents had always been not only a part of the church but heavily involved in the building of different church buildings wherever we went (my dad built three different churches) as well as leading the praise and worship at pretty much all the services for the church. So inevitably we ended up spending a lot of time in church or around church people.

As a young boy I wanted to do exactly what my parents were doing and be heavily involved in the church, I gave my life to God and would help out at the church as much as I could.

This was true until I got to the age of around 10/11. My brother was a teenager now and hanging out with his mates and they were all starting to try new stuff, smoking, sniffing petrol, pretty much anything that would alter their sense of reality. At first, I was against it but as I grew a little older and was approaching my time of going to high school I also wanted to be “cool” and so I started to experiment with the same things.

Things went south very quickly, by the time I was 12/13 I was drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, sniffing petrol etc. etc. this carried on and just got worse, by 13/14 I was doing other hard drugs like cocaine, LSD, mushrooms, pretty much whatever we could get our hands on.

I left school because I was accused of smoking marijuana by the principal and I told my parents I wanted to rather go to technical college (there we could smoke and no one cared). After 3 months my parents didn’t have money for my studies, so I started working. By this time I had already decided I wanted to become a rastafarian, like Bob Marley, and so I started the transition.

From 14 years old I turned to rastafarianism and I was a full on rastafarian, following all their ways/laws/rules. I had dreadlocks, only smoked weed, did not eat meat etc. etc. I moved out of my parents house to a town close by on the beach where I found work.

I would spend some days sitting on couches opposite my Christian friend, both of us with bibles, reading scriptures totally out of context  and arguing with each other about why our religion was right and the other persons was wrong. I was so blinded that no one could tell me that what I was believing was wrong. By the time I was around 19 I drifted from the rasta ways and started getting involved in drugs again, this got really out of hand over the next few years but somehow I survived.

When I turned 21 God opened my eyes and spoke to me and I realized I had been following a way of life/religion that was not right and I turned back to Christ. Once again I was on fire for Christ and I got involved in church and anything to do with Christ again, as much as I could.

When I was 23 I left the small town and moved to another city where I had a job opportunity. Arriving in this city was an eye opener for a small town guy like me who had only ever lived in a small coastal town. I very quickly ended up succumbing to the bright lights and party lifestyle of the city. Very quickly it ended up going back to partying every night, literally clubbing Monday till Sunday. As it happens when you are partying this much the drugs started flowing again and very soon I was addicted and was doing drugs every night.

For the next few years I was heavily into the drinking and clubbing/drugging scene. I eventually came to realize I needed to sort my life out and so I started going to church again. As previous times I got heavily involved in the church and turned my life around again. This cycle repeated itself all through my adult life until I met my wife who was also a Christian, at the time I was going to church and involved at church but I was also still drinking and smoking weed a bit as well as smoking cigarettes.

My wife and I got engaged and got married, I wanted to be better for her so I tried to stop smoking everything and only drinking wine with her. That didn’t last long because I went away for work and started smoking cigarettes again (after one month of stopping) and continued drinking with the guys when we got home after work. It was never crazy parties like it used to be, just drinking 5/6 beers every day after work.

Please note that from this point on I always thought of myself as a Christian, I behaved like a Christian, I prayed every single day, I trusted God for all big decisions and God was always there in my life. God was always doing stuff in my life, so many things that I cannot even begin to go into all that God continued to do for me and my family. 

Even when things got really bad and we almost lost our house and everything we owned, God was there and He picked us up and helped us to move forward. From having the bank ready to repossess our house because of debt, with every credit card and every other credit option maxed out completely to actually paying off all excess debt, God has always been there.

The drinking carried on from then for pretty much the rest of my life with the drinking becoming a serious habit the last few (14) years. For around 7 years it was 6-9 beers every single night without fail and then the last 7 years was 9-12 beers every single night. Alcoholism had me in its grip and I didn’t even realize that it did. I wasn’t going out and drinking with other people, I was sitting at home either by myself when the family was in South Africa or at home with them when they were with me, and I was drinking those beers, every single night. I never got violent and never got “drunk” like falling down drunk, I would drink, get tired, climb in bed and sleep and that was it. That was exactly what Satan wanted so he could tell me I wasn’t doing anything wrong by drinking so much each and every night, he would tell me “it’s to help you sleep”. There were two nights when I was on a work site and had no access to alcohol, those two nights I battled to sleep, was having crazy thoughts/dreams, Satan used these as examples to justify my drinking to myself even more. All the while I was still smoking cigarettes.

December 2025, I could feel that something was changing but I could not put my finger on it, God was starting to move, He had me start looking at some things from my past, just old Christian books I thought my kids would enjoy, small things. Then January 2026 I knew change was coming I just didn’t know what, I did know that without God the change me and my family needed will never come the way that it should so I asked God literally out loud, “What do you want me to do?”, God answered straight away, literally, I heard His voice say “Read my Word”. So I went and found my bible that I always had wherever I went but pretty much never read, and I started reading His word again.

From there I realized I need to let God back into my life properly and I prayed for forgiveness for just doing my own thing for so long, God answered my prayer and came and started sorting me and my life out. I asked God about my drinking and smoking and He said, “when My time is right I will take it away.”

On the 05th April 2026 sitting outside I had already drunk 9 beers and while drinking the 10th beer it didn’t taste so good, so I thought, "oh well, I must be tried let me have a smoke and go sleep", my cigarette didn’t taste so good for some reason either, but I thought nothing of it and got ready for bed. When I got in bed that night I prayed, like I do, but this time  God said to me, “Time to stop”, which I knew He was referring to my drinking and smoking, I could feel in my heart that God was doing something and there and then he took the smoking and alcoholism away.

32 years of smoking around a pack (20 cigarettes) a day, 14 years of drinking no less than 6 beers a night and 7 of those years drinking between 9 & 12 beers every single night, gone/taken away in one night, instantly. From the very next day I could feel God was in me, working, I had energy, I had an appetite again, I could do exercise and not be sore or out of breath, I would wake up and feel alive, not like I needed to lie on the couch for 4 hours after waking up, before feeling good enough to get up and do anything. It was insane the difference, and instantly. I had no cravings whatsoever, nothing, I still had packs of smokes and a fridge full of beer in the house but I did not feel like any of it, the stronghold was all gone, Thank you Lord. 

God Is AMAZING and with Him nothing is impossible, He loves you so much, no matter what you have done, nothing is too big for Him to forgive. 

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

Romans10:9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.