Exclusive: How Miller Green Found His Faith in God and How it has Transformed Him

NASHVILLE – Outside of Vanderbilt baseball’s equipment room that is tucked away in the left field wall of Hawkins Field lay the glove of Vanderbilt pitcher Miller Green on the dirt just feet away from the Commodores’ bullpen. On the glove reads the Bible verse 2 Timothy 1:7, the first verse Green memorized as a hometown kid that went to high school just minutes away from Vanderbilt’s campus.

The verse reads, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (English Standard Version)”

The context of the verse is to encourage followers of the Christian faith to be brave in the face of hardships, staring down and conquering fear through Jesus Christ.

For Green, the verse that he first memorized when he was a kid and held onto closely through his life all came together on April 6 this year. It was the day after Easter and Green was set to speak at a Christian event on Vanderbilt University’s campus called “Come As You Are,” organized by WhoUWith Ministries.

It was the first time that Green was given an opportunity to speak and share something so personal in front of a crowd. WhoUWith Ministries put on another edition of the event in the fall, where athletes such as Vanderbilt football tight end Cole Spence and Vanderbilt men’s basketball point guard Tyler Tanner shared their stories of how they found God in their lives.

This semester, it was Green’s turn to share his story. Green was first approached by former Vanderbilt baseball player and now the team’s assistant strength coach Cooper Holbrook to speak at the event.

Green went to the first edition of the event back in the fall and saw the impact it had on students and other people that attended.

“I’ve never really had a chance to do something like that,” Green told Vandy on SI. “I didn't know if I wanted to do it or not at first, because there was a sense of pride at first. I felt like ‘Am I doing this for God? Am I doing this all for the glory of Jesus?’ I had a little hesitation at first because I didn't want to fall into doing this for myself and getting attention from it.”

When he was told that part of his speech was going to consist of talking about the Bible studies he had started with some of his teammates and the impact it has had on their lives, the hesitation he once had quickly went away.

When the moment came and Green took center stage in front of the crowd, he felt a mix of excitement and nervousness. Moments before he spoke, Vanderbilt cross country athlete Brady Bliven had just finished sharing his story and told Green to take in the moment and look at the crowd, knowing there would be a sense of comfort that came from it.

“We're all here, we're all this together. And you're kind of in awe. And I did that. I went up there and I looked, and I felt God's comfort come over me, and the Holy Spirit. Just so much prayer before and during it just to guide me, because it's not my words at the end of the day. I didn't want it to be me. I wanted the Holy Spirit to lead me and what to say,” Green as he described the moment he observed the crowd he was set to speak in front of.

Miller Green’s Story

Miller Green grew up in a divided household with divorced parents. However, both his parents have always been Christian, so Green grew up around the faith. He would usually go to church with his father, Michael.

But Green’s journey with the Christian faith was more so self-learned. His father recounted to Vandy On SI that he would regularly walk into Green’s room and see his son studying the Bible and reading books.

“I don't know where that came from, but he's done that for a long time. I mean, good for him. He studied, he still does. I mean, he doesn't live at home, obviously, or anything, but I think he may have stayed a couple of nights when he was home during Christmas break or something. He stayed at home and, you know, I'd go in there and say, ‘Hey, breakfast is ready,’ or something, and he was in there studying,” Michael told Vandy On SI.

During the self-learning journey, Miller Green would watch countless videos on YouTube about the Christian faith, even messaging questions to pastors on Instagram constantly. Questions that Green looks back on and is even surprised at how he thought of them.

The driving catalyst to those questions was an injury that he sustained in eighth grade that caused him to not pitch for "a year or two." Eventually, all those hours and days spent watching videos and asking critical questions on the faith led to him reading a chapter from the Bible every night.

But when he got into high school, his search and discovery of faith hit a wall.

“I kind of fell away from that. And I was definitely lost. In a sense, I was falling into sin like crazy. The same sins I would fall into. The conviction wasn't there. I didn't really feel convicted for things. And so I went through pretty much I'd say my entire high school career, all four years, back to the same spot,” Green said. “I called myself a Christian, but was I really? I'd say a prayer in the morning and sometimes at night, but I'm just a lukewarm Christian.”

In the Chritian faith, lukewarmness is defined as claiming the identity of being a Christian, but in reality, the actions do not match the claim. In other words, lukewarmness in the faith is being a hypocrite. Claiming that you are something or someone positive when in actuality, you are doing little to nothing that your self-proclaimed identity would normally do.

Then, things started to turn back around after high school. When Green got to Vanderbilt, he met one of his teammates, Vanderbilt catcher Colin Barczi. The two ordered Bibles for themselves and would start to talk a little about what they were reading. Green viewed it as a “baby step forward” at the time.

During his sophomore year, Green met and started dating Vanderbilt soccer player Hannah McLaughlin. The two got to talking about Christianity and Green said that he started to get convicted of the way he was living again.

“I just started having conviction again for my sins. And it's not because of her, but it's just when you surround yourself with people that are deep into their faith, you're going to become that. You know you're going to become what you surround yourself with, and it's having people of faith around you,” Green said.

Shortly after that conversation with McLaughlin, Green said something just hit him out of nowhere. He started to take his faith in Jesus Christ seriously again. In a notebook that he has, Green has the exact day written where the turning point in his faith occurred. Though he could not remember the date off the top of his head, he did remember the number of days: 485. At the end of December 2024, just before the 2025 calendar year began.

It has not always been easy since that day in December that year, as Green would attest to. The natural journey of a Christian (or a person of another faith) is that there are going to be periods of life where a person feels his or her relationship with God is going great while there are other periods of life where God feels so far away.

Since the day he wrote in his notebook documenting a day he surely will never forget, Green was baptized during the summer of 2025. He first went to Lance Brown, the pastor for Vanderbilt athletics, and had a conversation about baptism.

“I went and talked to him. I'm struggling with some things just mentally and just falling into things weren't good. And I was just open to him. And he just looked me in the eyes, and was like, ‘Do you believe you're saved?’ And he wasn't meaning it in a bad way at all. But he was just like ‘Did you understand when you got baptized when you're younger?' And he was just talking about how sometimes that can be a thing that it might help just kind of having that. And so I ended up getting baptized again. Just about four or five guys came and it was awesome. Hannah was there, too, and it was amazing,” Green said as he recounted what led him to deciding to get baptized.

In the fall of 2025, Cooper Holbrook approached Green about starting a Bible study amongst guys on the team. Green instantly agreed to the idea. The idea turned into a reality. At first, just a few players came together for a weekly Bible study. Then, Green and Colin Barczi came up with the idea of sending out a team-wide invitation.

The goal of the group – which has grown to eight players on the team – is to talk about what each other is struggling with and holding each other accountable. Green and the guys decided to name the group “The Fold.” The name comes from the Bible referring to Jesus Christ as the “Lamb” and “The Good Shepherd” while His followers are a group of sheep that follow the shepherd.

Since the group has come together for weekly Bible studies, the eight have bonded closely and created a true brotherhood amongst them.

“It's about the same eight guys every time. And those guys, I mean, those are going to be the first phone calls. Those are going to be the first if you’re having trouble with something. And it was just incredible to see the growth that we had within it and everything like that,” Green said.

Persevering Through a Trial

Green’s journey with God since he made the commitment to take his faith seriously at the end of 2024 has not been sunshine and rainbows the entire time. The natural struggles and trials of life eventually happen to everyone, regardless of who it is.

Shortly before Vanderbilt baseball’s 2026 season began, Green came face to face with a notable life trial. He sat in his truck crying and got on the phone with his dad after learning he sustained an injury. At the time, Green did not know how long the injury would keep him out for. Just weeks before the injury occurred, someone had told him that he could not make baseball his identity.

It was as if the one comment he heard was foreshadowing what was to come. While Green and his father were on the phone, he recalled what his father had told him.

“I was talking to my dad on the phone, and he just told me, he was like ‘Baseball's not, you know, it can't be your identity.’ And so from that moment, I kind of took it as this a blessing because I'm about to find out a lot about myself. This isn't going to be my identity. No matter what happens in baseball, it can't be. It can't be,” Green said.

From his father's perspective, it was all about reassuring his son about where his identity needs to be and helping him realize the temporariness of sports.

“It's [baseball] a great avenue to be able to be a leader and bring others to Christ and things like that. But you can't put everything into just being a baseball player, right? It can go away real quick, so it's a lot about how you treat other people and things like that. And I told him, ‘Hey, it's whatever God's plan is. I mean, you'll come back from this, and you'll be probably better than you ever have been,’” Michael said.

When Green heard those words from his father, his mentality completely shifted to one of optimism rather than assuming the worst of the situation. It did not take too long before he started to lean heavily into his newfound faith that he found a little over a year before.

Once he started to realize that he was not out for the season and he would in fact return to the mound at some point during the season, it helped clear his mind and bring clarity as he continued to develop a consistent routine of praying and reading the Bible.

From the day he sat in his truck, Green knew that whenever the rehab and recovery process passed and when the time came for him to return to the field, he was going to come out the other side having learned plenty about himself. After a couple of months before he eventually made his first appearance of the season against Eastern Kentucky on April 7, Green learned what it is that truly satisfies someone.

“I found out that no matter what I'm going to go through, no matter what life's going to bring me, the goal always is I'm just going to lean into God. I'm going to lead into Jesus and nothing else is going to satisfy me. Nothing else is going to feed me,” Green said. “Everything else will leave me empty at some point. Except for Jesus. Just kind of having that, learning that about myself, and just that thought process. It's something that you just have to keep telling yourself. It's not just a one time thing.”

Behind the Verse on the Glove

Before he gets on the mound looking to provide a boost out of Vanderbilt’s bullpen, Green looks down at the verse from 2 Timothy on his glove. The verse talks about how the Holy Spirit that Christians receive from Jesus helps Christians be bold and confident in their faith. For Green, the verse means a lot to him for a couple of reasons.

Growing up, Green always felt like he was a timid person. He would focus too much on being humble to the point where he would become shy and timid in his personality. Up until he heard a baseball coach say something that would impact his mentality, Green thought his hyperfixation on trying to stay humble was going to stick with him. Then he heard the coach speak.

“It took a while, took years, but I finally heard somebody say this. A baseball coach said, ‘Hey guys, we want you to be humble, but not timid,” Green said. “And it finally hit me. I was kind of like, ‘Yeah, you need to be confident in yourself.’ You need to be confident in what you know, what you're doing, because if you're just crapping on what you've got, God gave you that. You can't just do that, and I used to have a tendency to do that.”

Secondly, the realization of having the same spirit Jesus had finally hit him as well. In the Christian faith, the Holy Spirit is seen as the spirit of God dwelling inside a believer, meaning that Christians are given the spirit that Jesus had while on earth. This realization the verse gave him started to make everything click.

“Just the fact the verse talks about that spirit and it gives power, and it gives love, and it gives self-discipline. And you can just thrive in those things through the Spirit. I just love that part about it,” Green said.

As that verse runs through his mind before every game, Green takes time pregame to pray and talk to God about what the verse means and does for him. He always makes sure to include the three most important words of the verse: power, love and self-control. He also takes time to ask God for confidence and for whatever God’s plan is to be done.

Green may have been away from the field for the first two months of the season, but what he has taken away from what he has gone through over the past 18 months is certainly something he will never forget.

As Green is asked what he feels God has taught him the most since that late December day, he takes a long pause in deep thought before answering. It is a question he evidently thinks intentionally about and a question that he wants to answer with the truth. After thinking for about 30 seconds, he does.

“I've learned that there's nothing I can do on this planet, nothing that will change His will for me. I believe that. I believe God knows what happens tomorrow. He knows what I'm going to do tomorrow. He knows what I'm going to fall into tomorrow. There's nothing I can do to change what he has for me. I can try to do whatever, but I just give everything to Him and just let His will be done in my life,” Green said. “It’s just wanting less of what I want. It’s not thinking that what I want is good for me. It’s not thinking that, it’s knowing that His will is what’s best for me, no matter what it is. That’s probably the number one thing I’ve had to wrestle with.”

From the parent’s side of things, all Michael has wanted was to see his son to find his relationship with God. In fact, he would rank it as the top thing for a parent to watch their child do with their life.

Of course, as a father, seeing Miller Green find God and develop a relationship with God to the point where he is bold enough to talk about it in front of a crowd of people, all Michael can do is feel proud. But seeing his son grow up to the person Green is now as a junior at Vanderbilt is not a surprise to him. He always believed the way Green acts now after finding his relationship with God is how he always has been.

“He’s always been a good kid for the most part. I haven’t seen any real big changes in him. He’s still a kid to me. But, I mean, you’re very proud of him. You’re super proud,” Michael told Vandy On SI.

Miller Green has experienced a transformation unlike any other in his life over the past year-and-a-half. The journey was never meant to be easy and he knows that. But the ways in which he approaches things when life throws him curveballs of its own has certainly changed for the better. He knows what and who to surround himself with now. Now, as he continues in his walk with God, he also knows what his ultimate calling is.

“If you surround yourself with his ways and with people that love God, it will 1,000% push you closer to God. And it will deepen your faith in Jesus, and deepen even just your knowledge in general,” Green told Vandy On SI. “But you need to be equipped with the things to be able to lead others. We are called to lead others to God. And so it's kind of stepping forward to a leadership role the past couple years and get others closer to Jesus.”

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