Steven Cook

Ghandi once said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.” I always knew I was destined for greatness, but I never knew what I was in for. I never knew that before I reached what God destined me for, I would experience addiction, jail, parenthood, selling drugs, hurting my family, and everything in between.
I grew up with four younger sisters. Our family dynamic was rather complicated growing up but we always found some way to endure it together and be there for each other. 

My first drug of choice was weed. I quickly started chasing that high at a young age and that whole trajectory of life spiraled before I could even acknowledge it. Yet, I somehow still managed to thrive in school and bring home exceptional grades. But despite that, I continued with the smoking and even moved on to taking and selling pills. 

To this day, I can not tell you why I didn’t stop there or why I continued to steadily destroy myself and the potential I had. Drugs provided something for me that (I thought) nothing else ever could. I wanted to suppress and mute any of the psychological or emotional turmoil in my mind somehow and that’s when it took over. It helped me to escape my very complicated reality.
It helped me side-step the fact that I was a young father with drug dependence and a tendency to sabotage everything around me. I know it sounds like a catch-22, because maybe those things wouldn’t be so prominent and daunting if it weren’t for the drugs, but I would have rather had my escape back then. You could say “priorities” weren’t even a thing for me at the time. 

My first entry into John 3:16 ministries wasn’t totally effortless. I received as much as I possibly could from the ministry and I owe a lot to my time there, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to submit and fully accept change and implement that in my life, which was 100% on me. 

On May 7, 2013 I had the cold barrel of a pistol in my mouth and pulled the trigger, only to be jolted into the reality that the clip was clear across the other side of my room. My circumstances and drug abuse had convinced me that the air in my lungs and the blood pumping through my veins was useless, and not at all destined for greatness.
So much of my days afterward are such a blur. I got into trouble, relationships were ruined and severed, continued to hurt my family. And boom, I found myself back at John 3:16, as if a second time would be different for me. My mindset was still anchored in the fact that God will forgive me no matter what, no matter where I am and if I get desperate enough I can leave God behind and I can always come back. The perspective that, because I had cheated death and a life in prison so many times, I was invincible is exactly what was going to eventually end me. Because I very quickly realized I was the opposite of invincible. I was weak, destructible, and vulnerable. 

May 3, 2019 was a major turning point for me. Breaking Bonds broke more than the chains around my heart and my wrists. It broke a record in my life. It broke a stigma placed on me by the world. It broke the pattern of addiction and mindlessness. But mostly it broke my heart. “Lord, break my heart for what breaks Yours” is a line in the song Hosanna but it rings so true for me in this ministry. I watch and experience the heartache of young men who nearly threw their lives away based solely on lies from the world and the enemy. But it is the biggest motivator and blessing to be on this side now, to have the tools. And to be standing on the foundation Christ built for me, and be able to take them by the hand one-by-one and pull them up onto it with me. God knows no limits, and He will always find room on this platform for one more.