By Steve Henry

I WAS about 12 years old when I found a pack of cigarettes on the side of the road. That’s when I tried them for the first time. What a mistake!

It was about the same time I was introduced to Sharon, the youth leader at the church we had just started to attend.  

Seed sown

Sharon treated the seven of us in the youth group like her own kids, taking us out on birthdays, on trips and to retreats. It was at a summer Bible camp that I first learned there was a purpose for my life. It came from God! After all, he made me – so who would know better than him, what that purpose was? So I accepted him into my life.

That was fine for about three years, until I started hanging out with a bunch of so-called ‘friends’ in high school. We drank and smoked dope together. I was sort of an introvert, and these things gave me the confidence I thought I needed.

For the next four years, this became everything in my life. I still did fairly well in school, and played on most of the school teams; but I was becoming an alcoholic and a drug addict, and I didn’t even know it.

After completing school, and a couple of years in the work force, I was getting tired of the same old lifestyle. I started drinking more as a way to soothe the pain than anything else. There was a void in my life. When you’re frustrated and angry, you look for a way out – and I thought drinking and doing drugs would give me that. It didn’t.

I had some good jobs. I was living with my fiancée, and I had fulfilled most of my boyhood dreams  – to get a good job, a car, a house and a girlfriend. I knew I was a very fortunate and blessed individual.

Deteriorating

Then slowly it started: I lost jobs due to my drinking; I got pulled over and lost my licence for impaired driving; and my relationship with my fiancée and my family were deteriorating. Eventually, I allowed cocaine to become a part of my life, and that led to even more problems. I started to hate everything I was doing, and the person I had become.

Then it happened: my fiancée got to the point where she’d had enough. She gave me an ultimatum: I would have to decide between her and her son, or the drinking and the drugs. I told her I wanted her and her son, and that I wanted everything to work out.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quit drinking, no matter how hard I tried. She kicked me out.

What followed was a restlessness and a discontentment in the centre of my being, which I couldn’t ignore. I had always taken pride in being a self-made man, showing off my accomplishments. I was used to being in control of my life. Well, I didn’t have control anymore – and I didn’t know how to handle it. I was also afraid of what my friends would think.

I was at the bottom of the barrel.

Up until this time  I had always been a regular blood donor – until one day they told me I couldn’t give any more because I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. It was another result of my drug habit – and yet I continued to drink and do drugs, not realizing how much it was affecting my health.

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Denial

My brother, having lived in a world of despair and problems of his own, heard of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program called Teen Challenge. He went through the program himself, and during that year I listened to him over and over again tell me about how I needed God to help me and how much God loved me even though I did the things I did.  I knew all this from that camp I went to as a kid – but I was still in denial.

“I don’t have a drinking problem,” I told myself. “I can quit whenever I want.”

After several letters and a visit home – and, I am sure, a lot of prayer from different people – I realized my brother had changed. It was then that I knew I wanted what he had. I needed that love, joy, peace and gentleness in my life.

One day, my father came with me to a doctor’s appointment. I still remember the look of anguish on my dad’s face and the tears welling up inside him when the specialist told me that I wouldn’t make it to my next appointment. The doctor said: “Steve, you’re killing yourself.”

After drinking and doing drugs for 20 years, along with the effects of Hepatitis C, my liver was destroyed. I was jaundiced – and I was dying. I told myself: “I can’t do this to my family.”

Around this time – and quite suddenly – the seed which had been planted 25 years earlier by my youth leader, Sharon, began to come to life.  Looking back, I realize that it was only by the grace of almighty God that the chains binding me were broken. It was as if the scales were removed from my eyes.

Teen Challenge

I rededicated my life to the Lord at the home of my mom and dad. I told them about my plans to go to Teen Challenge. At first I was worried that I would have to give up too much. But I knew in my heart that I had no choice but to surrender my life to Jesus.

I entered the Teen Challenge program in Winnipeg. The first night, they prayed for deliverance of the drug and alcohol addictions. When I woke up, the craving to smoke and the desire to drink were gone. It was like a switch was turned off. I couldn’t explain it.

I had to ask the guys where the cravings had gone, because I didn’t understand. I had tried so many times to quit on my own, but it had never worked. But that night, my Jesus took them from me. Praise God!

Since that day, I have never been the same – and I’ve never looked back. God has had a positive impact in every area of my life. He has taken away my anger and bitterness. He has filled that void in my life with his Spirit. Others have prayed for me, and now my liver is fine and my health is good. The Great Physician has healed me.

I had a tendency to continually take the steering wheel of my life. Now I’m glad to sit in the passenger seat, and let Christ lead me in the direction he always wanted me to go. He has proven himself to me over the past couple of years, with his faithfulness.

The inner quietness, contentment and peace I experience on a daily basis assures me that his promise to love and care for me is so real and true.

Steve Henry attends Southside Community Church in Chilliwack. 

November 2007