My name is Steve Shematz and God has blessed me with the honor of having Julie for my wife. I am 100% dedicated to my Lord, Jesus Christ. However, as with most of the people God has chosen to use, I wasn’t always walking on the straight and narrow.
I started down the wrong path at an age some would consider young, but nowadays is practically adulthood. While I was in middle school, I was introduced to alcohol and marijuana at a party and began a long, downward spiral, which eventually led to my trying harder and harder drugs. Around the same time, I got my first taste of something that would keep me in bondage for nearly two decades: pornography. Once again, what seemed innocent enough, with just looking at Playboys slowly escalated over my adolescence and young adulthood until I was getting vast quantities of explicit photos and movies off of the internet. I would spend hours of my life and untold energy on this horrendously deceptive and self-destructive pursuit.
My father passed away when I was 17 and I was existing from day-to-day but I was not really living. I knew that things were not meant to be this way, but I didn’t know how they were meant to be and I certainly didn’t know how to get them to the way they should be. I vainly sought fulfillment in the eastern belief systems, thinking them to be superior to Christianity, the brutal, constraining religion that had spawned the Crusades, the Inquisition, and (in my eyes) basically every atrocity that had been perpetrated in history. Of course, I really had no desire to have to face up to the moral obligation and eternal responsibility that go with the faith, so it was pretty easy for me to ignore the glaring question of "How did all this stuff just happen?" I knew deep down that there was a God, but I steadfastly refused to acknowledge the fact that He was indeed the Almighty Creator of the Bible.
While searching different "holy books" and exploring various avenues of faith, I came into contact with people who felt that you could make your own reality according to your wishes. These so-called ’magicians’ began to show me another world, to which drugs, sex, and rebellion were the gateway. As I continued to be around, and eventually to live with, these people, I started noticing things and symbols which I had always thought to be evil, but I was told that they were just symbols of knowledge or of power. They were involved heavily in the occult and I found myself in the middle of it seeking to be unconditionally accepted and loved. Strange things began happening around me and a creeping suspicion began nagging at me that in spite of the obvious pleasure in which they were all indulging, I wanted nothing to do with this. I became scared and paranoid and convinced that they were out to get me, but this opened my eyes to the fact that if there is indeed a spiritual force of evil, then there must be an ultimate, supernatural Good. If the devil exists, then God must exist as well. I cried out to Him for the first time in a long time, and somehow He delivered me, but, stubborn as I am, I did not even think of offering myself to Him completely and continued in my ways.
I somehow thought that He had saved me to continue to serve myself. I moved away and was free from the drugs that had clouded my mind, but I dove headfirst into the pornography which had always been my drug of choice. It seemed that I had gotten my life together. I got a job, saved up some money, paid off some debts, and even went to school and obtained a college degree in graphic design. Although I had cried out to Him, I never even picked up the Bible in all the time that I was "getting my act together." It is truly amazing how foolish we are without the Lord to lead us. So, like a dog returns to his vomit (Prov. 26:11), I went back to the same area and the same people, thinking that I would find a different situation.
Within the first day I was back in my home state of Maryland, I was smoking pot again and on the road to other drugs, not to mention my enslavement to pornography. Still, it took over a full year until I realized that I was in fact back in the same situation and worse this time. I still desperately needed God. I ran away and began to drive to escape the supernatural forces, which I believed to be pursuing me. I knew by now that God is real and He is good and He is the only One for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any idea how to find Him. Praise be to God that He was looking for me. (Luke 19:10)
As I drove through West Virginia, looking for a safe place, the Christian radio stations across the nation were a comfort, but more than that, God spoke to me as I drove. I found myself driving cross-country heading for Colorado because most of the Christian radio programs were from the area. I figured God had to be there & was determined to find Him. I heard on a talk radio station that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you shall be saved (Rom. 10:9,10). Then I heard about water baptism and the significance and importance of it, so I dumped my bottled water on my head as I drove and I felt the presence of God come over me and peace fill me for the first time in a long time. I heard about the Armor of God, the battle against principalities, the mystery of the Trinity, and many other things. I finally had found the Truth I had been looking for my whole life. Relief flooded my whole being as God revealed to me that we don’t have to live by the law of the jungle anymore and that His way is the only way.
I moved in with my mother, now remarried and living in Bradenton, FL and tried going to church, seeing a Christian counselor and doing it on my own, but the pull of pornography was too strong for me to defeat. Now, however, sometimes when I was looking at it, my eyes would begin to tear up. I know now that this was the Holy Spirit and He was calling me to repentance, but at the time, my heart was too hardened and I just wiped them away. I was going to church, reading the Bible and praying, but I wasn’t accountable for what I was looking at and I was still watching secular TV, reading ungodly books, and feeding my flesh more than my spirit. Finally, I realized and admitted that I couldn’t make it on my own and a pastor told me about Teen Challenge.
I went into Teen Challenge to get the help I needed. Over the year I was in the program, God purged me of my wrong thoughts and attitudes, and showed me the truth of His Word. He planted many scriptures deep in my heart, revealed to me the importance of serving others, humbled me more times than I can count, and most important of all, freed me to praise Him as loudly and vigorously as I want, regardless of who is around me. He has drawn out in me the love of singing, which I have always had, and given me the confidence to do it in front of people, because I know now that it’s not about them It’s all about Him.
Upon graduation, I became an intern at the center and processed the new students, talking to hurting people and families all over the country, ministering God’s love and sharing the hope that He has given me. I have been blessed to see Him change even the most lost and hopeless cases to healthy, vibrant, upright men of God. Alcohol, marijuana, pills, cocaine, crack, or heroin; smoked, popped, or injected- it doesn’t matter, He can absolutely free us from any bondage. There is NO high like the Most High!
One thing I learned at Teen Challenge was to put God first in all things, trusting that He will provide everything I need. (Matt. 6:33) I am hungry for God and am determined to leave behind all the things of the world, focusing on Him and what He did at the cross. (Heb. 12:2). In the past 4 years, my responsibilities also included leading praise & worship in the daily chapel services, teaching in classrooms, running a weekly mentor group and counseling @ the 42 bed men’s facility in Southwest Florida.
In August of 2003 He gave me a wonderful, beautiful, loving, godly wife in Julie. He did this through no effort of my own, but simply through my obedience to Him, He is truly granting the desires of my heart. (Psalm 37:4) I cannot say enough about Him and everything that He has done for me, but I can say that if you do not know Him, you need to. If you think you are beyond help, look at the thief on the cross next to Jesus. (Luke 23:43) If you think you need to clean yourself up first, look at the unnamed woman with the alabaster box.(Luke 7:36-50) If you think you don’t need Him, take a good look at yourself. (Romans 3:23, Isaiah 64:6, Jer. 17:9) If you have not accepted Christ into your life, I urge you to do it today. Yes, God is patient and not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), but today is the day of your salvation. (1 Corinthians 6:2) Please, ask Him to come into your heart right now. Tomorrow you may stand before Him.
Steve Shematz
President
Beauty from Ashes™ Ministries, Inc.
