Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome to today's episode. Other Bleeding Daylight episodes and links to our social media channels are at bleedingdaylight.net. Please share Bleeding Daylight with others. Today's guest is someone who felt like they never seemed to fit in.
Throughout a difficult childhood and into a life of substance abuse, he searched for something that would heal the wounds deep within. He now spends his time offering the hope and peace that he found to others. Joining me today on Bleeding Daylight is Eric Stephens, an ordained pastor, elder life coach, podcast host, and founder of Redwood Christian Ministries.
Eric's journey is one of transformation, going from struggling with addiction, rejection, and depression, to encountering the love, acceptance, and saving power of Jesus Christ. He now equips and inspires Jesus followers to come alive in Christ and live a life for Him through platforms like the Rooted in Christ podcast. Eric, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me on. I'm glad we could make this work.
So much of what we experience in life is shaped by our earliest experiences. Tell me what growing up was like for you. I had a loving mother, loving grandmother, loving family. One of the main things that affected my life, maybe my walk with God, was the relationship that I didn't have with my biological father. So I think a lot of that stemmed to some of the things that you opened up to, the addiction, the depression, because it was kind of like a snowball effect.
I remember it was like my eleventh birthday. I tell this story a lot. We went to a playground in Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, and we were playing basketball, and he fouled me so hard that I fell to the ground and actually started crying. Embarrassed to admit that now at age forty-one, but that's what happened. At that point, he had told me, you're not going to be like me. You're not going to amount to this. You won't be like that.
To put it in perspective, my father was out of the military, six foot three, maybe had like ten percent body fat on him at the time, and I'm some pudgy eleven-year-old kid. So you want to know why I'm crying, now you understand. Like I said, I did grow up in a loving home on the east side of Cleveland, but I never really felt like I was fitting in anywhere that I was at, whether it be school, obviously, in certain social environments. I just didn't feel like I really fit in.
That's another part of my story is like my weight loss journey as well. I was heavier as a kid. I used to weigh about 315 pounds later on in my adult life. That's part of the struggle was just like, man, just not being accepted in different avenues, and then there's a part of you also not being accepted at home. Tell me a little bit more about that relationship you had with your father.
You say that he wasn't there, but you had that opportunity when you were around 11 or 12 to be there playing basketball, which didn't end at all well. Was he someone that floated in and out of your life? What was the relationship like up to that point? Mostly out of my life. Like a lot of men growing up in that area, like my biological father, to be clear, was not a part of my life.
It was one of those, I might see you on holidays, I might see you every now and again, but there was not a real relationship there. That role of a father, whether it's son or daughter in their life, it matters. He wasn't there for that. I think I've talked to him once since then, maybe when I was in high school. There is not a relationship there.
There's this strange human thing that we have when there's someone like that in our lives, whether it be a parent or someone that's been close to us in some way, that we still yearn for their acceptance, even though we know that it's never going to come. Was that your story? Do you yearn for the acceptance of this absent father? I wouldn't say that for me personally.
I think that what was going on for me was that I had a God-sized hole in my heart that nothing was going to really be able to fill. I grew up going to Catholic school, but I was going to a Baptist church at the time. I had some encounters with Jesus, and I think I had a relationship with Jesus at a young age. But through just all of that early on rejection, I started and probably really hit my teenage years.
The people that I would come in contact with, the people that I would start talking to, the people who I would meet in college, the people I would end up working with, I would end up morphing myself to be something that they would accept and wanted to like, and a person they wanted to be around, a chameleon in a lot of ways. When I'm with this group of people, I'm going to act this way. When I'm with this group of people, I'm going to act this way.
I basically created this image and this falsehood that was never really Eric Stevens. I just wanted to be liked and be accepted, so I was probably 20 different people all the time, which is exhausting. It's hindsight now, but it's clear to me that there was a hole in my heart that I needed to surrender this to Jesus. No person is going to be able to fill that void in someone's life. We have a yearning for a Father. We have a yearning to be in communion with him.
At the time, the wisdom and knowledge was not deep enough to really see it the way that I see it right now. There is that desire to be accepted. As you say, you didn't feel as if you fitted in at any stage with any group. You changed from group to group to be what they would accept. What sorts of roads did that take you down? Obviously, if people are into a very different culture or different dynamics, you're having to be the chameleon to fit that. What sort of roads did that take you down?
Oh, boy. That's when the drinking started. That's when the partying started. That's when the chasing women started. That's when the late nights out started. That's when the tough guy image really started. I joke a lot about it, but I basically created this character. I wasn't being liked, and I had to consistently morph into something else. I basically created this image based off every rapper, every TV show, every pro wrestler that I ever saw.
I said, I'm going to morph all of this into one person. I'm going to be what it looks like people want to accept, which is by the worldly standards, that quote, unquote, bad boy, to quote, unquote, live that life, to be the life of the party, to be the tough guy, to be the guy who looks like he had it all when really I'm breaking and crumbling inside. Because one, alcohol is a present.
When I tell you we would go out and party, you're talking about a bottle of whiskey before we would even get out the door. Sin always takes you further than you want to go, and it's always going to cost you more than you're willing to pay. We don't pay for our sins right away. I was having fun. I was partying. I was finally getting what I thought I wanted, which was that attention. You were having fun. This was something that was enjoyable in a sense, and yet it still didn't fill the void.
The alcohol's enjoyable when you're there with friends and drinking. But again, as you say, it's a depressant, so it doesn't give the high that you really want it to. Where did it move you from there as you're continuing to try and find the next hit or the next high in one way or another? What other roads did it lead you through? My grandmother, later on in life, was diagnosed with bladder cancer. My grandmother, who's passed away now, she was my rock. I'm a pure 80s baby.
I grew up in that era of larger than life characters and movie stars and superheroes. She had beaten cancer before, and in this particular moment, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer again. I hadn't ever really dealt with my feelings or emotions. I wasn't processing the right way to deal with what potentially could be grief. I was using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism to help me feel better instead of actually dealing with the root of a problem.
When we got the diagnosis that she was living with bladder cancer, oddly enough, I started looking to go back to church again. I remember my mom gave me a phone call. She said, we just got a call from hospice. They really believe your grandmother has about five days to live. It was like a mountain was just sitting on top of my chest at that point. You're looking at the person you think is untouchable and unbreakable, and they are literally dying and broken at this point.
A few hours later, I got a phone call from one of my aunts who said, I don't know who's been telling the family that your grandmother's about to die, but she is not going to pass away. There's the reality of the situation of how far advanced the cancer is. Even though I'm in my 20s at this point, there's that little kid in me that hoping that my hero can just get up and rise and keep pushing through again.
I'm in my apartment and I am going nuts because I'm like, my mom is telling me one thing, my aunt is telling me something else. I literally was just sitting still for an extended period of time. I actually went into the bedroom, shut the door, and I prayed that prayer that so many people pray. I said, God, if you're real, I need you to make yourself real to me right now. I need you to unveil yourself to me right now.
The reason that prayer was so significant for me is because I was living in Lakewood, Ohio at the time, and I was living right by the Lakewood train. If anybody who lives near a train, you hear it all the time. It almost becomes white noise after a while. It doesn't phase you. The train went by so loud, I jumped out of my skin. It blew his horn three times, which is something it doesn't usually do. That's when I said, okay, my grandmother's going to die in three days. Lord, I know that's you.
I just had this feeling in the pit of my chest and in my stomach. I knew it. I just know that I know. I'm like, she's going to pass away in three days. Three days later, 6 a.m., first thing, she was gone. I said, okay, God, you have my attention. You have my yes. Because I can say this now, she was one of the main figures in my life growing up. She had a part of my heart that God was really supposed to have too, in a way. Good things can keep us from God too. Good things can be distractions too.
Now that I'm sitting here where I'm sitting, I can say, God used her death to bring me back to life. Just because you give your life to Christ, it doesn't mean everything just happens to fall in place right away. It doesn't mean it's peaches and cream right away. I actually became aware of the sins that I had committed and the sins that I was doing. Everything I was doing was so readily available. I actually, after I got saved, I backslid. Started drinking again. I was doing drugs again.
I was that Christian Paul that wrote a letter to. He would have had some stuff to say to me. At that point, I felt the very weight and pressure of my sin. I was sitting on my own couch, my own nine millimeter to my head, ready to take my own life. One of the pastors from my church had actually called me while my gun was to my head. He didn't know at the time what was going on. He didn't know that was sick, because I didn't tell him. He was one of the guys who was pouring into my life.
He was just telling me, he's like, there's just some things that we need. I'm putting this nicely, but he was running down all the things I need to work on, things in the chain that I needed to fix. It was a truth in love, but it was real heavy in truth kind of moments in your Christian walk. After that conversation, that's when I put the gun down. Weeks later, I told him what happened. He grabbed my arms and he's like, why didn't you tell me that was going on?
I'm like, because if I would have told you, we might not be having this conversation right now. I needed to hear what you said, exactly how you said it. That's what it can lead to. You think when you just dip your toe in the water that you're not going to drown, but you just start going further and further and further out. The water just gets deeper and deeper and deeper. I was drowning in my sin. Thank God for Jesus stepping in when he did.
You had that time when you came back to Christ around the time that your grandmother passed away, but as you say, things weren't all tied up with a neat bow at that point. Things continued to go in a very bad direction to that point where you almost took your own life. What was it that made you see God for who he is? What was it that made you see the acceptance that Christ had for you that you had been searching for in others?
I realized how people were just accepting of Eric Stevens, the authentic version for who I am and where I was, the good, bad, and the ugly. Seeing that is what really shown me like, oh, you don't have to be like anybody else, that you were made on purpose for a purpose, that you are uniquely and wonderfully made, that you are knitted together for a time such as this to do a work that God has just planned out for you long before.
When I started really seeing that, I was just like, okay, I'm going to figure out who I really am in Christ. I just started having fun with it. It became a drug that I had never experienced before because it was a legitimate, it was a high that I didn't wake up with a hangover.
There was a hunger there to just continue to just learn more about his Word, to pray, to fast, to just really see what he had for me, and then to see like, wow, I'm not looking around like I'm not like everybody else, and they're not like me. That's great because you can't have a church full of evangelists because you have people, you can't have a church full of people like me. We'll all be outside eventually. Just realizing that, wow, I do have a unique call just like everybody else.
There is a purpose for my life just like everybody else. Jesus loves me just like everybody else. He will bring the people in my life who are supposed to be there. He will equip me as needed for all the things that he has for me to do. There was an acceptance there that I was also part of the problem. There was an acceptance there that some of my behavior was not lining up with the Word of God either. There's also ownership that has to be taken.
You either know enough to change or you heard enough to change. At that point, I was heard enough to change and that knowledge needed to become wisdom. Then the wisdom behind, this is how we got here. Let's not go through this part again. You've had this opportunity to really understand the acceptance that Christ brings. You've had that conviction of sin, which sometimes seems to be missing in the church these days that people just think, oh, it's like signing up to a gym.
It's like, okay, I'm in now. Whereas you had been through that true conviction of sin, which brings repentance, but it also brings that beautiful realization that Christ sees us in a different way, that actually God sees us through the lens of Jesus. That must have been incredibly liberating for you. It was like you're done trying to carry a bunch of weights uphill. You know what I mean? Carry something heavy uphill. It's just like, well, I can just be me and that's okay, excluding sin.
It's just okay to be me. It's like, I'm letting you carry these burdens. You accept me, you love me, and you're going to bring the people in my life who also do for who I am and where I'm at. Because when you try to fit in everywhere, you fit in nowhere. Tell me about that balance that you had to walk of growing up with a very imperfect father and yet fully accepting God as this loving father that accepts us.
Because sometimes when we don't experience that in our earthly father, it's very difficult to think of God as that loving, perfect father. I really think God blessed me in that area. I really do. Because when I got saved, though it wasn't perfect, I was hungry for the Lord. I was hungry for something different because I hit rock bottom. So I was tired of being where I was. That was a huge piece of one. I think there was some definitely divine intervention there from the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes it can be difficult to love a father you don't see because of the father that you did see. He brought male figures to my life. My stepfather did play a huge role in my upbringing. The head pastor of my church is a man who led me to Christ. I consider him my spiritual father. It's not always easy because there's what you see, and then there's the unseen. That's why it's important to open God's Word and really read it.
Not just read it, but then meditate on it and do your best to live it out, because then you can really get a full grasp on God's character, his grace, his mercy, his love, his wrath, things that he likes, things that he doesn't approve of. The Word of God really became a real life source for me. I know that it's a book of life. I know the book's alive. It's like one of those for Christians, well, duh. But I wasn't reading it and I wasn't living it.
So when I started doing that, I was like, I see this goodness being poured out. I would imagine that there are some Christians that don't fully grasp the idea that the Bible is a life. They don't fully understand that it is the living Word of God. I've heard people describe the Bible as an instruction manual of how to live the Christian life. Certainly there are instructions in there. There's things that we can follow, but what you're talking about is different.
It is the fact that this is God's living Word for us daily, isn't it? They call it daily bread for a reason, and I would challenge anyone, if that's what they feel about the Bible, they don't feel it's a living Word. I would first and foremost, what I always tell folks, start reading a proverb a day. Just give that a shot. June 1st, read Proverbs 1. June 2nd, read Proverbs 2. By the time the month is over, you finished all the proverbs, but then do it again in July. Do it again in August.
You will quickly see how the Word of God is inexhaustible because now you've read the same verse and the same chapters for a couple of months. You will grow in the Spirit and it's going to start speaking to you differently. The Bible verses that I read 20 years ago, don't hit me the same way now. You start connecting the dots, and that can only be done through partnering with the Holy Spirit.
If people feel that way about the Bible, I would also encourage them, before you read it, pray that the Holy Spirit enlightens you. Pray the Holy Spirit helps you understand exactly what you're getting ready to read. If you're really struggling to understand God, you have 66 books of the greatest love letter ever written to show you who He really is, and then to show you how He wants you to live. And there's things that you can do intermittently.
You may not know the exact call that God has on your life, but in the meantime, you know that God has called you to love Jesus. You know that God has called you to pray. You know that God has called you to fast. You know God has called you to be a part of a local body. God has called you to love. God has called you to forgive, and you can do the things that you already know God approves of until you get that next step.
So until God tells you the next thing, just keep doing the last thing He told you to do. I think it's dangerous if we aren't going to read the Word and then live it out. We don't have to walk in that state of unknown. It's already there for us. Matt Walter I've mentioned the fact that you want to equip and inspire Jesus followers to live for Christ.
How soon after that became absolutely real for you did you realize that you were being called to be an example to others and to inspire others through ministry? This is a funny story. I didn't know. I was just doing it. I would go to the gym that I worked out at. I lost about 115 pounds. So I would go to the gym that I worked out at, and I used to use my voice for destructive things. So I said, I'm just going to go talk to these people about this new thing that I'm doing.
So I would just go to the gym and I would start talking to them. If they made eye contact with me, if they talked to me, I would just start talking to them about Jesus. I would find a way to talk to them about the church that I'm going to, all the things that's going on there, the stuff we're doing in the community, the role I'm playing there. And before I know it, a bunch of people from my gym just started showing up at church.
The head pastor pulls me aside one day and he goes, you know, half the YMCA is over there. And I'm like, yeah, I know those guys. I was like, yeah, all right. He's like, nice work. You're doing the work of the evangelist. I'm like, thank you. As soon as he walked away, I turned around, I Googled, what is an evangelist? That's how green I was. And I said, oh, okay. The Great Commission. I'm like, and it just, cause it just came so natural to me. I didn't think about it.
I really started just learning more ways to share my faith, learning how to package my testimony. Sometimes there's people who just need Bible verse and there's other people who need to hear my testimony, my life experience. And when I say give them the gospel, I'll give them the gospel. I mean, like I can quote Proverbs without telling you, I just quoted Proverbs three, five, and six, because sometimes I'm in the workplace and learning how to just not talk to any two people the same way.
When I'm in the ghetto or the rough parts of Cleveland and I'm ministering to people, I'm talking to them in a language they can understand, but I'm not changing the gospel message. When I'm in the boardroom and I'm in the office and I'm talking to people, I'm talking in a language they can understand, but I'm not changing the gospel message. The only thing changing is the people that I'm talking to and how I'm actually talking to them.
When that hit, I said, I'm going, I'm going to use my voice to bring people to the kingdom because I use my voice to bring people further and further away from Jesus. So now I'm going to use it to really tell people how good and loving you really are. And to tell people that you are the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to the father is through the son. I'm going to tell as many people that as I can. Tell me about Redwood Christian Ministries and what's involved with that.
I'm living in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm in the Midwest United States. The Redwood trees are in California on the West coast. So the Redwood trees in California grow to be about 450 feet tall. The roots of these trees are only six feet deep in length, but these tree roots go on for miles. So they go down six feet and they just sprout out and these tree roots are completely intertwined. They're interlocked. So these trees literally hold each other up and uplift each other.
These trees are also their own ecosystem. They nourish and water the area around it. They take care of birds and animals that live on it. These trees also battle storms together. So if you ever see a Redwood tree down by itself, it got isolated somehow. So when the Holy spirit gave me that, I said, this is how Christianity is supposed to be. This is a metaphor and characteristic of how Christianity is supposed to be.
I use Redwood Christian Ministries to help unify the church and unify Christianity, because I think the Bible is clear that Jesus is coming back for his bride and it's a singular. So whether your church is in Australia, your church is in Ohio or your church is in California or your church is somewhere in Canada, we are one body in Christ. Through Redwood, we stand on salvation, discipleship, and church unity.
I help spread that message through a weekly podcast called the Rooted in Christ Podcast, where I have guests come on and they share their testimonies and their life stories just to encourage people, you're not alone in what you're going through. We've got something on there for everybody. I do guest speaking and preaching and we're getting ready to launch our life coaching arm of this, Renewing the Mind life coaching through Redwood. Those are just some of the ways.
Because I really feel like the church can do a better job of praying for each other and supporting each other, especially in the times we live in today. The podcast has really been the flagship behind that, because that's what's getting everything out there. We go on local mission trips too. We went to New Orleans at the end of last year to help feed the homeless and do some street evangelism and do ministry there. We are out preaching the gospel and making disciples.
Matt Walter Tell me a little bit more about the podcast. Who are some of the people that you've talked to and who have shared their story on that podcast? Oh my goodness. I had Sam Ochoa on there from ESPN. I had Ty Montgomery from the Green Bay Packers, now the New England Patriots on the show. I had Rebecca George, who's a great author on the show. I have a lot of Christian hip hop artists. I've had Breno Music on there. I've had Don Reddy come on the show.
I've had George Rose come on the show. I had a lady who shared her story about how her father passed away and then she had a miscarriage right after that. She gave a great episode on grief. I've had people come on to deal with addiction. I've had people come on who've been in jail and in prison and got a chance to really talk about what that life is like, because a lot of times in movies and music, we glorify that life of just the gangster and the criminal. It's like, this is not a way to live.
There's people on there who have stories like mine of just addiction and people who deal with suicide or people who deal with depression. There's something on that podcast for everybody. And if you have a Jesus story to tell and you're interested in being on the show, send me a message. In telling the story of God, we see the stories of individuals that have lived their lives and where things have gone badly or things have gone well, and we see the power of story.
How important do you feel the power of story is as you're sharing those stories with others? What are some of the responses that you've had to those stories that have been told? People like to argue the word of God. They cannot argue your life story and your life experiences. That is why the testimony is so powerful. That is why the testimony is such a great tool for the toolbox. It's such a great weapon to be used properly.
No one can argue what you went through and no one can sit there and say, yeah, I had a gun to my head and all of a sudden this pastor just called me and I put it down. Or no one can say, I had all these things I went through in my life and I had a piece that I cannot explain. I was able to still do this. I never get tired of hearing these stories. After almost a hundred episodes, I sit back like this. I still sit back and I was like, that story is crazy. I'm so glad we have that out there.
I'm so glad we had that video and audio. I don't believe what this person just shared because it's unique to them. Two people can go through the exact same things, have the exact same experiences, and they're going to share it in two completely different ways because they're not the same person. Your testimony is for someone else. The very things that God set you free from can be used to set somebody else free. There is so much power in that.
The wonderful thing is that it is a powerful proof that not only do we have the living word of God, as you've said, but we have this proof that God is still alive and active today. We look back through church history, through history in general, and even to this day, people are still encountering God in amazing ways. That's obviously a great opportunity to share who Jesus is with people. I think sometimes too, to that point, sometimes I think we might feel like we're alone.
Man, is there anybody else out here following Jesus? Are we the only ones? No, you're not. That's why I look at the analogy of the redwood trees, the roots of those trees. They may only go down six feet deep, but they go out for miles. They extend for miles. I share things on that Redwood Instagram page and the Facebook page from Christians all over the world. I share things all over it just to encourage people.
Eric, I'm going to put a bunch of links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily, connect with you easily. I want to thank you for sharing your story, but also for what you're doing now in reaching out. I just love the imagery of the redwood tree. I think that that really has great power in it. I thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you so much for your time on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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