111. Forgiveness Changes Everything with Stephen Dees

A life can harden long before it ends. Stephen grew up in chaos, violence at home, abandonment, and abuse, then stumbled into his own storm of crime, grief, and addiction. Facing a possible 30-year sentence, he met a pastor whose quiet authority and lived joy cracked something open. What followed wasn’t a neat turnaround; it was a rugged apprenticeship to grace that reshaped how he saw God, himself, and the people who had wounded him.

We walk through the moments that mattered: the courtroom mercy that no one expected, the late-night wrestle with Scripture that reframed God as a loving Father, and the hard, practical work of forgiveness. Stephen explains why forgiveness is a choice rather than a feeling, and how aiming anger at the real enemy can keep a heart from calcifying. He shares the “taproot” model he uses in counseling - naming root wounds, tracing their bitter fruit, and cutting unforgiveness at its source so new fruit can grow. He also opens up about reconciling with his father and the tender strength required to forgive abusers while still holding wise boundaries.

If you’ve ever felt trapped by your past, scanning every room for danger, this conversation offers a way forward. You’ll hear clear steps you can apply today: write the letter, pray for the one who harmed you, forgive again when anger resurfaces, and let trusted community hold your story without judgment. The result isn’t denial—it’s freedom. Share with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to let us know: what’s one root you’re ready to face this week?

Katie Hauck’s interview:
https://youtu.be/wdemK7h2APM?si=NToEamNJi6fo-400

https://generationstogenerations.com/podcast

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We all have a story, all of us, share your story. You don't have to have the perfect answer or the perfect life - share what Jesus is doing in your life. This is an easy, real way to witness & share your testimony.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Book Launch, And Intent
• 0:36 Steven’s Mission And Ministry Work
• 2:16 Framing The Theme: Forgiveness
• 3:36 Childhood Violence, Abandonment, Abuse
• 9:17 Arson, Juvenile Time, And Prison
• 12:05 Loss, Addiction, And Meth Lifestyle
• 16:40 Facing 30 Years And Finding Faith
• 20:05 Charges Reduced And A New Path
• 21:55 Learning The Father’s Heart
• 26:08 Receiving And Extending Forgiveness
• 29:14 Forgiving Abusers And Letting Go
• 33:20 Letters, Boundaries, And Relapses Of Anger
• 36:35 Reconciling With His Father
• 39:16 Scripture That Reshaped Forgiveness
• 43:16 The Root And Fruit Of Trauma

Transcript

Nancy Bruscher: 0:00

Hi, I'm Nancy Brucher, the host of Ordinary People Extraordinary Things, where we tell stories of faith and hope from ordinary people just like you. If you have a story to tell, or if you know someone who has a story, please contact us through Generations Two Generations. Generations is plural and two is TO. As we're recording, I'm getting ready for my book launch party, and I'm so excited to celebrate this big milestone. The Legacy Heirloom Journal is available on Amazon and it helps guide you through sharing your heirlooms so that the stories are passed down to the next generation. As you listen to Steven's story today, I pray that it becomes more than just a story, that it impacts you to forgive yourself and to forgive others. If you find it helpful, don't forget to share. Welcome to Ordinary People Extraordinary Things. I'm so excited to have Steven on. Steven, thanks for being on the podcast.

Stephen Dees: 0:56

Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate this. I'm excited too. Amen.

Nancy Bruscher: 1:00

And Katie Hawk was the one who got us together. And you're in Tennessee, and you said it's just a beautiful day there today.

Stephen Dees: 1:08

It is a very beautiful day. And to speak about Miss Katie, a wonderful, wonderful friend, a beautiful person. She's doing great and mighty things in the kingdom too. This is awesome. It's a good kingdom connection. Yes, ma'am.

Nancy Bruscher: 1:20

Yeah, I'll link the podcast if you by chance haven't heard that one. That's a pretty powerful one as well. But Steven, if people don't know who you are, can you give three words or phrases to describe yourself?

Stephen Dees: 1:31

Passionate, one word, bold, two word, and someone who desires to see other other broken people healed, uh, to see them come to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ is.

Nancy Bruscher: 1:41

Oh, good. Yes. And you do that through kind of telling your story and in ministry. Can you kind of explain a little bit about that?

Stephen Dees: 1:50

But this started, it started off with telling my testimony, but then uh I went through a program. And through that program, I graduated, went out and worked in the world for a year. The pastor called me back in to be a pastoral counselor. So I ended up being a pastoral counselor and teaching, and it was my way of giving back, of helping people out of jails and prisons and off the streets and who are on drugs and alcohol to live a fruitful life. And it's very fulfilling.

Nancy Bruscher: 2:15

And that's that's part of your story, right?

Stephen Dees: 2:19

It is very much so.

Nancy Bruscher: 2:20

And we're going to talk about forgiveness today. And I'm so excited because I loved when we got to talk earlier and just kind of your points on forgiveness. And it was a little bit more, or I don't know, different. I don't know if I want to say that correctly, but then I'm mostly here. So I'm super excited to have our listeners hear that because what I'm thinking is um I want you to get a little bit into your story and like how you came to be able to take God's forgiveness that He's given you, but then also what did that mean to forgive others? And without just getting into your story too much, and I want you to tell it, is there were things that you really like if the world would say it, you shouldn't have forgiven them, right?

Stephen Dees: 3:07

And correct.

Nancy Bruscher: 3:08

Um, yeah, correct.

Stephen Dees: 3:10

According to world standards, um, a lot of the stuff that I went to, people hold on to that till they go to the grave. God's giving me some grace, and so he's taught me how to have grace on other people. Yeah, yes, ma'am.

Nancy Bruscher: 3:23

Well, can you tell us a little bit about um what brought you to Jesus, where you were before you found Jesus, and then you know, we'll get into like how you really found this forgiveness and what that means to you.

Stephen Dees: 3:36

Yes, ma'am. So born into a dysfunctional family, born with uh uh uh a family that was a lot of violence and already addiction in the family. My earliest memories are of violence of my real father hurting my mother, uh, alcohol, drugs in the house. And I'm talking about it at a very young age. I mean, by the time I was five years old, I don't remember dad being in the picture at all. Probably from three years old until five, he was in and out. And my mom tried to raise us on our own. We ended up moving in with her father, but she was so addicted to drugs and alcohol that she ended up leaving us three children with the grandfather. He had his own addictions and sicknesses, and we ended up being brought out that home because of the sexual abuse that was going on and flown out to California. And there again, my grandmother had married somebody who had a very sick addiction. And uh, we were flown back to Ohio quickly. Uh mom, three days before she left us children, she had OD'd. Uh, we had a bedroom where she was in the middle of the bedroom on a mattress, and we had a bunk bed against the wall. And I was on the top bunk, and I could hear my mom breathing erratically. So I got off the bunk to go check on her. And she got mad and angry at me, made me get back on the bunk. And that happened two or three times. The last time that I checked on her, she was non-responsive. So I went and got my grandfather. Uh, they called the hamlets, they came. And here I was, five-year-old child sitting on this bed on the bottom bed, watching them work on my mom. They were doing CPR on her and they had this big bag on her mouth, blowing air into her lungs. And they took her to the hospital, whisked her away, took her to the hospital. And as a child, you don't know how to identify what you're feeling. You know, I couldn't sit there and tell you, hey, I'm scared my mom's never coming back. Because I really don't know what's going on at the moment, right? And so I can't tell you these things. So I had a bunch of emotions and feelings that I didn't know how to identify or to speak about. So my mom came home three days later. She was okay. But when she came into the door, me and my sisters were very glad to see her. We were glad she was home. And she said it was never going to happen again. That night, my grandfather stayed up all night to make sure she didn't leave the apartment. And that night she ended up leaving out the window. And I didn't see her again until I was 11 or 12 years old. Now, fast forward, we went, uh, there was some sexual abuse in the family. We went to California to live with her mother. There was some sexual abuse that happened there. We were flown back to Ohio. Uh, the man that my mother was, my grandmother was living with had took pictures of me and my left. Me and my sister are what we call Irish twins. We're 11 months apart.

unknown: 6:04

Yeah.

Stephen Dees: 6:05

And uh he he had taken some pictures of us that were inappropriate on numerous occasions, and the police got involved. And so we were flown back to Ohio, put into an orphanage. And from the orphanage, we got adopted, or we didn't get adopted out, but we got put in the same home. And I really do appreciate the fact that we were in this home. I mean, as far as being safe, I don't know why, but me and the the foster mom didn't get along very well. There was just one incident after another, after another. My sisters got along with her really well. My dad came back in the picture. Long story short, my real father ended up taking my two sisters, and I decided to stay. Well, I went to move in with him down there, but I got in no trouble that I didn't want to stay. So they moved me back to Ohio and I went into another orphanage called St. Joe's orphanage in Cincinnati, Ohio. Uh really nice place, uh, probably the safest place I've ever been as a child. Then that's when my mother came back into the picture. The story of my mother coming back was it was a phenomenal story. And I kind of set it up like this because it was one letdown after another with my mother. Like when she when she did what she did when I was five years old, here she came back, and I felt like my whole world was coming back together again and everything was going to be okay. And she did jump through all the hoops to get me out of the workniche, but she had brought a man into our lives that was a uh he had he had some issues. After a while being in the home, the mask came off. There was a lot of violence, there was a lot of uh drinking, there was a lot of drugs, and he used to beat on my mom pretty bad. And one night he had beat her up really bad, and he had left the trail or the mobile home. And when he had uh he left the mobile home and my mom was crying and telling me to go get him, tell her to come back, tell him to come back home that I'm sorry. I was angry and I was mad. I asked, how could you be the reason that he done this to you? He's the one that hurt you. You haven't done anything wrong. And then I didn't know how to really help my mother other than go get the man. All right, go find out where he was at. And when I found him, he was getting drunk with a friend in the neighborhood, and they invited me in, and it was the first time I ever really got drunk. He had slapped me in front of the man and the uh the friend, and things got really kind of anxiety and stuff. So he had made us leave. And this man sexually assaulted me, coming back to the house. He threatened to kill my mom and my stepsister if I ever told anybody. I believed him. I've seen the violence, I've seen what he's done, I knew how what he was capable of. He called himself teaching me how to box. You know, he was 6'4, 240. You know, I was this little kid, and we'd put boxing gloves on, and he hit me so hard it would knock me out, and I'd have headaches for three or four days. So believing that he could hurt my mother and my stepsister that way, I believed him. So out of anger, there was nothing else I could do. Really, I was gonna run away one day, skip school, and I ended up burning down the house we were living in. And that kind of got that was my first felony. I got caught, did three years in juvenile, and did really good in juvenile as far as getting my GED, progressing in the way of getting my education. And then when I was 16, I started working, and then they wanted me to go back to the same home where my mom and them were, and I just didn't, I didn't feel like that would be safe for me. So I ran. So for a year and a half, I was on my own living in Ohio. Two months after my 18th birthday, I really made a really stupid mistake and ended up getting five, no less than five years and no many, no more than 25 years times three in Ohio. So I had a really 25-year sentence. My max out date was April 2013.

Nancy Bruscher: 9:36

Can you tell me what that was for?

Stephen Dees: 9:37

Yes, it was for aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. Um, I was actually drinking in a bar in the back of a bar one night. Um, we actually was pretty good at it. So I could hustle a little bit of money, hustle a little bit of beer, and and there was some talk about where there was some money at, and it got my attention. They said nobody would be home, then what set it up to happen. I went up there and there was two people home. By that time, we were so far into it that we couldn't back out, and I really hated myself for that and uh ended up going to prison. I actually did six years, nine months, got out, and that was the mid-90s, early or 94, 95, when I kicked off parole and got a girlfriend. She wanted to go to Lee College down in Cleveland, Tennessee, and I followed her. And we didn't stay together long, but there was another girl that I met down there, she got pregnant. I've never had any children before, and I thought, man, this is it. You know, this is this is gonna be great, everything's gonna be fine. I went to welding school, got my welding certificate, got a really good job, moved down to Calhoun, Georgia. I worked night shift, and man, uh, we had a mobile home on some land. I really felt really good about direction, and everything was going. And uh, I get paid on Thursdays. So we'd go to uh Kmart back then and we put stuff in layaway, take stuff out of layaway, her baby bed, and put pictures on the wall, do all the things, you know. I really thought everything was gonna be okay. She was born on March 14th and she only lived five weeks and she passed away on her bed from SIDS. And when she passed away, my whole world crashed again. So for a whole year, I poured into work and I could work 16 hour days, and it just didn't bother me. It was my way of coping. But somebody and while I was there, somebody introduced me to methamphetamine. And when I got introduced to methamphetamine, that killed every pain I had spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Took me down another long road. Uh, the same woman pregnant again. And by the time my son was born, I was in full-blown addiction, and I walked away from both of them. My addiction took me to uh being a red phosphorus cook, which is methamphetamine. And I thought that, I mean, I was so addicted to the drugs, I was so addicted to the cooking, I was so addicted to the lifestyle that making money was a byproduct of just what I really had an addiction to. It's like I didn't want to live anymore. So I just was really fast and hard. In 2010, I found myself in Polk County, Florida jail. And I'd been in jail for two or three years, and between the time that I was a meth cooked from different things from assault, never got caught with any, never got caught for manufacturing, but it was always the aftermath or the arguments in between or whatever. But in 2010, I found myself in a Polk County, Florida jail for aggravated assault and deadly weapon times two. I'd been with a girl for six years, came home, some things were happening, and I just lost it and ended up in jail when they caught me 14 days later. And they weren't gonna charge me with aggravated assault and deadly weapon times two at first. I was just charged with uh being on the run and having a warrant out of Tennessee. And then I went to see my lawyer, and they had all this other paperwork and they had a restraining order, they had these statements that said I had a knife in one hand, a pair of pliers in the other, and then they had the pictures of the two people I beat up pretty bad. I couldn't believe I was getting ready to face 30 years in prison. It was aggravate, it's uh automatic 15 years apiece. And my lawyer told me that we'd be lucky to get it run uh concurrent because of my aggravated burglar robbery charges when I was a child or when I was 18. So I said I'd probably get it run consecutive, which is a 30-year sentence. And I went back to my cell that day, pretty broken, couldn't see no light, didn't have no hope. Wasn't the back of the cell. I was crying, reading the statements, and I looked over in the mirror and I'd become everything I said that I never would. Somebody invited me to church that night. And I went to church that night. I kind of expected the pastor to beat me down and leave there feeling guilty and rotten for things that I've done because I know I deserved it. I kind of guess it's going for punishment, you know, because y'all, you better turn or burn, you know, you better repent, you're gonna go to hell. Those are the things I kept hearing, you know. I went in there and this man came into the room. He's a little short guy, probably about five, six, five, seven. But he was 10 foot tall in the spiritual realm. When he walked in there, man, he had this confidence, he had this peace, he had this joy, but he had this walk too. And I could tell that he had been some of the places we had been. And then he starts telling this testimony about living on the streets, the places that he's been, the hell that he lived in. He talked about Jesus Christ coming and how Jesus Christ came from heaven down to earth, and he he lived a sinless life, and uh he was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, so I don't have to live in hell anymore. And that got me. That was the hook because I was living in hell, and I knew I couldn't face this 30 years without him, without something. And there was hope in him because I seen the hope in him in the man that was preaching the gospel. I was like, Man, that's hope. So I asked the Lord to come into my life that night. The pastor, there's probably 40 of us in the room. Pastor walked up to me and he said, Son, he said, I'm taking the prayer requests. He asked us to write down these two prayer requests, and I wrote them down. He said, I'm taking these home and give them to my wife. She's gonna be on her knees on her bed tonight, praying over these. And he said, I want you to expect something to happen. And the only thing I wrote on there was two things. I wrote, Lord, if the two people that I beat up, I'd put their names on there. I said, Lord, if they're gonna be together, man, at least let her get off dope. And then the second one was, Lord, have mercy on my case. A week later, I went to go call my lawyer, and she had told me that all my charges had been dropped down to misdemeanors. I knew that was the Lord. It was nobody can tell me anything different. The Lord worked in that because I've never had that kind of luck. Nothing's ever been that good for me in the courtrooms. I've had a record, and uh I went from 30 years in prison to doing a little bit close to a year, half a year, and then had to go to Tampa to do some time, and then I went to Tennessee to do some time, ended up doing another 18 months in Tennessee. In 2013, I got out of prison and went into a program for 18 months or for 18 months of true purpose, and uh it's a program in uh Maribelville, Tennessee, a Christ-centered faith-based program. And it was there that I developed a relationship with the Father. You know, Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father. Understanding that I invited Jesus Christ to my life, and John 1.1 says in the beginning was the word, the word is God, the word was God. John 1 14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us. I understood that Jesus Christ was the word, he was the written word, he walked among us, now he's at the right hand of the father. And so, in order for me to get to know him, I had to read the word. Okay, so I had that part down. But what I didn't have was a relationship with the Father, right? Because that's what he brought us to do. And my idea of who Father God was was built on the way that I was raised: judges, uh, counselors, staff members at homes. And so when you did something wrong, you were you were uh punished for it. And so John chapter 1, verse 29 says that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, and here I am reading all of John 1, studying it, him being the light, going all the way back to Genesis in the beginning, because he was in the beginning, and I seen it all the way through there, and then John chapter 1, verse 29 talked about him being the Lamb of God, and I didn't have any idea what that was. So I went all the way back to Exodus 12 and I started studying now, and it was about the lap the lamb that was sacrificed and the blood was put on the door jam. So when the angel of death came in, right, it would it would save the people from having their firstborn killed, all the firstborn of the Egyptians, all the firstborn of the livestock. Well, God spoke to me through that, and he said, and this is how I got to know one of the characteristics of the father, being a loving, caring father, was that he allowed the innocent blood of the lamb to be slain, put it on the door frame. And the only thing he had told him, well, he told him two things that stuck out. One was, don't come out from underneath the covering of the blood. And here I was, I thought God was the one that punished me for the things that I did wrong. And what I found out, it was me opening myself up for the world to read havoc in my life. He provided a way for protection from that, and that's with the innocent blood of the Lamb. Well, that was Jesus Christ. So I got that, I got that. It was like a revelation that went off. Like, man, I've been seeing God wrong. I've been seeing Father God as a judge in the whole time. He's this loving father who was willing to allow his son to be sacrificed. So the angel of death can't wreak havoc in my life anymore. Got that. But the one that stuck out other than that was eat all the lamb, right? You had to eat all the lamb in the Passover dinner. You had to eat all the lamb, even the entrails, the things that don't taste good. And sometimes you can read the word of God and it reveals something inside of you. It's like, wait a minute, I really don't want to apply that. I kind of like what I'm saying.

Nancy Bruscher: 18:49

Yeah, I resonate with that, right?

Stephen Dees: 18:51

Like, we're gonna digest that, you know, we don't want to think about that too much. So that was so what you got was a uh a time of uh from my childhood all the way up to coming to the knowledge who Jesus Christ was, developing a relationship with the Father, being empowered by the Holy Spirit to live out a Christ-like life. And uh today I'm a counselor, uh, I've got a beautiful wife, I've got a beautiful home, I got a career. Those are things I never had before, never thought I could have. And uh, because of the power of God, or because of God in my life, that's why I'm here today. So forgiveness.

Nancy Bruscher: 19:28

Oh, yeah. I just wanted to say, Stephen, like, thank you for sharing because I'm I'm I'm here listening to it, and I hear awful, awful, awful things that happen to you. And for you to share that with us, I'm sure brings up memories and you know and feelings, and then also you being willing to be honest with people you have no idea who are going to listen to this on the things that you did wrong and the mistakes that you made. And I just I just want to thank you, first of all, for even sharing this part of your story because it it takes a lot of it takes a lot to to do what you just did. So thank you for that.

Stephen Dees: 20:12

My hope and prayer is that the people that hear this they hear the power of God in the story. Because no matter how far you've been or what you've done in life, God loves you. He can do more with your life than you can. It's not a story where I came from and the things that happened to me. It's God taking what the enemy meant for destruction and turning it around for his glory. He's gonna take a life that was broken, like like my life that was broken by the word of the testimony and the blood of the lamb. If he could take what the brokenness happened in my life and he could turn it around for what I'm doing today, that's a powerful story, but it's not a powerful story of Stephen D's. It's a powerful story of our Father in heaven.

Nancy Bruscher: 20:52

Yes, yes, yeah. So, how was it easy or difficult for you to first uh find forgiveness from God?

Stephen Dees: 21:02

Yes, yes, and then yes, yes, yes, yes. It was easier for me to understand and offer forgiveness for others than it was for me at times to receive that Father God had forgiven me for the things I've done.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Right.

Stephen Dees: 21:16

So, you know, I lived in a place of trying to always play a pay a penance type of lifestyle, you know, the slave mentality. After doing that for a long time, you know, God would just bring you into a place to where you He wants you to receive His forgiveness and His love so that you can live in the fullness of who you created to be. It says in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 says, Lay aside every weight and sin that these set you from the race that you're running. Well, for unforgiveness towards yourself can hinder you from being everything God created you to be. But it was easier for me to forgive others. Like forgiving my mom started in prison. It didn't start at true purpose ministries, it started in prison in 2013. They called me to the chaplain's office and tell me she had passed away. Let's just say this. I knew that she had done some things that had caused my life to be hard when I was younger. She made some really bad choices. I was angry with her. Okay. I was mad. I didn't understand why she didn't love me. And of course, you always hear the voices. Well, if you were a better person or a better son, or if you'd have done this, or if you'd have done that. You always blame yourself for the re for the things that had happened. I was laying there in my cell in my bed in prison after the after I'd come back from the chaplain's office and told me she had passed away. And she actually passed away from complications of her drug use of having hepatitis C that turned into some liver stuff that that's what she ended up passing away from. She had straightened her life up at the end. She got her nursing degree. They had to take her off the floor, which she loved to do, and they had to put her an admin because she did have hepatitis C, and there wasn't a cure for it then like there is now. But as I'm laying there in that bed and I think about her dad, I think about her mother, I think about the stories that I've heard from you know different family members and the things that happened to her. And I know how she was treated by my real father, I know how she was treated by my stepfather, and I know the things that happened. Heart started breaking for her. She never really experienced anything good in her life, neither. All of a sudden, this grace starts coming in. I started just praying for my mom. That's where the forgiveness from my mother started. And then, of course, reading the word of God, you read scriptures like Luke 23, 34, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, because you understand that the enemy was working through them, right? Colossians 3:13, bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you have grievance against someone, forgive us the Lord has forgiven you. But this is the one that really got me. Matthew 6, 14 through 15. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive you your sins. That's a powerful statement. I don't know. Right, we want to gloss over. We don't really want to. Yeah. Because forgiveness doesn't feel good. And I believe that my part my part of my process was when I went from prison into the program, was learning that forgiveness wasn't a feeling, that it was a choice. You know, we talk about my stepfather. You talk about the man who who sexually assaulted me as a young man, as a young child. He was an alcoholic. He was a drug addict. The enemy was working through him. There was a man that left a gun at our home because he went to the Navy and he lived in the neighborhood and didn't want his family to steal the gun. And I would think about going in there and using that gun to end this man's life. Maybe he couldn't hurt my mom, and then he couldn't hurt my stepsister, and then he couldn't hurt me no more. That was my thought process. And then the day that it came where I had an opportunity to do that, he was drunk in there in the waterbed and I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. And I felt so weak. I felt like a punk. And I would call myself names because I couldn't find myself to go in there and do and end this. And so in my anger, I ended up burning down the house, catching the felony. And so I carried this anger with me for many years. This and it was all rooted in unforgiveness towards other people, but a lot was towards him. It was so bad that when I was in prison and juvenile or when I was in jail or even on the streets, if we found somebody who had committed a crime like that, we would think it was our God-given right to hurt them, to punish them, poison them, to torment them. Those were the things that they would have to go through while they were in prison. And so, and I didn't feel guilty about it. But then again, I didn't know the Lord didn't either. You know, I was just taking out what happened to me on them in a different way, making them pay for what he'd done. When I read this scripture when I was at True Purpose Ministries, I wanted to be forgiven for the things I've done. So I look back on the things I've done in my addiction. I look at the things that I did when I hurt those people, I look at the things I did when I was 18 years old and scared those people to death. And I felt really terrible and really bad for the things I've done. And I can see myself before Father God, and I wanted to be forgiven. And he's telling me now that in order for me to be forgiven, I got to forgive myself, Father. And I argued with him.

Speaker 1: 26:07

I did.

Stephen Dees: 26:08

I was like, there's no way in this world you want this guy to be forgiven. He was plain, Stephen. I died for everyone. In order for me to do this, I had to make a choice. Okay, God, I want to be in your will more than I do my own will. So today I decided making a choice to forgive him. I told my counselor about it. He made me write some letters to him because we knew the address, and I still know the address, the telephone number today because of the just the, and it was for the wrong reasons that I knew them. But here I am. I'd write these letters and my counselor would go over them. And he was like, No, we're not sending that one. No, we're not ready yet. And it was a process to get to a point to where we actually sent a letter. Uh, actually sent two, wrote three, was wanting to send a third one, and my counselor came and said, Man, I feel like we've been released. We've done everything we can. There's no reason to set yourself up. If he's not going to be recipient of this, then he's just not in a place to and so I let it go. But does that mean that I don't pick it back up sometimes? Right? If I see a child hurt or if I look at a TV show and a kid's been molested or sexually assaulted, that anger comes back up, right? And it's like, well, where'd that anger come from, Stephen? Well, it came because of what happened to you. You chose to forgive him, remember? And so my pastor had to call me into the office one day, and he really helped me with it. He said, Stephen, you got to understand you got to quit looking at the person. It was the enemy through him that came in and hurt you. It wasn't him, it was the enemy through him. Now, he had allowed that to happen, but you get angry at the enemy, and that will help you in your forgiveness. So I just started getting angry at the enemy instead of you know, because the enemy is spiritual. The battles that we fight are spiritual, it's not physical. That helped me off. Help you 100%. It really did. It helped me get my focus off the man and onto the enemy.

Nancy Bruscher: 28:03

Did you ever hear anything from your no?

Stephen Dees: 28:06

No. So I thought that you know, I walked out this forgiveness and doing very well with this. And then one day I was biting at the bit to speak. I love to preach, I love to teach. And now listen, I was never like that in the world. Okay, I was more of an introvert than I was an extrovert. You know what I mean? I'd like to be go do my thing, stay away from me. It's my kind of life. I went and told my testimony for the first time at a church, and they put it on YouTube, and I told the name of this man and his family up in Ohio seen it. And man, it just totally was World War III with them. My sister, my stepsister, she just owned me. She just kind of blocked me on everything. We don't talk, and it really kind of put a rift. If I had truly forgiven him, what I caused that kind of harm. You know, so sometimes I still got to check my heart. Does that make sense? But I think God honors the fact that I made a choice to forgive him. I really do. And so that's where my heart said. I choose to forgive today. Why? Because it was hindering me from being everything that God created me to be. Well, first of all, I wanted God to forgive me for the things I've done. Okay. Is that selfish? I don't know, but I don't want to be found guilty when I go to heaven. So that was one. Two is man, is that I desire to have God in my life more than my own will. I want the Father's will in my life more than I want my own will. And so I found out that my unforgiveness towards people was hindering me from being a good husband, it was hindering me from being a good father, it was hindering me from being a good worker. I mean, I was the kind of guy that I could walk into a room and there'll be 10 men in there, and I think nine of them are speaking bad about me. Why? Because of what I've been through in my past. As I started to forgive, my mind started shifting, and not everybody was an enemy anymore. Does that make sense?

Nancy Bruscher: 29:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of times when I hear about forgiveness, you hear You're just like you have to do it in your own mind. But you're saying that you actually did a letter and a company.

Stephen Dees: 30:06

I actually had to write the letter. So my real father, never in my life was a child, uh, for the short period of time that I lived down in Florida, got troubled enough to come back to Ohio to wait on my mom. 2005, I was on the run. I knew he was at Grandma D's's uh uh down in Fort Fort Lauderdale, Florida, showed up one day, you know, saying, like, hey, I'm on the run, need a place to stay. That turned out really ugly, him putting a gun to my head and making me leave. It was pretty bad after about, I think most there were about two or three months. And so, fast forward to 20 uh 15, I get through True Purpose Ministries, and my sisters have seen me on Facebook and we ended up connecting. And now, mind you, we haven't been communicating or been a family or or fellowshipping or anything for years. They reach out and they said, Listen, we want to come rent a cabin in Gatlinburg. We want you to invite you and Kat. Me and my wife got married, so it was 2016, not 2015. And they said, We want you guys to come to the cabin and we just kind of you know get to know each other. I was like, Yeah, that's fine. But then she texted me right back, you know, and she said, and by the way, dad wants to come. I was like, I was like, really? You know what I'm saying? And I'm thinking in my mind, this is probably gonna go really bad, you know. You know, just cocaine, whiskey, all that stuff was involved back then. And and I was like, this is not gonna go good, but I'm a different person. And I said, If I'm gonna preach it, I gotta walk it out. I said, Yeah, you can bring. My real father came. We were in the cabin playing cards, me and my sister and my aunt and my wife, and my dad sat in the corner and he just stared at us the whole time. Never said a word. It's really quiet. I walked out on the porch and he followed me and he started to tell me how sorry it was. And I stopped him. I said, Look, man, we can we ain't gotta do this. I said we were both dealt handed cards in our life, we played it the best we can, and we just done the best we could. It's over with, it's done. I don't want to rehash it. And I knew in my mind why I'd done that because we were at a family event. And if we started going in saying, I'm sorry for this and sorry for that, we start pulling off scabs that may maybe weren't fully healed, and it could have really got ugly. Let's just go ahead and put this behind us right now, enjoy what we're doing and move forward. That's what I was saying, what I was, you know, in the words that I spoke, what I was really saying, look, we're good. All right. So 2017, my father goes to church with me for the very first time. I've ever known him to ever be in a church or hear for being in a church. It's a real revolution, the church I go to today. And uh, we were sitting in the back and he was asking me questions about being saved. He said, This is real. And uh I got to say a prayer with him and leading to the Lord right there in the back. He didn't go to the altar. Fast forward, I got to sit by my father wise to his last breath, and just knowing that it wasn't uh it wasn't uh a goodbye. I was a see you later, knowing that we had really truly forgiven each other and moved on, but it was bringing Jesus into it, it was a choice, right?

Nancy Bruscher: 33:08

Oh Steven, thank you. You said you had some thoughts from the Bible on this.

Stephen Dees: 33:13

Yeah, one one thing. Okay, you asked me for my favorite scripture.

Nancy Bruscher: 33:16

Yeah, what's your favorite Bible version?

Stephen Dees: 33:18

Yeah, they're all in this book, every one of them. I love them all because they all applied to you at one time or another. But for this case, for for forgiveness, my favorite was in the old testament, second kings chapter five. Just gonna read a little bit, a little bit now, not far. It says, now Naaman, the captain of the army of the king of Aaron, was a great man with his master and highly respected because by him, check this out the Lord, capital L had given victory to Aaron, Assyria. So now here he is, the captain of the army of Syria. He doesn't even know who the Lord really is because they're serving other gods, but the Lord Father in heaven had given him victory. That's powerful in itself, something for you to look at later. But if we read down, the man was also a valiant warrior, but he was a leper. He had a death sentence, right? Then we can all relate to that. For the wages of sin is death. We were all lepers at one time. Now the Aramaeans had gone out in bands and taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel, and she waited on Naaman's wife, and she said to her mistress, I wish that my master were with the prophet who was in Samaria, then he would cure him of his leprosy. I want you all to think about this. This is a little girl who's been kidnapped from her home, taken away from her mother, taken away from her father, taken away from her homeland, brought into a foreign land and made a slave to this man's wife. How many of us could look and say, My God wants to heal you? How many of us have the heart of to me? That's the heart of Jesus. Most of us would be angry and mad, and we would say, Man, he deserves to die. I can't wait till he dies. It's time for me to go. But here you got a little girl who spoke to my heart from every how many thousand years ago it was. This is what I heard. Oh man, I heard Stephen. My God wants to heal you from your leprosy. Now, mind you, I'd already been saved, so I'm going to heaven. So, what was the leprosy I was carrying? I was carrying unforgiveness in my heart, and she was showing me the Lord's heart by forgiving the man who was really in charge of the people that kidnapped her.

Nancy Bruscher: 35:35

Yeah, I've never looked at it like that. Yeah, man.

Stephen Dees: 35:39

That's when it started for me, like in that true purpose about forgiveness on a different level. Jesus spoke it first when he said that he hated divorce, but he allowed divorce because of the hardness of your heart. And in that word hardness of your heart is sclericardia in the Greek, and it means a hardening of your heart, but you got to understand what heart is. Heart is feelings and thoughts. So it's a heart, is it's a hardening of your feelings and thoughts that God has allowed us to have uh a writ for divorce through Moses, right? Because whatever sexual sins got me crying about that little girl, she's awesome. When I looked up this word sclerocardia, I started getting a teaching on Hebrews chapter three. It says that the Israelites could not enter into God's rest because of sclerocardia, because the hardening of their heart. Well, guess what? I could not enter into God's rest in my life because the hardening of my heart towards other people and what they've done to me. And I drew a tree, and at the bottom of the tree was a root system. And on this root system were root issues that happened in my life that I really had no power over. Okay. Let's talk about the child abuse. Let's talk about the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the abandonment issues, the death of my daughter, and emotional abuse. Okay, those are all root issues, right? And so this tree grows up. What kind of fruit do you think that tree could bear with those kinds of root issues?

Speaker 1: 36:58

Yeah.

Stephen Dees: 37:00

So I looked at my tree when I was five years old just off the one issue of abandonment with my mother and watching her get worked on. Fear, anxiety, depression, I mean, anger, and just the fruit off of that one was enough that no five-year-old child should ever have to go through. Now, I want you to picture a lot of people that come out of addiction, they have the same fruit. Okay. So I'm not saying I'm just trying to show, I use this as a teaching to show people that the fruit that you bore up until you become who who Jesus Christ created you to be in the new fruit, which is the fruit of the spirit. When you fast forward, you talk about the sexual assault and uh what kind of fruit did it bear? A lot of anger, a lot of depression, suicidal thoughts, disassociation in some areas, pornography, sexual immorality. You see, we don't know just now. This tree, I'm seven or 13 years old, and I got a tree that would poison anybody that ate from it.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Yeah.

Stephen Dees: 38:02

Right?

Speaker 1: 38:02

Right.

Stephen Dees: 38:03

God showed me about my root issues, and he told me, So, Stephen, now I want you to make a list of all the people who cause all that pain to you. Well, with the death of my daughter, man, uh God was number one on the list. I wasn't number two. And then there was just a long list of people that hurt me. And so, in order for me to kill the taproot, now on every tree out in your yard, or most of them anyway, they have a taproot, and that taproot goes down into the ground. And if you can dig it out, you can plant that tree anywhere else and it could live. But if you destroy that tap root, the whole tree dies. So I had to figure out what my taproot was. Well, my whole taproot was unforgiveness for all the people that have been hurting me, right? Including myself and God. And so, in order for me to kill that taproot, I had to make a choice to forgive those people. It wasn't easy, right? It was it was taking one individual event and ask and happen to go in and ask the Lord into my heart. I had to relive everything that happened to me, ask the Lord to come in, apply the blood of Jesus to it, and make a choice out of my mouth openly to forgive them. And it helped. Okay. So my heart started stuck uh softening. He started replacing my heart of stone for a heart of flesh, right? So, and the way I explained that there's a word called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It's actually a medical term for hardening of the heart, but it's the physical heart. What is your physical heart? It's a fist-sized organ that pumps 2,000 gallons of blood throughout your body a day. Okay. So when your heart, your physical heart has been exposed to things of the world like pollution, cigarettes, alcohol, certain kinds of food, it can develop a condition called the hardening of the heart or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Well, the walls of the heart get so thick that it's hard for that heart to pump 2,000 gallons of blood throughout your body a day. You start getting tired, your blood pressure is off, things start to wear you down more, right? Well, what happens when your spiritual heart, your feelings and thoughts have been exposed to abandonment issues, sexual molestations, physical abuse, verbal abuse. It starts to get hard, right? Now, guess what? I'm I'm a young man and I don't know how to communicate well. I can't work in an environment because I don't know how long how to get along with people. Um, I have low self-esteem, low self-worth. And so who am I gonna put myself around? People who are of the same mindsets, right? What kind of chance do you have? So God showed me a way out of it was I had to make a list of all those people that had hurt me. I have to go in individually pray for them. And he started softening my heart, he exchanged my heart and heart for a heart of a heart of flesh. And uh that was the process of forgiveness for me. And it's still a process, it's not something to, you know, there's days I still get agitated or angry, especially if I hear a story about a little kid getting hurt. So I have to go back and remember I chose to forgive that man.

Nancy Bruscher: 40:58

Did you forgive God?

Stephen Dees: 41:01

Well, it wasn't forgiving God, it was coming to the understanding of Matthew 10 or John 10, 10. It says the thief comes to steal, steal, kill, and destroy, and that he had come to give life and life abundantly. So I had to realize that I had been mad and blame God for something that the enemy did. And then I had to forgive myself because I'm the one that allowed the enemy in. I was the spiritual authority over my daughter. And uh forgiving myself was a very hard time. Uh as on a night at True Purpose, we go to a place called United Pursuit. If you've never heard of United Pursuit, man, I would recommend you listen to some of their songs. It's beautiful. They're very good praise and worship. Okay, they're out of Knoxville, and so we used to go to Fifth Avenue House on Tuesdays once a month, and we would sit in a circle or stand in a circle while they played this music and we would praise and worship. Well, I went there, man, and I would get wrecked. I mean, I would just get totally like in the spirit, just loving the Lord and a love fest, it was great. And then one day we went and I could not feel the love of the Lord for any reason at all. Man, I just couldn't feel it, and I couldn't understand why everybody else was in this big old love fest that I'm used to being in. And why is it that I have no feelings at all? And the Lord told me, Stephen, you got sclerocardia. I said, What do you mean? He said, You can't enter my rest because of the hardness of your heart, because you can't forgive yourself. And I just started weeping and crying, and I started feeling God. And that night I laid in bed and he said, Stephen, I need you to go tell Pastor Jeremy everything you did from the time you were a child until you were an adult. And I argued with him. I said, Man, if I go tell Pastor Jeremy everything I did from the time I was a kid till I was an adult, he'll kick me out of this program. God spoke to me, he said, Stephen, I opened doors and no man can close. I was like, Okay. And then I said, You know that he ain't gonna like me no more. He's gonna judge me. He said, Doesn't matter, I love you. So the next morning I was obedient. Pastor Jeremy came in and taught a class from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. And so at 8 a.m., 8:15, I went to him and told him what the Lord told me. We walked into his office, and five hours later we walked out. Oh wow, the Lord came into that room that day, and I was very honest, just buried everything that I ever done. And uh Jesus came in that room that day, and he just really washed my feet, put a ring on my finger, crown on my head, a rope around me, and all those just to tell me that I was his son, and he loved me. That was a game changer for me. I quit holding things against myself so much, you know. Still comes up, you gotta make you choose right. All right, Ms. Nancy. This has been a long day. Yeah, this is a good counseling session. You're a good listener.

Nancy Bruscher: 43:42

Did the pastor did he not love you? Did he no no man?

Stephen Dees: 43:46

That's what he did, man. Every time I bring up something that I thought he would, man, we just bring Jesus into it, and he never judged me. Pastor Jeremy is the one that hired me.

Nancy Bruscher: 43:54

Oh, okay.

Stephen Dees: 43:55

He's the one that got he's the one that ordained me. So so no, he the love of God that was in his heart manifested. He he's real, you know, he's solid all the way through when it comes to being a man of God.

Nancy Bruscher: 44:07

Well, can I pray for us as we end this and for the people who are believing God? Thank you for Stephen. Thank you for him telling his story, and uh actually, more importantly, your story, God.

Speaker 1: 44:18

This is what it's all about is your story, Father.

Nancy Bruscher: 44:21

Yeah, is giving you glory for the story that you've given us. Thank you for letting him just openly share about what he went through and things that he did, and then just how you came and just turned his life around. God, um, I'm praying for the people who are listening that if they can resonate with part of it or any kind of unforgiveness, no matter what we've gone through in our lives, we all face this, God. And I just pray that this isn't just like a nice little podcast that we listen to and we keep on our day, God, that we actually implement something so that we can be more like you and have the grace and the forgiveness that um Stephen shared about. So we give this um podcast to you. And as we always say in ordinary people, extraordinary things, your story is his glory. So thank you for us. Amen. As I was sitting here editing this episode, I'm also scanning pictures for a client. I hope that you are taking the time to share your story, to capture those heirloom memories, and to scan those pictures or digitize those old family movies. If you need help, please contact me at generations to generations.com. And I will see you in two weeks for a brand new episode.