Breaking Through #2: Have You Ever Been Run Over By A Car?

Pastor Steve spent his early childhood in Ribera, New Mexico. If you have spent your entire life in New Mexico and just thought "Where is that?" it is a tiny town in rural Northern New Mexico with a population, if you include all the surrounding villages, of about three thousand people.  Steve grew up on a farm. He was the second oldest of seven children.

Steve's childhood was filled with early mornings doing chores on the farm and afternoons playing basketball in the backyard with his uncle. Those backyard battles, where they would pretend they were Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, would become epic and even as they moved away from each other later in life, they continued to play competitively into their sixth and seventh decade.

Looking back on that time of his life, Pastor Steve remembers a simple way of life that was wholesome and good. Even though his family was "poor" in material possessions, he doesn't remember wanting for anything. Although he does remember falling asleep under a car he was using as shade from the heat of the New Mexico sun at over seven thousand feet in altitude there in Ribera and being awakened by the  vehicle's tire going over his stomach. A member of his family decided to take the car but had no idea that it was being used as Steve's oasis.

Steve remembers having a tire mark across his abdomen and chest but was never taken to a hospital. The nearest medical facility was twenty-five miles away, in Las Vegas. He was shaken up but appeared, outwardly at least, to be OK. If there was internal bleeding or damage, it was never known.

How many times in our lives have we had our lives spared? What tragedies have been averted? Coincidence?  Luck?  God's hand was there - He rescued you. He was watching you and kept you. Why? What purpose does He have for your life?  Have you ever asked Him? 

Breaking Through: Part 1

So many of us today relate to feeling lost and alone. With all of our technology to keep us connected, networked, and linked as a community, our feelings of isolation and loneliness remain.  Pastor Steve is no exception. His mother was put into a mental institution and his father sent him away.  He grew up without a father or mother, without a family who loved and cared for him.

Pastor Steve's life is not insulated from the brutality of modern life.  His experience is essentially the same as millions of people in our society. Maybe your own life experience hasn't been as dramatic as his but the end result is the same - feeling unwanted, abandoned, and unable to find your way.

Today, Pastor Steve is the pastor of a thriving church. Every year, groups of average New Mexicans, will depart for life-changing adventures to Central Africa and the Middle East to bring humanitarian aid to the poor and training materials, training, and encouragement to church leaders who operate without any ministry training and very few resources.  Sometime this month, he will meet in his home with a group of ten volunteers whom he mentors and trains for spiritual leadership.  They, in turn, mentor other leaders in the church who inspire others in their spiritual journey.  

Pastor Steve encourages his own spiritual "sons" and "daughters"  as they give advice to a single mother, counsel a young married couple who are working through the trauma of an affair, go to the county jail to visit a twenty-two year old man accused of drug trafficking, and grieve with a sixty-five year old woman who has just lost her husband to a heart attack.  They all look to him for inspiration and guidance.  Most of them have been in those shoes before and Pastor Steve was there to walk them through their own "Valley of the Shadow of Death." 

Pastor Steve, the orphan, the outcast, the loner from a tiny town in Northern New Mexico that no one has heard of is now a spiritual father to hundreds today and thousands over the past thirty years. He now provides hope and healing  despite a past filled with pain and despair. Every week, he is being used to provide a spiritual oasis in a modern wasteland.

Over the next few months, "Breaking Through" will recount Pastor's life story. This story, his story will be recounted here with the prayer that it will give you hope - faith to know you are not alone and that whatever you are facing, however lost you may feel, you can find your way again.