Steve Winn

Steve Winn - a changed life

Steve Winn is the Look Up Idaho Falls Team Leader.  But there was a period in his life when he hated Christians.  There was a period in his life when he not only was a professed atheist, but he tried to pull anyone he knew who believed in God out of their faith. There was a period when he says he had so much pain in his life that, while not suicidal, he would have been happy to die.  But Jesus changed him, from the inside out.  Jesus took his pain away, transformed his mindset, revealed His grace and love and gave Steve a new life, full of hope and purpose.

Steve grew up LDS and his family has deep LDS roots. While he went through a rebellious phase as a teenager, at age 19 he knew he needed to turn his life over to God.  That decision led to his next decision, which was to go on a mission for the LDS church. He was totally dedicated on his mission, which was mostly in a small town in East Texas. There he talked to a lot of professing Christians, and in many of these interactions felt an increasing weight of condemnation and hurt in his heart. 

After his mission he followed the plan laid out by the LDS church for young men and women – get married and have lots of kids.  He got married and they had five kids.  He loved his family deeply, and was also fully committed to his church.  But over the years this guilt and hurt in his heart kept growing, in part from words church leaders said to him as he sought to faithfully perform his duties as elder quorum president and other church callings.  This all came to a head in 2004 when he suddenly realized that he was spiritually dried up.  He knew something was wrong and was determined to find out what it was.

That search probably lasted longer than he anticipated.  He quietly visited a church in Idaho Falls and heard a sermon on Jesus’s atonement.  Then he launched into a two-and-a-half month study on grace in both LDS and Christian Scriptures. While this resulted in some intellectual answers, it only added to his anger, depression, anguish, loss of identity, and confusion.  And marital tension.  As Steve went further and further away from his life-long religion, his marriage fell apart and he lost his family. Still loving them, this loss added greatly to his pain.

To ease the pain he turned to alcohol, but it wasn’t long before he realized that drinking provided only short-term relief.  So again he decided to turn his life around, this time by going to an AA meeting. He started through the steps, but one particular night found himself in a wretched state, as his body was shaking because of alcohol withdrawal.  He called a man he had met in the AA group, who he knew was a Christian, and spilled out the despair in his heart.  The man responded, “Steve, you need to pray, and you need to say exactly what you said to me.”  Steve, although he admits that he didn’t know who he was praying to, did it and was amazed at what happened next.

He describes it as experiencing a presence of absolute, pure, unconditional love.  He says it filled his body, and adds that it was like a sword that simultaneously laid to waste all his opinions, all his views, all that he had experienced, all that he thought.  Though he would have said in this period in his life that he didn’t believe in love like this, now he experienced it.  So much so, that he could not stand in the presence of this unconditional love.  So he crumpled to the floor and wept.

Steve had remarried a few years prior to this, to a woman he knew from childhood and who, like him, had left the LDS church and abandoned her faith in God.  So when, getting up from this experience of unconditional love, he went to her seeking forgiveness for the man he had been, she was confused.

Just prior to this experience Steve had started going to a church in Idaho Falls, and had a conversation with the pastor.  Given his atheism at the time, he was surprised at the acceptance and grace he felt from this pastor.  So he kept going to the church.  And he started reading C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity, at times getting mad at what he was reading and throwing the book across the room.

But also at this time he started hearing a “voice” inside of him telling him to ask for forgiveness.  He could understand his need to ask forgiveness from his wife, but was curious about why he was hearing this voice, what it was, and what it meant.  As the voice persisted and got louder, he brought it up again with his wife and she, somewhat annoyed, told him “Would you quit talking about it and do it?”  Steve hadn’t really considered that the voice could be instructing him, but with the words of his wife, the light came on.  So he went into a room and confessed everything that he could remember and asked for forgiveness for things that he couldn’t remember.  When he was done he looked around the room, wondering what was going to happen.  And nothing happened, except that the voice stopped telling him to do it.

The next event that has led to change in Steve’s life came one day when driving to work.  He was reflecting on things he read in Mere Christianity, thinking about who Jesus was or is and whether He actually has authority to forgive sin.  After getting to his office he realized that the voice that had been telling him to ask for forgiveness certainly wasn’t his voice, and so the question came to him, “Well who then has been asking me to ask for forgiveness?” And that was immediately followed by another question, “Jesus, has it been you, has it been you all along?”

And then, Steve says, he became so weak that he immediately went to the floor and had an experience with God that lasted for 20 minutes. When he stood up, he said that everything was different, everything was new.  And in this moment, he says that he was thinking, “I’m saved, I’m saved, I’m saved. That’s what those Christians meant.  I’m saved.”

Now Steve knew his life was different.  The pain was gone. His confusion was gone.  His despair had changed to hope. Putting absolutely no pressure on his wife, it wasn't long before she too experienced God's love and grace.  Others saw the change in his life as well and were won to Christ, including his son and two of his brothers.  And in a dream, which his pastor helped him understand, God called him into ministry.