Who is this guy Chris?

I was born into a good home and was raised in the church. My parents were both involved with the church; my father played saxophone in the orchestra and my mother was the pianist. My parents were both busy being good people.

They had full plates which made it easy for us kids to run wild only to receive plenty of parking lot beatings!

We faithfully attended church but without getting into a big theological debate, it left me with a whole bunch of unanswered questions ... questions you just don’t ask I guess (I wish I knew then what I know now, you know?). I tried to live a good life as a kid but that just didn’t get it. The kids at church were worse than the kids I ran with at school and I had no support from peers.

My father was a pretty un-healthy man and had a terrible stroke when I was four years old. He was a test bed for all kinds of medication and spent a lot of time in the hospital.

One thing I can say about my father is that he left a testimony that I didn’t really understand, until I was older. He broke his leg when he was a boy and that left one leg shorter than the other, but he was always happy and full of joy. His body was a junk yard but his spirit was way alive.

In Feb. of 1978, while putting a log on the fire, my dad had a massive heart attack and died. I was seventeen years old. My mom was left a devastated mess and my older brother and I ran wild. We figured that had some catching-up to do.

Caught-up we did indeed. I found out all about booze and drugs and all the trash that comes with it. I met my first wife about two weeks before my father died. We were married in 1984 and had a son in 1986.

The coming of my son is something that helped (or should I say started) my quest for answers. My marriage soon turned into a mess with infidelity on both sides of the fence. I was drinking like a pro and reaping the benefits of it. My first wife and I separated which really set me on a wild spree. I thought it was some real freedom or something and these years were some wild ones.

One thing though, I had my son every weekend. With this full weekend “dad stuff” came some real responsibility. I figured that my kid deserved to be “churched” so I took him to my mom’s church which was something called Wesleyan (what’s that?). So as I would sit in this church looking at all these stupid narrow minded no fun havin’ idiots, I was doing my job as a father.

To shorten the story I’ll cut to the chase. The pastor that was serving there retired and some new blood showed-up.

This new jerk kept preaching to me and only me and it felt as if God was starting to hound me. So what would any good heathen do but just get worse. I should throw in that during this time I found me a girl named Jan and started to drag her to this weekend dog and pony show. Well she really, I mean really, messed-up and decided to start following this Jesus guy. This is something I didn’t bargain for. We got married (I needed health insurance) and I start sleeping around and trying to drink under this conviction that is hunting me.

I was such a mess that the stress of running from Jesus that I ended up in the Hospital with broken blood vessels in my eyes. Guess what, this jerk that kept preaching (just to me) shows up there and man did I get upset. I remember it like it was yesterday, seeing him walking down the hallway and later telling my wife what does this #@$%^# want?

All he wanted to do is love on me, but he represented the enemy in my eyes. I couldn’t come to Christ, I was in too deep. Through this whole mess I had built a collision shop business that was doing great, bought the big house, had five Harley’s in the garage, a girlfriend, and all the stuff the world had to offer. Except peace and joy.

Well ... on a rainy night in June 1998 I came clean with Jesus and my wife. (The supernatural stuff happens now). My Christian wife said “we can work through this” and we started our journey together. As you can see, by this time I was a full blown alcoholic and needed some real help. People were taken out of my life and people were put into it, but I still couldn’t shake the booze. That jerk I keep talking about really got me mad. I went to him and told him I couldn’t shake the booze. He says “this ain’t nothing, we will anoint you and throw it on the Altar and allow God to heal you”. I thought “you scum bag, you have no idea what I am going through. The battle that is raging in my body”. Well we threw it on the altar and I was healed - I mean HEALED - just like that. A few months later I told Pastor Mark what a jerk I thought he was because of how lightly he took my problem. Come to find out he was a drunk too - cool hey!

Well Jesus fixed my house, fixed me, called me and what a blast.

I gotta tell His story, I just gotta.

- Chris Steinle
  Pastor of North Shore Church

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