One Moment at the Altar Ended Years of Darkness

Raised by drug-addicted parents, Zach Rocke’s childhood left him doubting his self-worth. The family dysfunction, along with being molested by a babysitter, shattered Zach’s childhood.  

“When I was around eight years old, the first drugs I ever got were from my parents. It was marijuana. I thought it was normal. This is a normal childhood,” Zach begins, shaking his head.   “That really just kind of detached me from myself and broke me internally. Holding that in—your innocence being taken—it’s a lot of pain. You start to wonder, ‘What’s wrong with me? What did I do to deserve this? Am I not doing something right?’ It’ll break you. It’ll break anybody,” he confesses.  

Zach coped the same way his parents had modeled for him—through drug use.

“You look at people in your life that are supposed to be trusted leaders—your parents that are supposed to love you—and you see them doing this and you continue to do it, and it just becomes part of you,” he explains.  “It was normal. For years I thought, ‘I’m always going to do drugs. This is normal,’ because I watched my mom do it. I watched her over and over again,” he adds with a sigh.  

It wasn’t long before the drugs were consuming his life, sending Zach down a path of destruction. “It was unstoppable. It was like a freight train. By the time I was fourteen, I was doing cocaine and getting locked up in juvie,” he recalls grimly.  “I didn’t have to find drugs. They would find me because I was always looking for that acceptance and that next high. And I was finding other people that were looking for the same thing, and it almost becomes second nature. It became second nature to me,” he reflects.  

For over a decade the drugs kept Zach’s pain and trauma in check. Then, in 2012, 27-year-old Zach found himself homeless in Oklahoma.  A local church helped him find work, housing, and invited him to their Sunday service, where Zach gave his life to Jesus. “I just ran down to the altar—I probably dove into the carpet—started crying, ‘Jesus, make me the man You want me to be; I give my life to You,’” he recounts, eyes glistening.  “And when I lifted my head, there were probably ten or fifteen men from the church standing around me, praying for me,” he remembers warmly.  

He worked as a ranch hand for two years and was able to stay clean. However, when he discovered a meth house nearby, the temptation was too great.

“I think I wasn’t ready to give up certain parts; I didn’t fully surrender. One bad decision led to another, and I found myself actually worse off than before. I fell right back into condemnation,” he admits.  “I used to tell myself, ‘You lost yourself—you had it. What happened?’ I ended up on methamphetamine, and you want to talk about a drug that’s straight from the devil and demonic?” he says, voice dropping to a whisper.  

Now deeper in his addiction, Zach’s self-worth was at an all-time low. When a former addict told him how Teen Challenge had changed him, Zach, now 30, decided to give it a try. 

“I told myself I was going to Teen Challenge because I needed to find myself. But I went to Teen Challenge and found Jesus,” he smiles.  “I began to read my Bible again, began to pray, seek the Lord. The defining moment for me… it was actually in a dream,” he notes.  

“I heard the Lord say ‘Zechariah.’ And in the dream I woke up and I said, ‘Yes, Lord?’—I’m weeping. He said, ‘Because iniquity abounds, the love of many will grow cold.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s Matthew 24:12. But I heard it, and I woke up, and I was just weeping. And I committed right then that I was not going to grow cold, that I was always going to stay on fire for the Lord,” he recounts, passion rising.  “That is the moment that gripped me, where I surrendered. I remember getting down on my knees and just saying, It’s all Yours, Lord. I’m all Yours. I don’t want to grow cold. I never looked back,” he affirms.  

Zach grew in his relationship with God, and through Teen Challenge he was able to kick his drug habit. There he met Andrea, and the couple married in 2017.  “You want to talk about the grace of God—I married a pastor’s daughter. A multi-felon, an ex-drug addict, an ex-needle junkie—I married a pastor’s daughter and was called to ministry,” he marvels.  “My wife and I both ended up on staff at a church as youth associate pastors. And only the Lord can do that,” he emphasizes.  

Today Zach walks in a new life, sharing with others how God’s love and grace satisfied him in every way. “I found everything I needed. I found a friend, I found comfort. All my shame was taken away. I found home, I found family—everything that I was looking for in drugs and that lifestyle, every desire was completely taken away, and it was replaced with the love and the power and the grace and the mercy of God,” he shares.  

“It makes me know that I have a purpose—to know that the God of the universe, the God in heaven, somehow saw it fit to continue to rescue me and save me and bring me here… have me here,” he concludes, a smile of gratitude spreading across his face.