Steven S. Winn

As a “Christian” teenager, Steven S. Winn began to engage in activities that were not Christian at all. He tried to stop, but they had a stranglehold on him. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and his rather accurate picture of himself as a guilty hypocrite shoved him into a dark closet of depression. He began to sense an emotional cloud over his head, and it just wouldn’t go away no matter what he did. That cloud rained on his sense of purpose, eventually drowning it in a murky pool of moldy, desperate helplessness. He remembers lying on his bed in the middle of the day, his biggest goal to merely survive the next 24 hours, preferably by sleeping.

Then God stepped in. He won’t repeat the story here, as you can read all about it in his first book, “I’ve Lost Control: And So Can You.” But the upshot is that, when he let him, God climbed into the car of his life, placed his foot on the accelerator, and began a process of taking Steven from more and more emptiness, failure, and depression, to more and more purpose, victory, and joy.

You can get stories and practical tips on how to accelerate joy in your life or in the life of someone you care about by joining his weekly e-mail newsletter at winnbooks.com.