Steve’s testimony: God seeks us out!

Mom was Canadian, raised in Australia. At age 17 she fell in love with her Silver Star decorated Marine Captain, who was recovering from malaria in Melbourne, a survivor of Guadal Canal. Mom crossed the ocean to marry dad in Ft. Lauderdale the next year. He was a good, honest, hard working man, but the horrors of war had wounded his soul and he felt only alcohol could numb the painful memories.

My brother was born right away and Mom didn’t want another boy. When I came along 4 years later, she divorced dad, and we moved in with my Aunt and Uncle in Jacksonville, FL. Mom worked hard to support us, not having a high school education. She’d sell vacuum cleaners and anything else during the day, and worked tables as a bar waitress at night. There were lots of parties, but I was alone. I’d only visit dad in the summer for a couple weeks a year. My brother was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve when I was 13.

I began working around age seven, selling flower seeds door to door, coke bottles, newspapers, Christmas trees, mowing lawns, and anything to make a dime. In Junior High, I noticed a lot of cute girls went to an Episcopal Church in the wealthy section of town across the river. Mom and I were poor but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from meeting one of those cute girls, so I went to that church. I received confirmation, became an acolyte, sang in the choir, and did everything I could to get respect. But I was always in trouble. After various appearances before the Juvenile Judge, I went to a Military reform school at age 15. The abuse was incredible, but I figured I deserved it and just stuck it out.

MILITARY SERVICE

I tried college after Military school but felt too confused to be able to concentrate on studies, so I volunteered for the Army and Vietnam. I told the recruiter I wanted to help people, so he signed me up for medical corpsman school. I became a paratrooper and went into Special Forces, but flunked out of S.F. for partying too much.

In Nam I was awarded two purple hearts and the bronze star twice for valor in combat as a corpsman with the 1st of the 4th Cavalry. The next six months I spent in the field with a mortar platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. I didn’t like myself. I had gone to Nam, thinking that if I died I wouldn’t loose anything, and if I survived, perhaps I’d have some sense of value to my existence. But when a person doesn’t know the love of his Creator, how can he have any true sense of value? I didn’t believe God existed.

I should have died a number of times in Vietnam. Once I was blown into the air when our APC ran over a forty pound land mine and I got up with hardly a scratch on me. As a medical corpsman I didn’t have to go on ambush patrol, but I went anyway three times a week. I figured if anybody was going to get hurt it would be one of my buddies, so I went out to be with them.

NEW LIFE

For me, real life began at age twenty two, when I walked to the ocean two blocks from my apartment at Cocoa Beach, FL. At 2 o’clock that morning a thought was causing me deep shame and depression. It was the October 12, 1971, and I was alone again. I wanted to find a woman to make a life with, but I realized I was totally ignorant of how to be a husband and a father. Who would teach me to be a father? What would I be able to teach a child? I would only ruin their lives. I felt that if life and marriage were what I had seen in my family, it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want my heart broken and to break the hearts of others, over and over again. So I decided to end my life by swimming to the other side of the ocean.

As I got about knee deep in the water, a soft, quiet thought seemed to just float up into my mind and arrest me. The thought said, “Steve, I’m what you’ve been looking for. Give me your life and I’ll make it new.” Where could a thought like that be coming from? Instantly I knew, for the first time, that God was real and that I had been rejecting him all my life. The thought of rejecting a person so loving and kind broke my heart and I fell to my knees crying and asking His forgiveness. I remember every moment and sensation of that night as if it were only yesterday.

It must have been around 5am, when I found myself being washed up on the beach like a dead fish. I had been in the water for hours. As I sat up on the beach, I realized nothing had changed outwardly. The world was just the same. The only thing different was that Steve Cobb knew God is real. I was disappointed and began to complain. Why hadn’t God taken me out of here as I had begged him to do? He must have a reason. So I prayed my first prayer. “Lord, if you want me to be happy, you’re going to have to put your hand on my shoulder and put me where you want me to be every day for the rest of my life.” I sensed He would do just that. Then I prayed again, “Lord, teach me what real love is. Just do those two things and I think that’s all I’ll need.” Strong assurance flooded my soul and I literally jumped up and did cartwheels down the beach, while laughing and jumping and praising God.

SPIRITUAL FATHERS

From the outset, I sensed I’d be teaching others what real life is. My first Pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers, taught us that Christians are people who love the Bible and follow Jesus by applying His Word. He said you could read the entire Bible in a year by reading three chapters a day, a Psalm and a chapter in Proverbs. It was the first book I ever read cover to cover. And I’ve been reading it through every year since. I moved back to Jacksonville to live with my mother and Jesus came into her life and the lives of my Aunt and my cousin.

God began to bring men of the Church into my life who took me under their wing to mentor me. Russell and Barbara Linenkohl of Beaches Chapel in Jacksonville, Ken Sumrall and Bob Bishop of Liberty Church and Globe Missionary Evangelism in Pensacola, and Ed King in Honduras. I learned from them and from the Scripture, what it is to be a man, a husband, a father and a servant. Thirty seven years later, they are still among our closest friends. Ed has graduated to his heavenly reward. He died bringing aid to survivors of Hurricane Mitch.

I started studying in college again and found that I had the peace I needed to concentrate. After Junior College I was accepted at Oral Roberts University, but my destiny was kept in line when I met “Papa” Ken Sumrall speaking at a meeting in Jacksonville. He had a student from his Bible College with him that he was mentoring, and I said to myself, “That’s what I need!” So instead of going to ORU, I enrolled in Liberty Bible College.

My first year there, Papa Ken asked me if I would go on a summer “boot-camp trip” to take pictures of the missionaries that the Church supported in Mexico and Guatemala. In Mexico, accompanying Paul Koehler on his visits to the ranches, my destiny was once again kept in line, as I was drawn to the needs of Latin Americans. I knew I would be living somewhere in the Spanish speaking world the rest of my life.

I became a Deacon in Liberty Church in Pensacola and enrolled in the Spanish Studies program at the University of West Florida, while studying at Bible College. Helen and I married and we began teaching Sunday School together. When Ed King visited from Honduras, Bob Bishop, the Director of Globe Missionary Evangelism, asked us to meet with him. Ed needed someone who could raise up a Bible College for his young Church in Tegucigalpa.

HONDURAS and ECUADOR (20 yrs.)

After a year in Costa Rica to learn Spanish, we settled in Honduras where I founded the Living Word Bible College from 1977 to 1986. The “Living Love Church” of about a hundred young people and 20 adults became 9 chuches before we left. Today they are more than 50 churches throughout the Americas. Many are pastored by the men and women we trained there.

In 1986 we were invited to join a team of missionaries from Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, TX, to raise up a Bible College in Quito, Ecuador. We trained many wonderful men and women in Ecuador, traveling all over the country. The small congregation of VERBO Ministries we were members of became 10 congregations by the time we left.

In Ecuador I enrolled in a Master’s degree program in Christian Leadership through Azusa Pacific University. But we moved to Guatemala before I could graduate. In Guatemala I enrolled in the Institute of Theology by Extension (INSTE), a program in which I became the National Director. I also studied and graduated from a local Guatemalan University. I wanted to experience first hand, the traditional theological classroom formation offered in Universities, to be able to compare it to the holistic model of mentoring that INSTE offers Pastors in their churches. I am presently studying in the Latin American Doctoral Program (PRODOLA) in Costa Rica, an extension of the School of Leadership and World Mission of Fuller Seminary.

GUATEMALA (12 yrs.)

What we see Jesus doing through us in Guatemala is restoring His holistic biblical discipling to the Church. We believe this is a very important part of God’s answer to the tremendous identity crisis that afflicts most Christians. God’s kids don’t know who they really are and loving Christian mentoring is crucial for them to discover their true identity.

Jesus did four specific things with His disciples that transformed their lives forever. 1) He gave them His authentic friendship; 2) He developed in them the daily spiritual habits of connecting with God; 3) He imparted life to them through His relevant, practical theology; and 4) He imparted to them God’s mission and heart for others. INSTE is designed to integrate spiritual fathering with solid theological formation. The testimony of the three dimensional growth of Churches in each of the 30+ nations that are using it as it is designed is evidence of its effectiveness. The members grow in their intimacy with God, the church grows in membership as they become active in God’s mission, and the church multiplies by raising up solid leadership to plant new churches.

This year Helen and I celebrate 33 years of marriage. Our four children love Jesus and follow Him. Three are wonderfully married. Two have Ph.D.s, one has an M.A. in Pastoral Ministry. Our youngest son Tim is in the National Guard. Cristina and her husband Stephen will move to Ecuador this year for Stephen to become the Principle of the Christian High School that Cristina and Philip graduated from. Cristina will complete her Ph.D. in communications from Regent University soon and enjoys writing Christian novels for young people. Our children were all raised in Latin America. We lived one year in Costa Rica, nine years in Honduras, 10 years in Ecuador, and 12 years in Guatemala, training men and women by teaching and mentoring.

OUR LIFE THEME VERSE

“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and he died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Cor.5:14

Helen and I have never owned a home of our own. Not that we wouldn’t have purchased one if the Lord had provided. We continue to focus on what’s ahead, and how we can let Jesus shine through us. We take Jesus’ words seriously, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all the rest will be added to you.”

Recently one of our children asked me, “Daddy, how long do you think you’ll live in Guatemala.” My answer was, “In each of the countries we’ve lived in, it’s always been a lifetime commitment for us. We’re here until Jesus shows us it’s His will for us to move on. We do not belong to ourselves. He purchased us. And that’s the way we’ve always lived. We don’t call the shots—He does. That’s our commitment.

Marrying Helen was a great part of God’s healing and maturing process for my life. She comes from a long line of missionaries and Pastors for generations. Her parents were Baptist missionaries for 40 years in South America, Spain and Africa. They are two of the most loving people I’ve ever met. They celebrate 63 years of marriage this year. Their example has taught me what it is to be a father in law and a granddaddy. We never cease to need mentors.

Helen and I praise the Lord for periods of special ministry and training that God brought us, helping us to persevere in our marriage and our ministry. We received ministry and training in Chet and Betsy Kylstra’s Restoring the Foundations inner healing ministry. Steve founded a recovery program in our Church in Eucador, based on a Christian application of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Steve also received special training in the first level of Dr. Ruben Feurstein’s Instrumental Enrichment therapy, and in Dr. Ed Smith’s Theophostic Prayer Ministry. All of these have been helpful to our own lives and in ministering to others.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME

We believe that our best and most fruitful years of ministry are yet ahead of us. There is so much need here in the Guatemalan Church and it takes someone who will pay the price to restore the foundations. There is an increasing sweetness of influence building in our relationships with Pastors all over this country. We’re also learning greater things to help the Lord’s bride become the healing balm to the nations that He’s going to make her be as she learns to reign with Him.

One of our deep desires of the past few years has been to encourage fellow missionaries. After surviving some really hard knocks on the field (they must come and they will) we feel we can comfort with the comfort we’ve received from Him. We invite you to learn with us how God wants to make each of us mentors and co-mentors, reproducing ourselves in spiritually needy folks all around us, so He can fulfill His mission of redeeming fallen culture.

“Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me! We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion.” Isaiah 8:18

Father, we offer ourselves to You for the strengthening of your Bride. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve and Helen Cobb
Globe International
PO Box 3040
Pensacola, FL 32516
(850) 453-3453

www.gme.org