This is an incredible real-life story. The Joe Tarasuk you get to know in the first
half of the book is so different than the one in the second half, that you
might be tempted to believe some of the story is a bit glamorized. How could a guy who rose to the top levels of
the cocaine business, dealing directly with a Bolivian drug lord, change so
completely? How could a guy who was so
addicted to alcohol and cocaine walk out of that life and into the light of
God’s love? And how could a guy who
could barely read or write himself write a book that’s as absorbing as this
one?
The one thread that runs through the story from beginning to
end is Joe’s awareness of the spiritual realm.
We in the USA generally fall into two camps here: either we don’t
believe in the existence of a non-material world at all, or we buy into the
Hollywood version of demonic creatures, which is mostly ridiculous. The truth is somewhere else. The truth is that we are all partially spiritual. The fact that you think, that you can
understand and translate the words on screen or page into thoughts means that
you possess spiritual powers. But they’re
very limited spiritual powers.
In reality, the spirit world consists of holy and demonic
beings. What Joe Tarasuk shows us, up
close and personal, is how demonic powers can take hold of a person, twist
their thinking more and more, and eventually turn them into a slave of their
own desires. (C.S. Lewis brilliantly
showed us some of the strategies they use in The Screwtape Letters.) Joe’s natural ability to sense this darkness,
and the power it had, drove him to and beyond the brink of sanity. But his awareness of the power of God through
the Holy
Spirit gave him all he needed to resist those powers, even though they
took him to some dark and scary places before he finally gave up.
Only the Holy Spirit – the third person of the tri-une God –
can overpower the demonic beings and force them to release a man they’ve taken
over. And it was Joe’s willingness to
surrender to Him and His will completely that allowed him to move away from the
darkness of the demonic realm of drugs and lawlessness, and into the wonderful
light of God’s truth.
In Against All Odds, Joe takes us on a personal journey from
shy kid, to scared kid, to star athlete, and into his life as a young adult
trying to live a good life, but with the baggage of low self-esteem, the
haunting memory of having been sexually abused, and without a moral compass to
guide him. Starting with a “little pot”,
he gradually goes from smoking it to growing and selling it, then is introduced
to cocaine, which took him to a more euphoric high. Soon, it became an easy next step to start
selling it too. And he shows us
firsthand how he rose up the ranks of street dealer to the big time. As he unfolds this success story though, we
are also shown his rising inner struggles with the spiritual darkness he
increasingly found all around him, as well as his own sanity. When he’s finally busted for trafficking, we
share his profound feeling of relief as he surrenders his life to God while
sitting in the police car at the arrest scene!
The story changes at that point, but does not become less
intriguing. We see him admitting his
guilt, but getting a 35 year sentence anyway.
Then we walk with him as he is offered the chance to stay in the local
jail with the sheriff to do ministry work in the nearby jails and prisons. We see his growing knowledge of who God
really is, his growing friendship with the sheriff, and his willingness to work
hard and to go above and beyond what is required.
We see his hunger to be close to God and his willingness to
pray and fast. And after only 18 months
of this growth and service, he secures a release, and moves back to Maryland! From there we share his quest for complete freedom
through Celebrate Recovery, where he learned the joys of helping others get
free as well. (He says he was clean and
sober, but not free until he dealt with the baggage put on him by his
past.) We see him continuing to grow in
his faith, his service to others in recovery, and in his business in
flooring.
But this is real life, and we also see the darkness
returning to Joe’s life, this time because of his wife’s inability to break
free from her own addictions. As she
descends more and more deeply into addiction, we share Joe’s feelings of helplessness
over his inability to fix her. We watch
as her life slowly ebbs away, and share in his grief over her death.
Finally, after a time of grieving the loss of his wife, we
see Joe gradually starting to pursue his dream of opening a recovery center, as
CrossRoads Freedom Center takes shape.
As the book draws to an end, we are left with a sense of
anticipation, and a conviction that God has used Joe Tarasuk for a purpose – a
purpose that will outlive his life on earth, and that will bring peace to many
tortured souls. Addictions to drugs and
alcohol are a scourge upon our world, and freedom from them remains an elusive
ideal. Most treatment programs ignore
the powerful spiritual forces at work in the addict, and fail much more often
than they succeed. The few (like AA and
NA) that do have a spiritual component so water it down that it may as well not
be there at all. One of the few that
does it right is Celebrate Recovery, which in just a few decades has grown to
over 20,000 church locations. CrossRoads
Freedom Center will be one of only a handful of residential recovery programs
that use the CR principles.
We should all pray that it is successful, and we should all
read this powerful story of how it all came about.
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