Stories of Faith

The Faith Story of Steve McClellan

For most of his life, Steve McClellan has known what it means to trust God. But recently, that trust has looked less like knowing what comes next and more like surrendering the need to know at all.

In August, Steve woke up with a severe headache. His vision was impaired, and he knew something was wrong. After a trip to the emergency room and a CT scan, a doctor delivered news Steve never expected to hear.

“You have brain tumors. It’s cancer.”

Three days later, Steve underwent brain surgery. Doctors removed a tumor roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. The tumor had caused significant swelling and pressure on his brain. For Steve, who had spent decades practicing law and was accustomed to evaluating problems, making plans and finding solutions, suddenly there was no argument to make, no problem he could reason his way through and no way of knowing what the next day would hold.

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“Coming face to face with your mortality in a real and life-threatening way will change you,” Steve said. “And it changed me. I didn’t know how to pray. I didn’t know what to ask for. I just knew I needed God.”

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A Faith That Grew With Him

Steve’s faith began long before this diagnosis.

Growing up in Broken Arrow, church was simply part of the rhythm of life. His parents, Lee and Sandy, made sure their family was there Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night. His dad served as a deacon at First Baptist Broken Arrow, his mom was involved in women’s ministry, and Steve grew up immersed in the life of the church.

“The gospel was always in front of me,” he said.

At around five years old, Steve began to understand that something separated him from God. After hearing his pastor, Leon Hill, preach one Sunday morning, Steve went home with questions. Pastor Hill came to the house that afternoon and spent several hours talking with him.

“At the end of that time, we were all satisfied I understood what I was doing,” Steve said. “I put my faith in Jesus Christ.”

His understanding of that decision grew as he did. Through middle school, high school, college, marriage to his wife Debbie, law school and eventually a career as an attorney, Steve continued learning what it meant to follow Christ. And over the years, God began teaching him a lesson that would become especially important later in life: He was never really in control.

The Illusion of Control

Steve first learned that lesson during a difficult season years ago. As a teenager, he had watched his father struggle with severe depression. Years later, while working at a law firm in Tulsa, Steve began recognizing some of the same warning signs in himself. Things that had once come easily became difficult. Staying focused became a struggle. And Steve was terrified. Eventually, he told his boss what was happening and made a plan. He sought counseling, received medical care and began walking through the season one day at a time. Looking back, Steve sees God’s sustaining hand in it.

“Of course the Lord was holding me up,” he said. “There’s no other explanation for that.”

But the experience also confronted something deeper. “It was probably the first time that I had to decide that I wasn’t in charge anymore,” Steve said, before stopping and correcting himself. “Well, wait a minute. That’s not exactly right. I wasn’t in control. Control is an illusion.”

It was a difficult lesson. And decades later, facing cancer, Steve would encounter it again. Only this time, the stakes felt much higher.

“I Just Yield”

For years, the book of Job has been an unexpected source of comfort for Steve. He has returned again and again to the story of a man who suffered deeply without understanding why. Job wanted answers from God. But in the end, he was reminded of something greater: he could trust the wisdom and sovereignty of God even when he could not understand what God was doing. That truth became deeply personal for Steve as he faced surgery, treatment and an uncertain future.

“The hardest part was not yielding,” Steve said. “The hard part was not seeing how and not knowing what the plan was.”

Eventually, he reached a point where there was nothing left to figure out. “I just yield,” he said. “Nothing else for me to do.” It wasn’t giving up. It was trusting the God who had been faithful to him before. Steve could look backward and see God’s provision through depression, career changes, financial uncertainty, raising a family and circumstances he never could have predicted.

“So God provides,” Steve said. “And that’s kind of the theme. He provides. It’s not ever what I expected, but He provides.”

Now, in a season when his future feels less certain than it once did, Steve is choosing to trust that same God.

Every Day Is a Gift

Surrender has not made Steve passive.

In fact, walking through cancer has made him think even more carefully about how he wants to spend the time God gives him. There are people he still wants to invest in. Work he believes is worth doing. Things he hopes God will give him more time to accomplish. After raising three sons who all became Eagle Scouts, Steve has a particular passion for helping boys grow into godly men. As he considers how to steward the time God gives him, he feels especially called to invest in the next generation and help create opportunities for young men to experience Christ-centered mentorship, discipleship and adventure alongside godly men.

“Young men need men to teach them how to be men,” Steve said.

Steve has begun putting that conviction into action, using the experience, relationships and skills he has gathered throughout his life to help create opportunities for that kind of mentorship to happen. It has given him something meaningful to pursue in a season when it would be easy to focus only on himself. And for Steve, that matters because facing his own mortality has changed the way he thinks about time. He has asked God for more time. But he is also learning not to demand an answer about how much he will receive.

“I’ll take what He gives,” Steve said. “Every day. Every sunrise is a day that I’ve determined to be a good steward of. Not to waste that time.”

When asked what he would tell someone else walking through suffering or uncertainty, Steve turned to the passage that has anchored him for years, 1 Peter 5:6-11. Its words have taken on even deeper meaning in this season: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

Later, the passage points to the hope beyond suffering: “And the God of all grace…will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”

“I don’t know how to say it better,” Steve said. “That’s as powerful as it gets.”

Steve doesn’t know how many sunrises lie ahead. But he knows the God who has been faithful through every season behind him. And for however many days God gives him, he intends not to waste them.