Dean Sikes
19 min read ⭑
“Every day, I stand before teenagers, and they ask me afterward, ‘How do you know that I matter? You don’t even know me.’ And I always smile and say, ‘That’s the easiest question I’ll ever answer. You matter for one reason: you’re breathing. God has never made a mistake, and he created you on purpose, with purpose and for purpose.’”
If there’s one thing Dean Sikes wants today’s young people to know, it’s this: you matter. Not because of what you can achieve or give or look like — but because God’s very breath is in your lungs. With that message, Dean speaks at high schools, prisons and Teen Challenge centers around the world, hosts the YOU MATTER television broadcast and has written 33 books.
Today, Dean is getting honest about how God turned his life around with an audible command that saved his mother’s life. He also offers a peek into how he regularly hears the voice of God in his spirit, how God is using the You Matter ministry to rescue teenagers and his favorite ways to recharge so he can continue spreading Jesus’ message of hope and truth.
The interview below mentions suicide and self-harm. If you or someone you know is in a crisis, please call, text or message the Christians In Crisis Hotline at + 1-844-472-9687. You are not alone.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
I have a three-tier response. When our ministry turned 25 years old eight years ago, I picked out the top 10 restaurants I had been to in all of my travels in eight different countries, sharing our message of hope with teenagers. One of those top restaurants was a place called Couch’s Barbecue, and it’s here where we live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The restaurant is usually closed on Sundays and Mondays, but on the Sunday of our 25th-year anniversary, our family, our entire team and some dear friends went there after I ministered somewhere that morning. After we flew back in, we all gathered — there were probably about 30 or 40 people there. I was the happiest person because everybody I loved was there but also because I was eating my favorite meal at that time, which was the restaurant’s great barbecue sandwiches.
Second to that, I love pasta. I just really enjoy Italian food. Some of the most meaningful and enjoyable times for our families have been when all of our kids, grandkids, Lori (my wife) and I sit around our farm table at home eating Fettuccine Alfredo with grilled blackened shrimp. It allows everyone to gather so we can listen, talk and enjoy a great meal together. It’s something that I look forward to on a pretty consistent basis.
Finally, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where we like to vacation, our family loves to get what we believe is the greatest pizza on the planet and take it down to the beach. As the sun sets, we sit there eating pizza on the beach together, watching those waves crash in.
It was hard to narrow it to one dish, but those three quickly came to the forefront of my heart and mind.
Bryce Wendler; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
Golf is at the top of my list of relaxing activities. I unplug best on a golf course. Interestingly enough, I very rarely track my score. I just enjoy the game, and I enjoy golf courses that are architecturally designed with excellence. I love to watch the terrain and the grass. I love to play mountain courses. I love walking onto a green and seeing its contours.
I’m reminded of one hole in particular where I can look out at the mountains, and be reminded that God created his world by speaking. I sit there on that green, oftentimes by myself, looking out across the valley and thinking about the mountaintop experiences that we get to have with God. It’s a time of real reflection for me. It’s a time of walking and talking with God. I love to listen to his voice, and I hear his voice with pretty strong clarity.
Here’s a funny story: I was 150 yards out on a golf course when I grabbed my 8-iron, which would be the club I’d normally use in that situation. But the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said to hit the 9. I said, “Lord, I’ve never hit the 9-iron that far, but OK, you’re out here with me, so I’m going to do it.” I hit the prettiest 9-iron. It was like four feet from the hole. And of course, there was no one there to experience that except the Lord and me. Part of me wished someone else could have seen that, but I get it. I think the takeaway for me was to hear and obey. So I love to walk and to talk with the Lord, and in fact, I walk every day with him early in the morning for about 35 to 40 minutes. Why? Because God is my top priority.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?
For decades of my life, my kryptonite unquestionably has been feeling like I’m not enough, like I don’t matter. Interestingly, our whole ministry message, which became a movement, is You Matter. The takeaway for anyone reading this today is that, oftentimes in life, what we overcome becomes our platform.
In the Word, the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and the second is that you love your neighbor as you love yourself. I didn’t love myself, so I was incapable of loving anyone else. Why didn’t I love myself? The answer is that — and I’ve shared this over 4,200 times at events across the globe — at 15 years old, I was sexually abused. As a 4-year-old kid, I was emotionally abandoned. So I promised myself that I would never get hurt like that again and would bury the pain. But we all know that pain seeks pleasure, and my drug of choice was lying. I lied more than I ever told the truth. In fact, people had to catch me telling the truth because I lied so much. I lied because I didn’t like myself and, as a result, couldn’t love others. I thought, Well, if I don’t like me, there’s no way you’re going to like me, so I’m going to create this fake plastic person driven by ego. This was my way of overcompensating for my insecurity — because when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was someone who was broken. I saw shame.
Then, 22 years later, I walked down aisle 21 at Home Depot, turned right and walked right into the person who had sexually abused me when I was 15, when my life unraveled. I learned a lesson that I’ve shared with millions of people, and it’s this: if you and I do not deal with our emotions, our emotions will deal with us. I had to learn how to let my guard down again and let people in, and I couldn’t hide behind a microphone or a big stage with a lot of people watching and listening. I had to come down from my spiritual platform and get real. I had to get in the dirt and get messy.
I went through significant seasons of constantly making sure my ego was in check, making sure what I was doing was for the right motivation. It’s not to be seen for me, it’s not for me to have a name out there. It is to lift up the name of Jesus and to hopefully offer young people a lifeline.
Here’s the reality: if a teenager does not feel heard or seen, then by default, they’ll buy into the lie that their life doesn’t matter. So I’m on this audacious, crazy campaign from God to eradicate hopelessness and end teenage suicide by speaking truth wherever we go. That all took on a life of its own as I worked on getting free from me and overcoming that which was trying to overcome me. We teach young people how to do that — by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. So if you’re going to have a weakness — and we all have them — it doesn’t do any good to hide them or to ignore them or just assume they’ll go away. They don’t. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of faith. And it requires you to stop relying on yourself and start relying on the One who can truly deliver.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
My current obsession is hearing God. Here’s the cool thing about God: he will speak to anyone. He’s no respecter of persons. I believe the most important thing any human will ever do is hear the voice of God, and the second most important thing is to obey what they just heard.
When I was 21 years old, I was on a search. I had whatever society says makes you successful. The company I worked for had two airplanes. We had a condo in Florida. I was dating great-looking girls. I had plenty of money. But the truth is that all the stuff I owned had a hold on me. I had grown up in church, and I was in church every time the doors were open. I grew up in a Christian family, and I went to Christian schools, but the truth is I didn’t know God. The children of Israel got to see what God did, but Moses got to understand why God did it. I knew about God, but I didn’t know God.
So one day at 21, I said a simple prayer: “I don’t think you’re real, but if you are, prove it.” Two weeks later, I was in my office dialing a phone when I heard the audible voice of God say, “Call Mom.” I swung around in my chair to see who was in my office, the hair on the back of my head standing up. I knew I had just been given an instruction. I dialed my parents’ number, and the phone rang several times. On the eighth ring, my mother answered. When she said hello, I knew instantly something was terribly wrong. I could tell by her voice that she wasn’t herself. I soon learned that at the precise moment God told me to call my mom, she was attempting suicide.
I ran out of my office, got in my car, drove up I-75, and for the first time in a long time, there were no lies. There was no pretense. There was nothing superficial about me. I was hitting rock bottom, and I said, “God, I can’t save my mom, but can you please help her.” I drove in my parents’ neighborhood, and from the outside, it seemed fine. But inside, my mom was dying. I see the same thing in millions of people and teenagers. From the outside, they appear to have it all together, but on the inside, they’re facing their own private wars.
That day, I got my mom to a hospital, where a doctor worked on her for 45 minutes. Afterward, the doctor walked over to my dad and said, “There’s no medical reason I should be able to tell you this, but your wife is alive. She’s fine. It’s a miracle of God.” I heard “miracle of God,” and I just looked up and said, “You’ve got to be kidding — you’re real.”
That started me on this journey. What I just shared with you is what I share every day on the road, through media and in our books. We are working diligently right now, as we always do every year. I’ll do 180 events this year on the road in high schools, Teen Challenge centers and prisons. We’re on something called the Pando App in prisons. There are 750,000 tablets in prisons across America today, and on every one of those tablets is the Pando App, where we’re reaching hundreds of thousands of people who are locked up in very hopeless situations. In the last 22 months, we’ve had 125 million views of our videos on social media.
We’re passionately pursuing social and all that comes with it, but the thing I’m most passionate and excited about is a book I’ve just written. It’s my 33rd book, and it’s titled “You Matter: Finding Hope and Meaning in Everyday Life.” This book is a testimony, but it’s also 16 words that will change anyone’s life. Those words come from Job 33:4, which says, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Every day, I stand before teenagers, and they ask me afterward, “How do you know that I matter? You don’t even know me.” And I always smile and say, “That’s the easiest question I’ll ever answer. You matter for one reason: you’re breathing. God has never made a mistake, and he created you on purpose, with purpose and for purpose.”
This book, which is set to come out within the next few months, is the legacy and heartbeat of our ministry. We are called to Ezekiel 3:10,11 with a message of Job 33:4 and a mandate of Proverbs 24:11, all for the purpose of 2 Timothy 4:5. I know exactly why I get to do what I do every day.
What makes our ministry a little different is that we never charge anybody anything. Never have, never will. I’ve spoken over 4,200 times. We’ve had over 300,000 teenagers give their hearts to the Lord so far. We’ve had 156,000 students choose not to commit suicide after hearing our message of hope. I’ve already talked to you about social media. That’s kind of the heartbeat of what we do; it’s what our team works on every single day. But the revelation in Job 33:4, coupled with my personal testimony, created the “You Matter” book, and I can hardly wait for it to come out and start doing what I know God wants to do with it.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
He invigorates my work because I invest in time with him every day. You and I will spend for the immediate, but we will invest for the long term. So walking with him, praying in my office, praying on the road. Just last night, I was ministering at a youth service, and I had an idea of what I was going to talk about, but by the time the service was over and our team was back together, I looked at God and said, “I never got to say what I thought I was going to say.” He took it in a whole different direction, but teenagers were born again, suicides were stopped, people who had been cutting themselves stopped.
The reinvigoration is a continual process of being in his presence. I do it through worship. I used to be the road manager for a Grammy Award-winning Christian artist, and I traveled the world with him and learned about the power of music. Since that season of working with him, I dove deeper into what God wanted to teach me about music and why it was so important to my time with the Holy Spirit. Here’s what I learned: when we praise God, we enter his presence. When we worship God, he enters our presence. When I’m worshiping, I’m not asking for anything. I’m just wanting him. The Bible teaches us that in the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy. The joy of the Lord is the strength of his people.
The takeaway for me is if I want to get strong, I’ve got to be in his presence. You can’t give the way we give to as many audiences as we do without taking time to fill yourself back up. It’s a constant tension between listening and then going out and saying what he wants me to say. What’s really amazing is there’s never been one time in all 33 years of doing these events when he has not been right there and shown me what to say — and, in many instances, shown me to whom I needed to say it in an audience.
You want a quick testimony about that? I was speaking at a large Christian convention in Dallas. When I was done speaking, many students came back to our table to look at our resources. I noticed a young lady at the end of the table. Every time students left, she moved a little closer down. The Holy Spirit said to me, “Don’t you dare leave. This is important.” She walked up to me and said hi. I replied, “Hi, what’s your name?” She said, “Megan.” I said, “I have a daughter named Megan. We call her Maggie. How old are you?” She said, “I’m 14.” She said, “I really liked what you said tonight. Thank you for telling me that I matter.” I said, “You do matter, sweetheart, and I’m glad I got to come to your convention.” She said, “I listened to you. Will you listen to me?” I said, “Absolutely.” She began to unpack her story, and in talking with me, her eyes filled with tears, and then my eyes filled with tears, thinking, How can a 14-year-old kid endure what she’s told me she’s endured? She says, “Can I show you something on my wrist?” She pulled her sleeve back, revealing her wrist. She had been cutting herself, and it was horrific. I said, “Why do you cut yourself?” And the answer she gave me stunned me. She said, “I hurt myself to stop the pain.”
Whenever a teenager tells me they’ve been cutting, I ask them that same question: “Why do you hurt yourself?” All of them say the same thing: “I hurt myself to stop the pain.” But with Megan, we went one step further. She said, “You really believe I matter?” I said, “Sweetheart, I don’t just believe it — I know it.” She said, “I’m going to trust you. I want to give you something.” Out of her book bag, she pulled out a bloodstained razor blade, handed it to me and said, “I don’t want to hurt myself anymore because I know I matter.” I stood there with tears in my eyes, and still to this day, after all these years, I carry that razor blade with me. I saw this little kid who was in so much pain and was hurting herself, but she somehow came face to face with truth, and in embracing that truth, the Holy Spirit got it into her heart, and that truth set her free.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
There’s no question. It’s the combination of the Word, worship and time in prayer with him. I do that often in my office. I have an office away from everybody. Oftentimes, I’ll put a sign on my door, and if it’s there, people know to keep walking because I’m with God. I often pray in our boat, too, because I enjoy the water. Many, many times when I’m in town, if my wife is doing something with our kids or grandkids and she can’t get with me, I’ll meander up to the lake and take our boat out. I’ll get out in the middle of the lake by myself, and I’ll turn the engine off, and the Lord will just kind of block off that space of the lake for me so that there’s nobody there. I’ll sit in the sunshine and just bask in his glory and talk with him. I’ll take my phone and start taking notes because he’ll start talking to me.
Many times, especially in ministry, people are hurting, and they’re afraid to let their guard down. They’re afraid of letting others in for fear of being judged or thought of as less than. How many people — whether they’re in full-time, fivefold ministry or in their lane doing what God’s called them to do — never take the time to sit back and rest? If you and I don’t rest, God won’t work. The Bible is clear. Our labor is to enter into his rest. He’s already done it. Our job is to say, “OK.”
The Lord gave me Matthew 10:8 at the start of my ministry in January of 1993. Part of that verse says, “Freely you have received, freely give.” And God said to me, “Dean, you are never to charge anyone for your ministry.” Man, that freaked me out. I thought, OK, I’ll do that, but I’ll never get married or have a family or a car. But at least I get to work for you. It took me years to learn how to even begin the process of rest. I’m not there yet, but it’s a journey. When I rest, I just say, I trust you, Lord.
Right now, God has me meditating on and studying one word that fits into this: surrender. That means wholly surrendering my life and saying, “Not my will, but yours.” I look at Jesus’ life in ministry. He was flawless because everything he did was motivated by love. He only said what he heard his Father say. He only did what he saw his Father do. Those three very simple, profound truths set him apart from everybody else. He did that as Jesus, the Son of Man, which gives us the opportunity to walk in love, to hear his voice, to obey his voice and to do what he tells us to do.
What does time with God in your office look like?
Music is always playing when I’m in that mode. I have a pen, I have my Bible, and I have three or four pieces of blank paper. I worship God and begin by simply saying, “Lord, I’m here for you, and I don’t want anything from you. I just want your presence. And Lord, if there’s anything that you want to tell me to do, if there is any place you want me to go, if there are any instructions, I’m ready to write it down. But right now, this time is your time, and I would rather have your presence than anything else.”
Whenever I do that, by the time I finish up with him, I have pages of notes. He drops in my heart. I’m convinced of this: those droplets from heaven would not hit my heart, much less the paper, or ever get done if I didn’t schedule time with him. We all schedule our lives based upon priorities, based upon things we want to do. If the most important relationship on the planet is between you and Jesus and we don’t take time to be with him, how will we ever know what to do? Here’s what gets me out of bed in the morning: there will be a day when I stand before God and will hear either, “Well done” or “What were you thinking?”
I don’t want people to think I do it right every day. There are many days I should have stayed in God’s presence longer, or I get busy or distracted. Just because you stand behind a podium and have a microphone and cameras on you doesn’t make you any more special than a greeter at Walmart. We all have a job to do. The Bible says, “The eye can’t say to the ear or the hand to the foot, ‘I don’t need you.’” If the people reading this aren’t doing what they’re called to do, we’re all missing something.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
First and foremost, the introduction to the Holy Spirit. I’ll never forget being prayed for when I was at a church in Vero Beach, Florida, on a Sunday night and got baptized in the Holy Spirit. My life went into a meteoric rise in pursuing Jesus, and the Word became alive to me.
I also watched people and began to ask myself, What are the common denominators? Why is their life successful? Why is their ministry successful? Why is their impact so much greater than maybe someone else? And I did my homework and realized everything they do is based on the Word of God.
My testimony when God spoke to me to call Mom is another thing that so changed my life.
Next is a book I read by Og Mandino called “Spellbinder’s Gift.” I’ve read it three times because it inspired me so much. It talks about this character who was created as a speaker and not only had a great gift but was also moved with compassion. The people I have watched over the years who are used mightily by God are not only in the Word and prayer, but they’re also full of compassion. That comes straight from the New Testament. If you study the life of Jesus, you’ll see he was moved with compassion and healed people. He was moved with compassion and raised the dead. And so for me, it’s all about the heart. It’s not about who knows us. I often tell teenagers, “If you’re still counting your likes, you have no idea how loved you are.”
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
Technology for me is social media. That’s where my audience lives. The average teenager will spend five to nine hours a day on their phone every day. What we don’t talk about is that, every day in America, 5,600 teenagers attempt suicide. An arena that seats 12,000 people could fill up every two and a half days with teenagers who, in the previous 60 hours, bought the lie and ended their lives. So for me, the tech world is critically important because it’s a direct link to reaching all of those students. That’s who I wrote my latest book for. And how do you get a book to everyone, everywhere? Technology. You make it available online.
That said, we all still need time away from technology. The most peaceful times in my life are when I turn off my telephone, iPad and computer and go outside. I did that one day at our home, and as I was walking, I saw a large oak tree that was missing a lot of its bark in one specific area. I walked by it, and the Holy Spirit stopped me. He said, “Look at it.” And I looked inside of that area where the bark once was, and I saw the smallest red ladybug. I thought, You know, Lord, six months ago, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the tree, much less the ladybug. Why are you showing this to me? And he said to me, “I want you to be constantly mindful of the seemingly small and insignificant things on this journey called life.” At that moment, without a phone or any of those distractions, I was able to hear from the Lord. Had I been on my phone, I would have missed one of the greatest life lessons in my life.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
You can expect even more books, more social media content, more events on the road and more sharing the message that: “God loves you. He’s got a plan for your life, and because you’re breathing, you matter.” And through all of that, the one thing that I am trusting God to give us more than anything else is more connection at the heart level with the audience that we get to reach every day.
We don’t need anyone to convince us that this world is broken. So very broken. As a result of that brokenness, 40% of high school students regularly feel sad or hopeless, and nearly 1 in 5 teenagers engages in self-harm.
While there are innumerable factors that can play into a young person’s pain, true healing is found in one person: Jesus.
“Come to me,” he says, “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28,29, ESV).
Since January of 1993, Dean Sikes has been on the road, ministering words of hope in high schools, Teen Challenge Centers and prisons across America and in nations of the world. He’s spoken at over 4,200 events, sharing the You Matter message with millions of teenagers. In addition to his road outreach, Dean also hosts YOU MATTER Television, a national television broadcast, and reaches tens of millions of people on social media. A published author, Dean has written 33 books for teens and their families. Together with his wife, Lori, the Sikes family makes their home in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
