What happens when the life you thought you could control begins controlling you?
In Surrender Control - God's Way Is Best, Peter Schwarzenbart shares his deeply personal testimony of alcoholism, destructive choices, incarceration, broken relationships, and the life-changing moment when he finally stopped trying to run his life his own way and surrendered completely to Jesus Christ.
For years, Peter appeared successful on the outside. He built a career in accounting, raised a family, attended church, and considered himself a Christian. But beneath the surface, perfectionism, obsessive behavior, alcohol, lust, dishonesty, and an overwhelming need for control were slowly consuming his life.
Even repeated consequences, including multiple OWI offenses, jail sentences, counseling, divorce, and career loss, were not enough to produce lasting change.
Everything changed after his fifth OWI in November 1998. Facing the consequences of his choices once again, Peter reached the place where he could no longer pretend his way was working. In a jail cell, the man who had spent years insisting, "I was in charge," finally cried out to Jesus and surrendered control.
That surrender became the turning point in his life.
Peter's story did not end in a jail cell. Years later, he walked back through jail doors voluntarily this time as a Christian ministry volunteer offering other men the hope that had transformed his own life. His journey eventually grew into years of jail ministry, Christian mentorship, and leadership with God Before Anything (GBA) Ministry.
Surrender Control - God's Way Is Best is more than a story of one man's past. It is a testimony about accountability, repentance, grace, obedience, recovery, spiritual transformation, and learning the difference between simply knowing about Jesus and truly allowing Him to be Lord of your life.
Peter does not hide the difficult parts of his story or glorify his past. Instead, he shares them to point readers toward the God who met him in his brokenness and gave his life a new direction.
For anyone struggling with addiction, guilt, shame, destructive patterns, incarceration, or the exhausting need to control everything, Peter's testimony carries a message of hope:
Your past does not have to determine the direction of your future.
Sometimes the greatest turning point begins when you finally surrender control.
God's way is best.
