How Prayer, Tough Love and a Song Brought Artist Back to Faith, Sobriety

Published: June 19, 2026

By Shawn Smith

CCM artist Zach Williams is a living testimony to keep praying for your prodigal children, no matter how far they have strayed from God’s path.

“I can remember one morning in particular that I was still drunk the next morning from going out and playing a show, but I missed work, and I think you came over,” Williams recalled, referring to his father, Steve. “I stumbled down our stairs, you know, almost fell down the stairs…and then Dad sits, you know, in our living room, and prays.”

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Despite growing up in a Christian home, where his father was a worship pastor, Zach fell into the party lifestyle. It escalated when he started touring with a rock band, but his parents never gave up hope for their son and kept praying for him — just like that night.

“We probably had a good cry that day, prays with me and my wife, and the second he leaves, you know, I go light a joint,” the singer said.

His wife of nearly twenty years Crystal confronted him soon after.

“[M]y wife was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? You need your butt kicked. Look, they love you, they’re praying for you every day, and you’re doing this’” the Grammy-winning artist said. “So that was kind of where I was at that time in my life.”

It wasn’t until he was traveling through Spain with his band at the time that his parent’s prayers started to be answered.

“I realized that nothing in my life represented a walk with Christ,” Zach told Decision. “And I just remember saying, ‘God, if You’re real, and You’re who You say You are, and You can prove it to me, I’ll leave this lifestyle behind, and I’ll follow You.”

“And out of nowhere, I heard this song by Big Daddy Weave called ‘Redeemed’ that came across the radio,” the “Chain Breaker” singer recalled. “I was like, ‘Man, this is not a coincidence. You don’t hear a song like this in Europe, of all places.’ I had never heard Christian music over there, and I went back to the hotel and listened to the lyrics of the song, over and over. I felt like God was saying, ‘I see you in a way that you’ll never see yourself,’”

After that encounter with the Lord, he called his wife to let her know that he was quitting the band and that they needed to start going to church.

“I remember walking in the door and just busting into tears and just asking for forgiveness from my wife and kids and just apologizing for the past and all the wrongs I’d done. I felt horrible,” Williams told CBN.

Both he and Crystal both accepted Christ and started to attend church. He credits Christ for strengthening his marriage and family.

“Since I hit the ground and fell on my hands and knees that day in my bedroom in 2012, it’s been one thing after another that God has just shown up and really done in my life, and in my family’s life,” Zach said. “He’s strengthened my marriage, my relationship between me and my wife…It’s been so humbling. Just to know that He hears your prayers and your cries.”

As Zach’s parents Steve and Jenia will tell anyone, and as they attest to in their 30-Day devotional God’s Heart for the Prodigal, don’t stop praying for the salvation of those you love.

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