Seventh Day Slumber wasn’t kidding when they titled their latest album Once Upon a Shattered Life. Each of the four guys in the band has a story that speaks of a broken life restored by the healing power of Christ. Yet all four band members agree that their ministry centers around the life story of lead singer Joseph Rojas, a once hopeless felon rescued from the brink of death by God’s grace.
Shattered
For most of his life, Joseph was an outsider who never got picked for anything. He remembers standing with his brother as the two coolest kids in the neighborhood lined up everybody to choose teams for a game.
“My brother was the tall, skinny nerd who worked on computers,” Joseph says. “And I was this short, fat kid who waddled to the line.”
He and his brother waited as sides were chosen. When the Rojas brothers were the only ones left standing, the other kids told them they could watch or go home.
“I remember my heart being broken,” Joseph says, but the feeling was nothing new to the boy whose father left when he was 3.
“My only memories of my father were of him beating my mother, and I grew up with that theme playing over and over again in my head,” Joseph says. “I didn’t know anything about God.”
The abuse and loneliness took their toll on the young boy, and his life spiraled downward with each passing year. He began feeling overwhelmed by hopelessness when he was 12 years old. By 14 Joseph was using cocaine to try to stop the pain. The next step was selling drugs as a 16-year-old. He was arrested and spent time in and out of treatment centers, jails and institutions.
Too Late?
Throughout Joseph’s struggles, his mother was looking for a way to help him. She eventually found her way to church where she gave her life to Jesus. She hoped Joseph could find the same hope.
“She told me about Jesus every day for three years,” Joseph says.
But he wasn’t listening — until he hit rock bottom after stealing from his mom to get money to buy drugs.
“I took a lethal dose of cocaine, hoping that my mother wouldn’t be the one to find me, and she walked in unexpectedly,” Joseph says. “She was screaming out to God to save my life.”
Lying on the verge of death in the back of an ambulance, he says he felt the power of God hit him. “I knew that Jesus was real. And I said, ‘Would You save me?’ “
Joseph smiles and says, “That was the first time in my life I felt like I got picked.”
Restored
The road out of addiction wasn’t easy, but Joseph says the transformation was powerful.
“Giving my life to Jesus changed my life so dramatically that people who knew me before can’t believe I’m the same person,” he says. “They have no choice, they say, but to believe in Jesus.”
Joseph’s spiritual growth continued at a Bible college in Dallas. It was there that he also began to hone his musical skills and offer them for God’s use.
Now Joseph tells his story from the stage at every Seventh Day Slumber show. Afterward, the entire band stays for as long as it takes to speak to everyone who wants to talk. Each of the guys is able to share his own story and connect with kids who need to know someone loves them.
Joseph estimates that the band has seen about 20,000 people respond to altar calls after he has shared his testimony. “That’s a small stadium filled with people who have committed their lives to Jesus at our concerts,” Joseph says. “How amazing is that?”
The band hopes its musically based efforts will continue to connect people to God’s transforming power.
“We’re just a bunch of guys who are leaning on God’s grace, and we can attest to His incredible power in forgiveness,” Joseph says. “We want Once Upon a Shattered Life to testify that God wants everyone to let Him in and [to encourage everyone] to pray that whatever’s messing them up gets turned around. I can promise from personal experience: That’s exactly what God will do.” 
