Jack Cassidy was raised with two major influences passed on from his family: Jesus and music.
Much of his family is musically talented: Cassidy is the grandson of singer-actress Shirley Jones and the nephew of former pop stars David Cassidy and Shaun Cassidy. Jones and David Cassidy starred together in the musical sitcom “The Partridge Family” in the 1970s.
“Growing up in the Cassidys was interesting,” Jack Cassidy, who shares a name with his late actor-singer grandfather, said during a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “It was … definitely its own unique experience.
“My parents tried to keep me very, very grounded and really instilled what was important, which is just normal family life and love.
“Mom sent me to a church camp called Forest Home. She thought me and our family needed Christ because we were going through some rough stuff. And she’s like, ‘Hopefully my kids can find Jesus.’”
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The camp helped Cassidy do just that.
“I just said yes, but from there my prayer became a prayer for evidence,” he said. “And over the next few years, I just got flooded with those evidences. Jesus showing up in very miraculous ways in my life and — and giving me peace in the midst of chaotic circumstances. And it just definitely affirmed for me that there was power in the name of Jesus.”
During his high school years, Cassidy put his singing talent to work as a worship leader. When he was 17, he learned he had been accepted as a contestant on Season 12 of NBC’s “The Voice,” and his opportunities exploded.
“I had never done anything in the music business before,” Cassidy said. “And, you know, trying to succeed on that show, or win that show was definitely the goal, it was like, ‘Oh, I definitely belong here.’
“I was working with other artists and working with the coaches, and it was like, this is — this is where I fit in. This is, this is who God created me to be.”
It came as quite a blow, then, when Cassidy made it to the top 12 but was then eliminated. Everything had seemed so providential and felt like where he was supposed to be that he lost his grounding when he didn’t make the cut, he said.
“I let that show get the better of me, and I just got caught up in — in that world,” Cassidy explained. “So, when things returned to a state of normalcy, it was, it was a much bigger fall.
“And I guess I was chasing that high again. And I was allowing myself to let my Christian guard down, and went to a lot of parties and interacted with a lot of worldly type things which was temporarily soothing the depression and the fall from that show that I was, that I was experiencing.”
And then he met his new obsession: cocaine. It was an instant connection — and something that quickly destroyed Cassidy’s life “in every aspect,” he said.
He lost money, integrity, friends and family. He distanced himself from the people who truly cared about him to focus on his addiction and try to drown his disappointment.
That went on for at least a year-and-a-half when Cassidy had quite the come-to-Jesus moment, facing possible death as a consequence of his own poor choices that forced him to claw back to his former faith.
“Found a new batch of drugs that was just a lot stronger, and I did one line that night that was — that was too much,” he said. “And I felt my whole body start to shut down and go cold. And my heart started uncontrollably pounding out of my chest. And it felt like it was, it was right on the verge of a heart attack. I felt like I, I couldn’t really call the ambulance or get any help.
“Even though I had buried God really deep in that season, I hit my knees in the midst of that full-blown chaos, and I just cried out to him and asked him to let me live, to save my life in a moment of total, total brokenness, total darkness, did not deserve to be saved.
“I got myself here. I felt the spirit come in in that moment and completely overpower the chaos and the drugs that I had put in my body. And the drugs were warring against me, trying to make my body shut down.
“But God was literally breathing life into me. His power in my spirit in the midst of all that is what was keeping me in a place of real peace, and — and calming my heart down, and keeping me literally alive.”
“And when Jesus showed up in such a radical way in the midst of that, it really made it really real and tangible that he was the way to life. Jesus showed that, ‘No, I’m — I’m Lord over that, and I can be Lord over all these things in your life,’” Cassidy said. “So it really established this — this deep-rooted trust in God.”
From that point, he realized that the escape cocaine offered wasn’t positive and that it would kill him with the promise of release. Sober since 2018, he has returned to music.
“He is willing to meet us in whatever place that we’re in,” Cassidy said. “And that varies for everyone. But for me, the darkest moments I walked through, he wanted to meet me and redeem me in that place. And he came with a spirit of kindness, a spirit of love, and a spirit of ‘I just want to help you.’
“And, and he’s willing to do that in whatever scenario people walk through.”
