Please find below, my friends testimony - its not just about how he became a chrisitian but after, till now and how his journey has taken place. His journey of freedom in addiction and his journey with following Christ.
If you would like your testimony featured please contact me from the contacts form. Enjoy reading!
'Firstly I just want to say I know that the following makes me very vulnerable, but honestly without honesty will there ever be change?
Growing up life was pretty average, school, holiday’s, smoking cannabis from the age of 13 and drinking alcohol from 15, okay maybe that isn’t such an average start to life, to be fair if we think about our friends we were getting smashed with then it may seem normal but I think from an older age now we can see that drugs and alcohol from a young age can teach addictions to entrench our mind-set. I grew up in a family which looked after me well and the general teaching was that there is no God although there was a little use of the other spiritual practices, but I was brought up being told there is no God and so this I believed. Let’s jump in to the story then so I left University early due to a motorbike accident (Healed now:) and when I came back down South suddenly ecstasy was the drug of choice and everyone was on it, I would occasionally smoke weed but mainly drinking lager, until that one night when I said go on then let’s try half an ecstasy tablet… silly silly boy, well I mean of course I enjoyed it, so much so the following weekend I couldn’t wait to try it again, I became absolutely fixated on this little round tablet every weekend, we would also sniff coke on a weekend however at this point ecstasy was the choice. I do remember after a few years seeing a few of my mate’s mental health deteriorating and it wasn’t long until I started feeling paranoia and a little low (of course with all my serotonin being used up on the weekend) I then tried different ways of kicking the habit which didn’t go too well to be honest. In the end I lost my job and was unemployed, which in a way was a good thing as I couldn’t afford to go out on the weekends. At this time ecstasy was giving one of my mates headaches of massive proportions (a few others suffered from this also) so we simply smoked a bit of pot on the weekend, I was selling some watches on the side life was pretty easy to be honest no stress.
I remember one of my good mates Jimmy that I had known for years became a Christian and to be honest I thought that’s just weird, everything started changing he started caring about what he thought was right and wrong which was weird as he used to go large with everything you know, I even remember when he ate two king size kebabs! So Jimmy used to call me on a Saturday morning talking to me about this guy called Jesus, I asked questions like why is there so much suffering in this world, why do people die early, why doesn’t God show himself to me right now, after a while I said Jimmy I love you man but this isn’t for me, and he left me with ‘look and you’ll find.’
So one day I was filling out an application form, happy as pie to be honest with you, life was pretty easy, I looked over at the bookcase in front of me and thought I would take five minutes out and started flicking through a few books, ones that my Mum would read when I was a kid, books which I used from school and then I pulled out the family bible which looked like it hadn’t been open in a very long time, so I started reading from the start and in the genesis account on day five of creation I read that the water was teeming with life and I saw a drop of water hit the page, and another, and another one and realising this is coming from my eyes and at the same time I hear ‘look and you’ll find’ I rub the water from my eyes thinking is this God so I say okay God if you’re real then stand in front of me and I will forever follow you, I waited, and said okay I can appreciate if you really are God then you may not stand simply in front of me, but instead speaking out the addiction of ecstasy which was always lurking in the background I asked God to take this away as I knew this wasn’t good, and at that point it was like air going through my veins, like the most perfect purification as if I was taken up to a special place and in this moment of being in the presence of a Holy God I asked for forgiveness, and asked Jesus to come into my life, this felt amazing as if I had been carrying around the weight of all my sin in a heavy ruck sack; being flung of my back and me feeling completely and utterly free from the old and suddenly receiving love, an acceptance of love and peace that truly transcends all understanding. I went to Church with James and attended an Alpha course. Around the same time my Mum had been diagnosed with Osteoporosis and speaking to her on the phone, well I’ve never heard my Mum cry before and boy for a tough lady she was in a lot of pain. So at Alpha somebody asked if anyone wanted prayer and with the smallest amount of faith I could muster I said about my Mum who was crying on the phone last night and a very simple prayer was said. Speaking to my Mum on the weekend my Mum firstly told me that she hasn’t had pain since Thursday morning, of course I was blown away as we prayed the previous evening, a routine bone density scan the following week showed that my Mum no longer had osteoporosis. Okay now you would imagine that seeing God heal my Mum and my addictions that I would then be running for God thereafter, well yes and no, honestly in the past I have been a specialist at stuffing things up! So I gave my life to Jesus, running the race for a year and a half which was an incredible time of seeing countless miracles as God stepped in to reality, friends becoming Christian and a happiness that I had never known before.
However, stuff up time! So I ended up in this relationship with a girl which was a little un-godly to be honest, me and a couple of mates ended up bringing a new music scene down to Bournemouth called bassline breaks which God clearly spoke to me saying to choose between the music or him however stupid me chose the music, from there our nights grew allowing us to finally reside at the Opera House in Bournemouth (now the 02 Academy) we had the upstairs room which could hold around 500 people and one Friday night a month we lavished in what we were seeing as hundreds of people were dancing to this new style of music rather than the typical drum and bass scene which was clinched round Bournemouth at the time. We set up a website, internet radio station, were travelling around England and Spain and living it up, but of course those addictions are only going to get stronger and by this time coke was the choice of drug, so much so I was dealing it and knocking out two ounces a week which allowed me to enjoy all I wanted from Tuesday to Sunday night every week, you can imagine how that went, I lost multiple jobs, should have been making money yet rattled in to debt, one time the judge gave me maximum community punishment at the time of 300 hours (second time I was caught) and he said if he ever sees me again that I will go away to prison for a long time, this equally should have stopped me but it didn’t, and slowly but surely drugs carved out a side of me which I didn’t fully know who I was anymore. I haven’t got the space to write here but two times I was in a dangerous situation I called out to Jesus whilst I was far away from him deep in my sin, and both times he miraculously turned the situation round for me which I always kept a thankful heart to him for those times.
So fast forwards a few years and a couple of friends at work noticed my chain and the cross hanging down from it, they took me out for lunch and asked about my faith which I had locked in a box and kept in the loft it felt like. A couple of crazy spiritual things happened during the lunch break and I knew that I was living in a world of darkness yet could feel God’s light trying to penetrate in to my heart. I couldn’t stand this internal battle anymore and so gave my life back to Jesus. By this time my addictions were wildly out of control, I had a lot of coke at home still to sell, the Opera House had just closed its doors however another big club in Bournemouth The Consortium offered us a ridiculously good deal where we would have been making good money however I knew music and drugs were wrapped up together. I sold the drugs in one hit at the price I was getting it for and paid back my dealer, I walked away from the music scene giving up my old life.
To forward a little more, my addictions were taken away by God however over those next few years I did dabble and God kept on bringing me out of that way of life, in all honesty I do wish that I had simply accepted the first time he took away my addictions however I guess this story of my life wouldn’t quite be the same, I wouldn’t have been used by God as an instrument of his grace and mercy to see so many people giving their lives to Jesus thereafter and being set free of their sin and of their pain. I now stand in a life where I have enough a money to live, a new career in social care that is panning out quite nicely, a lovely girlfriend who I really don’t deserve, stories after stories of praying for people who have been healed or who have given their lives to Jesus seeing that at the cross he did everything that was required for us to share in the peace and freedom that can only come from heaven. I think it’s important to add that I’m being vulnerable in the same way vulnerability set me free. I’m not talking about taking a tablet that releases you from your addictions, neither a nice experience but instead that Jesus removes sin out of the equation so all which is left is a relationship with Father God in Heaven. Free I am, and this free gift of mercy and grace won by Jesus is freely available to you too.'
If you would like to know more feel free to contact me Steve; steveewin@hotmail.com
