This is a testimony as to how I came to know Jesus as my personal Saviour.
Before you flick off the page because it is so big, please save it to your hard drive, that way you can read it later. Many thanks and all the glory goes to God.
This is a not too short an account of how I came to know Jesus. I will give you a few details of my life before knowing Christ, but will centre on the time between January and May of 1993.
I grew up being part of a family that believed in Jesus. We would go to Church every Sunday and sit in the pews. To me and my brother who is four years younger than I, it was not what you might call exciting. We went, but much more out of duty than of love.
My brother Michael, was from the early age of four what we call in England, a prodigal. Not someone who has returned, but a genius. He could read music from that age and astounded his musical teachers with his ability to be able to play that the most complicated tunes, having only heard them a few times. He would not need the music, he would just listen, and then play it back to them on the piano.
No one can tell another child who is in that situation that they are not second best. It just starts to grow inside you like a rotten seed.
This seed grew and grew during my years of growing up. When my brother graduated for the Royal Northern School of music, this was the icing on the cake so to speak. I really wanted to feel that I was just as much loved as he was, but I never seemed to be able to make my parents feel as proud of me as they were, obviously were, of him.
By the age of 16 I was a complete loner. Barring one friend called Craig I had none! I would go out at night and spend time on my own.
The thought behind this can still rule me now, if I let it. If I was on my own, I could not let anyone down. I could not fail anyone, I could be me without having to try to be someone or something I was not. In other words I would hide away.
By the age of 18 I was bordering on alcoholism and totally addicted to one arm bandits. I could get paid on a Friday night and by the time I got home I would only have the money for my rent. The rest was already in the bandits! I could not bring my self to really open open to anyone.
There was no-one!
I cannot say that my life was in danger from drugs or even from the drink, it never got that bad. The only danger to my life was me. I had become convinced that I was either homosexual or just the sort of person no-one else wanted to be with,especially the opposite sex .
When I was 21 years old I started a relationship that lasted for four years. From the start my parents hated the girl and could not bring themselves to accept her two children into their lives. I cut myself off from them and refused to have any thing more to do with them. This separation lasted for over two years and caused much pain within my extended family. I was seen by many as being a trouble causer, and few people could see why I could not get on with my mother and father.
Their rejection of my girlfriend was the last straw to me.
Not accepting me for who I was was one thing, but not accepting my girlfriend was another.
The relationship with this girl was doomed from the start, I now see that what my parents were seeing was the differences between us to, something I was blind to.
On April 22nd1991 my son Ashley was born, this was up to that date the happiest day of my life. He was a perfect birth and a perfect son, everything I ever wanted. When the relationship with his mother started to break down he was only 18 months old, he knew very little about it.
This didn't help me much. His mother had promised me that if we ever broke up she would allow me to see him, no problems, no questions.
When we did break up on January 1st 1993, all that changed. I didn't see him for over four months. I had never had him out of my sight for more than 12 hours at a time during those first 18 months. If you do not have kids you may not understand this, if you do, no need to say anymore.
During the first few months of 1991 I ploughed my way back into the dance scene and the drinking. I would go out five or six nights a week, always coming home drunk. I had no contact with my ex girl friend, she had disappeared. What was there to live for.
If Jesus would have revealed himself to me at this time it would have been wrong. One reason only. I still hadn't figured out that if I loved a person that did not mean they would love me back. It sounds very naive to expect this, but I did, it hurt when all these people ever did to me, was use me.
By the end of January I had found a new girlfriend, totally on the rebound. I thought I loved her, but in reality she was just taking the place of what and whom I had lost. When in May, I found out that she was going behind my back with other men, I felt my life was finally over.
Seven years earlier I had been involved in a very serious road accident, in which I damaged my back. I was taking very strong pain killers for this and had a supply of over one hundred.
On the Friday night of May 13th I came to the conclusion that the only option open to me was to go home and kill my self! Two friends of mine decided that was not such a good idea.
They insisted I come home with them and spend the night at their place. I did this, but had the intention of going home on the Saturday morning and fulfilling my inner wishes.
I arrived at my flat about dinner time, and as I walked through the outer door a gentleman from the top flat met me on the stairs.
His name was Tony, and up to this time I had hardly spoken to him. He seemed like a nice guy, and for some very strange reason I asked him if I could have a few moments of his time.
Looking back, there was no real reason why I should have trusted him. I did not know he was a Christian! I did not know him at all !!!!
We spent five hours talking through my hurt and pain. If he would have told me that Jesus could take that pain away I would have left. He did not preach the Bible to me one bit.
He simply said one thing.
Why don't you come to Church with me tomorrow?
I thought to myself, " well, why not, the tablets can wait until tomorrow night". I agreed to go.
That night I spent hours telling Tony all about my relationship with the mother of my son, and of the relationship I had had on the rebound.
I explained to him the very deep hurts I had inside of me, including the feeling of always being second best, always feeling rejected.
On the Sunday night we arrived at Church early, and as I sat there I must admit it did feel peaceful. The worship scene lasted for about half an hour, and as I watched the people jumping up and down to the music, waving their hands, it all seemed a long way from the Church I had been used to.
I said something that I have heard many people say since, "they do seem to have something that I don't".
When the pastor started to preach I must admit that at first I wasn't really listening. That soon changed as little by little he started to say things that sounded familiar.
At first I thought, Oh, that's strange, I said that to Tony last night. When the pastor had repeated my exact sentences word for word, over five or six times I had had enough. I grabbed hold off Tony and hauled him to the back of the Church.
I was screaming at him, " why have you told him everything about me. I told you those things in confidence. You had no right to tell him those things."
He replied, "I haven't told him anything, I have been with you since yesterday and I don't have a telephone".
It was at this precise moment that I realised it was not the pastor speaking to me, but it was God. The pastor could not have known what I had said to Tony the night before, and even if he had it would have been, (if you will forgive the pun), a miracle for him to repeat my sentences word for word. If this seems strange then what happened next is even stranger.
Instead of staying in the Church, I ran!
I run as fast as I could to the only person I knew who really believed in God. This lady's name was Carol, and she was a Jehovah's witness!
I didn't understand the difference between a J W, a Pentecostal, or any other kind of faith for that matter. To me all I wanted was to speak to someone I trusted, and who believed in God.
If anyone tells you that a Jehovah's witness cannot be used by God, then I am living proof that is not true. Carol asked me, " do you think you heard from God tonight "? I had no choice but to say yes. Her reply was that I should go for it then.
The following day I went to Tony's flat to speak to him about the meeting.
When I got there we were alone, but within a few minutes Christians started to arrive at his flat totally out of the blue.
Tony had not invited them, nor was he expecting them, they just turned up not really knowing why they had come. When the room was quite full one of them asked the question that all the rest were dying to ask.
"Chris, do you know Jesus! Would you like me to pray for you, I can help you get to know him".
Everything inside of me wanted to reply no, but my spirit said yes, and so we started to say the sinners prayer together. I knew that the people in that room had instantly become my new family. They were no longer strangers with whom I had nothing in common.
Over the next four years these people would become very close friends and play a major part in my life. Many people say that after they have said that prayer they feel no different. Well I felt different, I felt so different I started running round the town telling my friends!
The friends who had put me up on the Friday night, they thought I had won the lottery.
They couldn't understand why I was so happy after being so suicidal only 48 hours earlier.
I am now seventeen years old in the Lord, and like so many Christians if I were to tell you that life since I first got Born Again had been a ball, full of happiness and no sadness, that would be a lie.
Life still has its ups and downs, its trials and tribulations, but now I have a captain. Maybe soon I will submit a poem I wrote entitled, " Captain of my ship". Without spoiling the poem, Jesus is the captain of my ship. When I take the controls back off him I commit mutiny. This ship is no longer mine, it belongs to Him, and only he can steer it on the right course. Please believe me that in the past ten years I have many times committed mutiny, and many times this ship has hit rocks and sank.
The good news is that He's always rescues me, always repairs the ship, and then we carry on our journey together. If I were to leave out the events between September 20th and November 25th of 1996 I would be leaving out the most precious gift God has given me.
When I met Odette on the 20th she had no real feelings towards God or Jesus, she was a young lady enjoying life without a spiritual existence. Within seven or eight weeks God had used me to bring her to him. On November 25th 1996 we were married! We did not see the point in hanging around, waiting until everyone else knew we loved each other.
As far as we were concerned we knew it, and God knew it, what had it to do with anyone else. If they did not like us getting married so soon after knowing each other only seven weeks, well that was their problem.
We have had times of troubles during these last two years, but always we have both know that God is with us. When we are walking in the spirit it is quite easy to feel God's presence, but some times God shouts things to us and we don't hear.
When that happens and we go off in a wrong direction, it is awesome just what lengths God will go to, just to get our attention.
I could write over six or seven pages of testimony concerning what the world would describe as coincidence. There are no coincidences in God's kingdom, it is God's sense of knowing what we need and when we need it.
I submit this testimony to Jesu's love and determination to win the people of this world. In one Corinthians 13 it says, that love always perseveres, that love never fails.
I may not always persevere with my faith, I may fall, but my God will always persevere, for He is love and He never fails. He will never fail me!