God’s abundant grace is overwhelming and amazing - but in such a gentle way!  i had written in my journal before the residential about being open to God and recognising that when we say yes to him its like opening the sluice gates - well never a truer word!  God has blessed me this residential (Cheltenham) in so many amazing ways, with confirmations and wonderful pictures (one of me dancing with him!) and individual words given to the wonderful people on the residential with me that were just what i needed.  He is so good AND ive more or less done my essay too (well i think i have!) - Praise his Holy Name and God Bless WTC, thank you.

I am simply blown away by how God has met with me in such a deeper way at the recent residential. I thought 3 months into the course we had covered a lot of ground and I had no idea that getting closer to Him, trusting Him and letting go of control (it took me a few attempts!) would bring about such extra cleansing of the inner me which I had never expected or even realised that I needed. God met with me in ways that I had never experienced before. This is not just a theology course, this is a journey with God. Now, whilst I’m basking in post residential peace and joy, I need to crack on and write an essay…

I had completed and posted my essay about Benedictine monasticism last Sunday but when I came to print it off to hand to my Hub Director, my printer didn’t work so I e-mailed it to work to print there. After printing, I said to a non-Christian work colleague who had received several healings that I had finished my first ever Theological essay. The lady asked if she could read it and did so.

She got the the 5th page and suddenly said that 2 questions she had about Christianity had been answered! The lady completed reading the essay and was complementary about its readability.

It struck me suddenly that God had not only spoken to me in writing the essay but also someone else who had read it. I was reminded of how often we had been told that the marks of the essay aren’t the important thing but its what God does as you write the essay as an act of worship. My worries regarding what mark I may get for the work receded.

Thank you Lord

What I love about this course is that it includes not just Theology but it also looks at developing you as a person. Since digesting the results of the personality test that we completed, plus writing the ensuing Personal Development Plan as part of the Leadership and Ministry module, God has opened my eyes to areas within me that He can change for the better. Combined with the choice of essay title from the Creation and Worship module, the whole process has been not simply an intellectual exercise, but a time of change. God has spoken to me in more ways than one to the point where I feel like I am going through a car wash! The picture is not one of a car symbolising me going through the car wash, but my very own self travelling between the very large and furious washing brushes. This at times can feel cleansing but also exhausting! All this and only 2 months in! This course, if I keep to God’s plan for my personal development, will be one of the best investments that I have made in my lifetime. I am very pleased to have enrolled and I am looking forward to the next study sessions. (Reality check: to say this has been an easy time would be unrealistic. However, they say that nothing worthwhile is easy…).

During our hub night talk on prayer from a local practioner, a couple of fellow students shared how they subconsciously worship God during their sleep - if they woke during the night and when they woke in the morning, they found they were singing songs of praise to our Father. It has happened on occasion previously to me but since that night, it has been happening everyday!!! Praise our mighty, loving, living God.

I had struggled all day with lower adominal pain on my left side near my operation scar. No position or posture seemed to work. I came to the Hub sweating from the pain, asked my fellow students in my class to pray. They did and whilst they were praying, I started to smile and laugh. This was because I could feel a warmth all over me and heat in my hands. However, the most exciting feeling was one of an internal cooling that went from the top of my head to the souls of my feet. As it exited my body, I saw this monster-like creature exiting me on its fours with a long tail. It couldn’t look me in the eye but as I laughed at it, it started fleeing fast from me and I wanted to kick it but God just made me laugh more at it as it continued to flee in terror. I felt the pain in my side instantly disappear. To prove it, I was bending in all directions for my prayer warriors  to see and glorify God, which we did when I told them what was happening. Praise God for His healing me!!!!!

I was in the middle of a cluster migraine (which happen maybe 2/3 times a year), which had started on Friday night with a complete loss of sight on my left-hand side and major sickness.  An “ordinary” migraine, rather than a cluster, would continue for anything between 2 to 48 hours.  This time, however, it went away during Friday night, only to return on Saturday morning, Sunday evening and all day Monday.  Tuesday I was back at work but with a major headache and felt very sick during the day.  By the time worship started at the Hub I wasn’t able to stand to worship as the migraine was back (I felt very queasy and unsteady on my feet), so sat on the floor to worship instead.  During Paul’s lecture I couldn’t see him properly or wear my glasses as they were making me feel very ill and sat with my eyes closed for part of the time (I had already warned him, so he didn’t think I was going to sleep!).  At the end of the lecture someone asked if I wanted my migraine to be prayed for, I said yes and felt loads of hands touching me (no idea who!) and within a minute my migraine was gone and I was able to see properly.  It didn’t return for the rest of the evening and I was able to listen to Crispin’s lecture and take notes (I couldn’t really see the paper beforehand).  I’ve also been clear all today and able to work properly.

I think one of my first memories was that my parents worked in the pub industry. There were four sisters, two brothers and myself.  We had to fend for ourselves over the weekend between Thursday & Sunday, my brothers used to just disappear.  My older sister looked after us all. Fending for ourselves meant finding food, which as the only boy there I took it upon myself to go out and get food for us that led to me getting into trouble with the police.

Many a time the police would bring me home, tell my parents, my dad was quite a violent man, all he did was just beat us which made me resent them a lot more, instead of it teaching me a lesson it taught me to be more cunning and conniving, and about the 5^th or 6^th time the police brought me home, it got so bad that I would stay out on the streets and build dens on the croft, and stay out with all the guys that were getting into trouble, I was about 8 at the time. I was hanging round with guys that were 13-15 years old, who had run away from their homes and had been living on the streets, this became like a family.

So eventually I was taken before the courts and the courts had had enough of me, my parents couldn’t cope, so the only option left was to put me in care.

I went to a place called St Vincent’s, a place was found for me there. This consisted of about 35 boys between the ages of 10 and 16 quite scary; it was an old Victorian house.  I was quite fearful, the first couple of nights were really scary, it must have shown pretty bad because one of the care workers took an avid interest in me, comforting me at night time, little did I know that this was going to go on to be, what is called grooming, he was grooming me to abuse me.  Which he did do for the next 18 months, I was always running away every time he did it, I was always caught at the train station, in peoples gardens, always trying to get home, 10 years old 50 miles away from home, just run away from the kids home in my pyjamas, I always made it back to Manchester. Every time I got back, I was put in pyjamas and always made to wear these all day because I was a persistent runaway.

Because nothing was getting done about what was happening to me, I assumed it was part of being part of being in care, normal. So I started training at the local boxing club, putting all my energy and focus into it, my trainer was a guy called Toolan, he was the assistant headmaster, it was after one of my encounters with him, he let me take up the boxing course, I became quite good. It gave me a new lease of life; eventually I committed more serious crimes, and put in even more secure units.  Always fighting the system, constantly fighting causing trouble, and it was like that for the next 30 years, every time I came home, I’d come home and organise young lads who I knew would help me in what I wanted to do, creating gangs letting the boys defend each other make them into a force that no one could touch them, then if anyone touches one they’d all stick together and defend one another.

By this time every time I ran away I would go home, my dad never was around, he was a hard man, he worked as a doorman, he always had alcohol at home and that was my way of the boys wanting to get in with me, because I always had alcohol.

So it continued like that for the next 10 years building up the strengths of the firm, making sure that they supported one another and backed one another up, that family network I should have got from my mum n dad I got from the streets, I made a promise to myself that no one would ever ever touch me like that again.

It wasn’t before long I was in prison, at 15 years old.  Sent for a short sharp shock, a detention centre. You couldn’t even speak, you had to march everywhere, and grow up fast.  I n those days prison officers beat you if you stepped out of line in any way. Again that was just strengthening me more giving me more hatred for people that were around me. And it was like that for the next 25 years, in and out of prison committing more serious crimes, as I got older.

Each time coming out of prison, I met up with guys that were in prison when they got out, id get them to a certain area, and then we’d set them up with whatever there was at the time, to make money with in the firm, be it drugs, cars, guns. Never once did I think about religion or God.

On one of my prison sentences, I was on remand for, I went to church, but it was a soft option, it was easy to go along to the church instead of being locked up in my cell, so I played the system, this gave me a new outlet, it let me get in touch with the rest of the guys in the prison system. This is like 16-17 years old in a mans prison, connecting with people 25-30 who had already been serving lengthy sentences, prison just bred criminals, it was a school in prison, making me more better more efficient. And whilst you were in prison you had to fight, you had to hurt people, for them to take notice of you. 

Once you gained their respect, you initiated certain criminal activities, like the PLA, this was an organisation we got going on in the prison called the Prison liberation Army. And this was an organisation that would get information on certain prison officers, and we used that information to hurt them, outside of the prison, torture them, and make sure that they didn’t hurt any of our guys with in the prison.

And it got so big that it was a problem for the prison system, every time we were locked up and put in prison, we would be put in solitary confinement so we couldn’t mix with the other prisoners, but there were always ways we could communicate with other prisoners, and then the riot happened, we implemented the biggest riot the prison system had ever seen.

That was the end of the brutality in prison, we changed the whole system, the way prisoners were looked at now, they weren’t bullied or picked on by prison officers, and the notoriety that came with organising the prison riot, it was phenomenal, people from up and down the country wanted to be in touch with us, for all kinds of things, so I guess this is what you call the big time. Another level of organised crime consisted of ecstasy, and rave parties, soldiers stood on the fields with balaclavas organising raves in farms in Blackburn, this was where the money was made, it was a new light.

When ecstasy came about, it was a wonder drug; there was so much money to be made from it. It got to the point where the firm that I was in, was investigated, and connected to at least 26 murders. I knew my life had to change, I didn’t want to be this person, nothing would ever be enough, money, etc it was never enough.

Always something missing. I never actually knew what it was till my last sentence, I was a drug addict, alcoholic, serving a prison sentence 3 years, and I heard about Jesus Christ, and what He did for me, and it was then that I realised, that was what was missing in my life, so again I moved into the church, still as a gang member, still as a drug dealer, still organising drugs into the prison, but I knew I wanted Jesus Christ in my life, going along to a Bible study one day, and the guy that was teaching, just asked me to stop and listen and he told me what Jesus Christ could do for me, and what He had done already.

There and then I just surrendered and gave my life to The Lord, and then he prayed with me, and again I was expecting this epiphany, I was expecting something major to happen, but it didn’t. I just asked God into my life but I was still feeling the same way.

Again expecting epiphany nothing happens then I went home, back to my cell, sold a couple of bags on the way, and night time came and went, and I slept, the next morning I woke up and low and behold that emptiness that was there from when I first can remember, going back to when I was 8 years old, was gone, I felt an enormous amount of peace in my life, and I knew I had been set free, I knew God had come into o my life, and instantly filled that space that was missing, the problem was how do I stop all my gang ties how do I step away from this all without causing offence? Or any problems to myself because the information I had could put a lot of people into prison, and I didn’t want people to think I was a threat to them, so I started living a Christian life along with my gang life, which didn’t work, eventually I was shipped out of that prison for things that were beyond my control. 

And being blamed for having firearms in the prison, for selling drugs and mobile phones, so they shipped me out to another prison, which was good, because now I could start again. I got involved in the church at Lancaster prison, and asked God to work on me, what I needed to work on and started working on it, I had to change everything about me, my whole structure, thought pattern, I had to strip everything down and start again. And God did that for me.

The 1^st two scriptures that I learnt when I became a Christian were

John 3v16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Matthew 6v33

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all this will be added 

This is so true, the scriptures are so true, because when I put my will down, and picked up Gods will, my life changed, I got out of prison, a new area, a new church, a new family.  I got married in December to Jenni and we are about to have our first child in September.  The Lord has really Blessed us dearly and is continuing to bless us every day.

Only By His Grace.