Lawrence's Story

My life took me to the gates of hell really before I became a Christian.Hi, my name's Lawrence, and this is my story.My life before I became a Christian was just racked by drug addiction for about four decades.I never believed I would amount to anything.I left school as soon as I could because I was always gettin' into trouble in school.I was caught up in addiction and I was really people pleasing and trying to be something that I wasn't.I was never myself in that world because I always had that fear that if I'd been myself, they would eat me alive.I was mixing with people that you would probably call gangsters, but really when I got to know them, that was a revelation to me, because they were really just the same as me, frightened little boys, you know what I mean.I came to this church rather for the wrong reasons.I just, I was selling drugs at the time and two of my customers, strangely they were coming about here from time to time, and I went to the service, and although it wasn't like a light bulb moment, it wasn't like a thunder bolt or anything like that.Just for moments, it would remind me of childhood, and how good life was then.Life was much easier then, and then I just started, it kinda initiated an interest in me and then I just started getting more and more into it.Life is so, so much easier and less complicated with Christ.He's just relaxed me, he's made me so much more chilled out.He's really turned me back to what I was before.You know, they use the term 'born again' and it doesn't mean literally born again, as what it's explained to us in the Bible, but it really almost feels like I went back to how I was created as a child, and I'm gentle, try to be kind.He's just changed me in so many ways.Others have certainly noticed a change in me.It's almost, it's a supernatural change.My social worker who was brought up in a Church of Scotland family, and she actually said, "I never thought I'd be dealing with you for long because I really thought you were ready for the grave."0 The Bible kinda challenges to be bold and all that when we talk about Christ, but I feel it really easy because it's people that come to me and ask me, and that gives me the opportunity to share what Christ has done in my life.People find it really hard in these circles, to talk about Jesus 'cause I think back to what I was like then, and when you're living in the darkness, the light's quite frightening, you know.To know that I'm forgiven, and I'm loved, I can look at anybody in the eye now.I don't need to be uncomfortable in life because I know how I'm living, and God knows how I'm living, and that's been such a powerful change in my life, just incredible.