Russell’s Story
Life for me became difficult at the age of 13. I was a regular kid until I started to drop out of school with a hidden habit of glue sniffing. At the age of 15 I left school with no real qualifications. Over this period of time I became more and more involved in glue sniffing, which in turn led to a life of stealing and crime. Life was very desperate with no direction.
My habit and lifestyle became worse until I ended up on probation for 2 years with a suspended prison sentence. By this time the glue sniffing had really started to affect my mind and health. I began to hallucinate and started to lose my grip on reality. I then spent the next few years of my life being high on drugs. During this time I became more violent and my whole personality changed. My relationship with my parents became really bad and things just couldn’t get any worse.
At the age of 19 I was invited to a youth camp for 5 days in Dartmoor. When I arrived I realised that it was a Christian camp. I could see that other people had something I didn’t have. As the week passed I began to feel God drawing me to Himself, but I refused to give my life to Him. I still felt angry inside and decided to leave the camp. I booked a ticket home, but when I reached Plymouth I knew I needed to go back.
When I arrived at the camp, one of the men who was preaching took me out for a chat. He challenged me about my life and where I was going. I knew I needed to change, but I had a huge question – ‘Is God really real?’ if the answer was ‘Yes’, then I knew I needed to know Him for myself. Because of the life I had led, the hallucinations I had experienced and the damage that had been done to my health, it was important that God was real to me. In that meeting, I shut my eyes and I felt the presence of God. Later that night someone prayed with me, and I asked Jesus into my life.
The next day, I had a huge tug of war inside me, and I asked myself whether I could live life as a Christian. I ended up sitting on a rock, where I stayed for most of the day. I began to think about the decision I had made. There was still a fight going on inside me and I was really struggling. That evening I walked back to the camp knowing that I had made the decision to fully give my life to God and open my heart to Him. When I arrived, they were baptising people in a river and I was baptized there and then.
Life didn’t change overnight. I still had problems, but as God worked on the inside of me, things began to change on the outside. It took a couple of years to work through my past as I became more involved in the local church and my relationship with Jesus became closer and closer.
Over the next few years God totally changed my life. He gave me a beautiful wife, Jane, who I married in 1997. We now have a daughter called Grace who is 4 years old, and a son called Aaron. Jane and I run a church Homegroup, and have been part of the leadership team at The Ark Community Church for a number of years.
‘I believe that God saved me out of a hopeless life with no direction or purpose.
I was glue sniffing to die.
He gave me a life, a purpose, a family, a home and a future’.
Jane’s Story
I don’t come from any religious background, and I had never been to church except for weddings and funerals. If anyone had asked me what religion I was, I would have said I was Christian, because I believed in God and His son Jesus Christ.
When I was about 19/20 I began to wonder what would happen in the future. I had a good job in London as a secretary; I had lots of friends and a busy social life. But there was an emptiness inside of me as if there was a big hole. I tried to fill this hole with relationships and material things but the emptiness remained. I also had a real fear of dying, not really knowing if there was a heaven or a hell and if there was, where would I go? I needed to know.
It was just before I was 21 that a Christian friend invited me to a ladies breakfast. There Fiona Castle, wife of the late Roy Castle, spoke about God’s love for us and how Jesus died for our sins so that we can have a personal relationship with God. This really touched my heart and I knew that this was what was missing in my life.
I started to go to church and one Sunday I asked God to forgive me for all the things I had done wrong, and that He would come into my life and take control. The person praying with me asked God to fill me with His Holy Spirit. Instantly I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and as if I had been washed on the inside. I knew that my sins had been forgiven. From that moment my life has been totally different. Jesus said ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’ and ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father but by me’. Jesus hasn’t just changed my life He has given me life.
I am happily married to Russell with two wonderful children.
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