When I was about 10 years old my mother told me that I used to
go down to the front of the church and ask Jesus to come into my
life. Mum said I did it about 10 times just to make sure.
Matt 10:32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men,
him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.

I use to love the time after church when the kids would play
around and I didn't understand much about the issues of the
Christianity and only had a small understanding of the bible.
Looking back now I wonder why I stopped going to church
when I think of how much use to like it. The thing is that
chooses are something that we have in life and when we
start to make them mistakes occurs.

So the choose to stop going to church was made and suddenly
things were different, hitting high school took my mind off Jesus but I still had faith in him but wasn't living the life. School is a time of life that can be enjoyable or it can be a hassle, fighting and picking on people was normal but it didn't seem right but it still happened.

Some of the fondest memories of school were when I stuck up
for people and stopped fights although it only happened a few
times it felt good.

A friend I use to sit with in a class use to help me with the work, the thing was he use to get picked on alot and I told him if I was around and people were picking on him to tell me and would help him if I could, he took me up on that offer and people didn't picking on him as much.

Another time there was a kid who was sick and at the start of
school we use to pick on him about his illness.

Our form teacher told us off about it and we stopped cause we
knew it wasn't fair. After that we looked after him and included
him more in the group and got the word around the school if
anyone picked on him we would bash them.

One day there was a kid bailed up in the entrance to the library
and he was getting hit in the head for bumping into a guy and I
asked him to stop, the thing was people in the school knew not
to mess with me cause I was a tough kid.

So what is the point Well they are 3 things I have picked
out of many and they are things that are of meaning to me
in my school days cause they represent kindness and I
helped someone in there time of need.

You see the sick kid passed away he had more than 100 operations in his life and loved school because he had spent so much time in hospital but we didn't understand until we were told and when we stopped picking on him and looked after him we could see he was alot happier.

Matt 22:37 Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38"This is the first and great commandment. 39" And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' It's about loving the people around us and treating them the way we would like to be treated, it's worth thinking about and trying to apply it to your life if you can.

I started drinking from the age of about 15 and I was classed as an alcoholic at age 17 after being caught a few times for under age drinking by the police. I dropped out of school at the start of year 12 because I spent the money for books on drugs and couldn't keep up with school so that was the start of a down hill path into things of a deadly nature.

Drinking heavy, smoking and popping pills was a day to day thing
and it caused me to loose my mind affecting the people around me, I went through a drug induced break down at the age 18 and it took me about 2 months to recover.

But things didn't improve at all if anything they got worse and I continued to do drugs and started to sell them, dealing with some dangerous people and started to become like them. It was a hard life style and I would not want anyone to go through some of the things I went through, up to the age of about 20 I had been in 3 car accidents caused by drugs and alcohol. One was my first car and to tell you the full story would take to long but it was the only one I was driving in and I was on my own.

The police couldn't understand how the car got into the position it did and how I made it out alive. Alot of things happened in a few years, I was in a bad way and depressed alot of the time although because of the car accidents I had started to despise alcohol and cut down on the drinking but was smoking pot alot.

A defining moment happened in my life at this point of time , living
on my own renting a house I found myself thinking about what was
going on in my life and didn't like what was happening.

You see I had just been ripped off by a drug dealer for $300 at the while having a base ball bat held at me and a dear friend had died in a car accident and when I herd about it I got drunk, while drunk I got knocked out in a night club and dumped out the bush.

When I came to my nose was broken and I was in a barn at the
back of someone's property.

Through all of this Jesus was working on me but I was still
reluctant about talking about God in any way and would tell
people off if they tired to convince me about the subject and
literally kick them out of the house or leave myself, but
something was wrong with my life and I knew it had to change.

While Joking around one day my mother said she would pay me
$100 to goto church and being desperate for money I said OK and
agreed to it on the condition that I would not spend any of the
money on drugs.

Mum did not know at the time if she could cover it and left it in the Lords hands, so I went to church and for the first time in about 8 years sat through till the very end then mum gave me the money, then I went down the pub and told my friends about it. That was what broke through to me and since then things in my life started to change.

But I was still in a bad way and I was living alone now and didn't have long to go in the house that I was renting, I was working and mum told me of a place that might let me stay at the church that was accommodation for students.

So one day alone in my house I said to God if you can get me into the student accommodation house I will give you a good go and try my best to do the right thing while I'm there.

About 2 weeks later I had given up hope in getting a room there and that was when I got a call on the phone and the person told me they had to bend the rules abit and that is why it took so long to get back with an answer for me.

So from that point on I went to church every Sunday twice and cut
right down on the pot and didn't drink much at all.

But most importantly I would read the bible and pray most days and listened to advice people had for me about how to live my life.

I got to go on some youth camps and had a great time there, met some great people.

I come to the conclusion that Gods ways are the best ways and at that time I began to love everything about the Lord.

I could feel His presence and although I was the worst state of my sad existence I was overcome with joy and love for the Lord.

One of the hardest things for me was all the people were so nice to me and that took alot of getting use to because of the way all my so called friends use to be was so different to the way the Christians treated me.

It came time to leave the house and I was trusted to house sit for someone while she was overseas, I had been hanging around with some people who were into drugs and alcohol.

At that time I didn't drink but I still smoked pot, we ended up going to a party and I got drunk for the occasion and passed out.

Next thing I know I'm upside down in a car out the bush and that was the 4th and worst car accident my arm was broken bad and it took me a long time to recover.

There was a time when movement was painful and I was limited to
as little as possible, during that time all I could do was pray, think and abit of reading.

I thought alot about how my life had been full of things that caused me pain and hardship and realized that these things were caused by doing things thatwere contrie to the way the bible would suggest us to live our lives.