| Brian |
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| Thursday, 13 November 2008 09:07 |
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Hello my name is Brian, I was born in Tiger's Bay a loyalist area of North Belfast. Over 30 years of trouble North Belfast was the centre of most murders. My father was a memeber of the UDA a loyalist renegade army and our area was mixed between UDA and UVF members both loyalist paramilitary groupings who opposed anything Irish. I was brought up believing that Catholics were my enemy and that the PIRA were out to destroy my British identity. My mother worked in a local loyalist pub and my father was an alcoholic who spent much of his time with her in the pub. Alcohol, was a constant problem in our family. I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. At a very early age I started drinking and taking whatever substance out there that would get me high. From drugs, tablets, glue and petrol even gas. My life was spiralling out of control but my parents were very often too drunk to notice. I was constantly being expelled from school and had become a skin head and a member of the National Front and the Nazi party. During this time I done some horrible things on people that I am not proud of. I had no thought of God and left school at the age of 15, either leave or I was being thrown out. I got a job in a building site but each week the money I gained was used for more and more drink. Twice at this stage in my life I should have been dead, on one occasion I had a gun put to my head and on another I escaped out a window of a house. My life was a life of hurt and destruction, I had a girlfriend named Martine and her parents wanted rid of me not in a bad way but they wanted me out of their daughters life. Martine attended the local Elim church even though she was not a Christian, she had lost her leg in the troubles and the church were good to her family therefore they started to attend. One night my mother returned home with my sister and they told me that they had got saved I laughed and went to bed with a bottle of vodka. A few weeks later my dad got saved and once again I laughed. I told them not to start preaching to me. My mother was the type of Christian who had to share her faith. And one day she started to share with me. I was so enraged that I wrecked the house and threw all of the furniture out through the window. I had no idea that God was working on me. Next my mother took cancer and I remember very clearly one morning when the police kicked in our front door and dragged me form my bed my mother knelt at the top of the stairs wrecked in pain with the cancer and called out for God to save me. Around 6 months later I was in the car with Martine and I herd an audible voice speak to me and tell me that I was going to hell. Fear gripped me and I cried out to God for His forgiveness and asked Him to change my life. He did, Glory to His name. Many things have happened since then, my mum died Martine's mum and dad both died. I have 3 daughters one who was born with severe brain damage. But God has been so faithful and so good. I never believed that God could take a violent young man like me and then put me into the ministry. He did and if He did it for me He can do it for you. |