Jesus Took Away My Heroin Addiction Overnight - Ray's Story

From heroin addiction, prison, overdoses and homelessness to freedom, healing and purpose through Jesus.

In this powerful episode of the Jesus Studio Podcast, Ray shares his extraordinary testimony of growing up neglected and in care, battling deep rejection and identity struggles, and spending 10 years addicted to heroin. After years of crime, overdoses and trying everything possible to escape addiction, Ray found himself at rock bottom in a derelict room in London.

But everything changed when God intervened.

Ray shares the dramatic moment he encountered the Holy Spirit in a small church in Hampshire, where the desire for heroin instantly left him after years of addiction. He opens up about discovering his true identity as an adopted son of God, the healing journey that followed, and the incredible ways God guided and provided for him through every stage of his life.

Now, after decades of helping others through counselling, addiction recovery and ministry, Ray reflects on the goodness, faithfulness and kindness of God through it all.

This episode is full of hope for anyone struggling with addiction, rejection, identity, anxiety or feeling lost in life.

Topics covered:

• Heroin addiction and recovery
• Foster care and childhood trauma
• Identity and rejection
• Miraculous freedom through Jesus
• Healing and restoration
• Counselling and helping others
• Discovering purpose in God
• The power of prayer

If this testimony encouraged you, please like, subscribe and share with someone who needs hope today.

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Transcript

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

I got, I got, I mean, by this time I was using something like 350 to 500 pounds a week on heroin, I was really in quite a bad way.

00:00:10 Speaker 1

And the only way I can describe this is like a big hoover sucking everything out of me and being filled up with light, the Holy Spirit, and the desire for a heroin just went in a heartbeat.

00:00:28 Speaker 2

You're listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

00:00:31 Speaker 2

Hello Ray, welcome to the Jesus Studio podcast.

00:00:33 Speaker 2

We're so grateful that you've taken the time to come and share your testimony.

00:00:38 Speaker 2

I'm with Ash and yeah, we're on a day of podcasting, aren't we?

00:00:42 Speaker 2

Yeah.

00:00:42 Speaker 2

So it's exciting.

00:00:44 Speaker 2

And yeah, we've heard a lot about your story, Ray, and we can't wait to delve into how the Lord has changed your life.

00:00:51 Speaker 2

Welcome.

00:00:52 Speaker 1

Okay, thanks very much.

00:00:53 Speaker 1

And I'll just kind of put some context on the story to begin with.

00:00:59 Speaker 1

I was born in Aberdeen into an environment that was called Castle Hill Barracks, which was basically an old army barracks where all the social problems of the time were put, which I'm guessing was pretty difficult for most people in terms of poverty and stuff like that.

00:01:26 Speaker 1

Part of my story is that I had a sister called Linda who was a year old and a brother called Brian who was about six months old at a time.

00:01:38 Speaker 1

And at age of two I was found, well we were all found, neglected by my mum.

00:01:46 Speaker 1

My mum and dad had already separated.

00:01:48 Speaker 1

My dad lived in Dundee, my mum still lived in Aberdeen.

00:01:54 Speaker 1

And she

00:01:56 Speaker 1

was further up the road in this area with someone else and when my dad happened to come up from Dundee and visit us on a weekend, he was a troll fisherman and he came into the house, this is all stuff that I've been told since then and found us neglected, unfed, unchanged and so forth and so when the

00:02:22 Speaker 1

When they took me, I was covered in open sores and verminised and we were put into a children's home.

00:02:32 Speaker 1

I still have the newspaper cutting of the time and my mum got six months in prison and my dad got a 5 pound fine because he was seen to have been responsible in terms of informing the authorities who came to take us into care.

00:02:50 Speaker 1

So all three of us went into care.

00:02:54 Speaker 1

My younger brother had already spent six months in hospital with malnutrition.

00:03:01 Speaker 1

And so, I mean, at two years old, I didn't really know him.

00:03:06 Speaker 1

And my sister and I were eventually fostered out to a couple of people who had lost one of their own children.

00:03:16 Speaker 1

And we grew up with them all the life.

00:03:18 Speaker 1

They were poor people, working class, and so poor that my dad used to have to make heels and soles from his shoes and et cetera.

00:03:30 Speaker 1

And all our clothes were secondhand, but they were hardworking people.

00:03:35 Speaker 1

And I think they'll put as much love and care into us as they could possibly find.

00:03:42 Speaker 1

And it was good and bad that growing up there was

00:03:48 Speaker 1

It was one of those things, as a child I felt I was always looking, I was always on the outside looking in and checking things out.

00:03:56 Speaker 1

Is it okay to say this or will I get put back to the children's home but say the wrong thing?

00:04:02 Speaker 1

So trust was quite a major issue for me even when I was young.

00:04:09 Speaker 1

And although I didn't realise it at the time,

00:04:15 Speaker 1

later in life, I came to the conclusion through therapy, etc., that if you can't trust your own parents to look after you, who can you trust?

00:04:26 Speaker 1

So I grew up with major trust issues, insecurity, feelings of rejection, and all that stuff.

00:04:34 Speaker 1

It tends to hold you back a bit in life.

00:04:40 Speaker 1

And from that,

00:04:44 Speaker 1

I guess school for me was an obstacle.

00:04:47 Speaker 1

It was more of a survival education than an academic education.

00:04:55 Speaker 1

I'd fight at school, stuff like that.

00:04:58 Speaker 1

But what reinforces the rejection and the insecurity was my dad used to work for Aberdeen Corporation as a bus driver.

00:05:07 Speaker 1

And every year, every Christmas, for

00:05:11 Speaker 1

Every employee of that corporation would have a big Christmas party down at a beach ballroom.

00:05:18 Speaker 1

And we came of age to be at that party, but they wouldn't let us.

00:05:24 Speaker 1

And they said to me, dad, they said, well, they're not real children, you know.

00:05:29 Speaker 1

And that reinforced the prejudice that I already felt against me because I had a biological name and I had a foster name.

00:05:39 Speaker 1

And so growing up like that, it was, who was I?

00:05:44 Speaker 1

So those kind of things just reinforced the idea that, I was obviously nobody because nobody wanted me.

00:05:54 Speaker 1

My own parents didn't want me.

00:05:55 Speaker 1

I wasn't recognised by the local council as somebody that was real.

00:06:03 Speaker 1

So

00:06:05 Speaker 1

Coming into teenage years, I would fairly seriously rebel against authority figures and it didn't really matter who that authority figure was.

00:06:17 Speaker 1

So it was partly growing up into the hippie period, I was rebelling against society, I was rebelling against police, rebelling against teachers, anybody that wanted to tell me what to do because in that

00:06:34 Speaker 1

In that childhood, every few months the doctor would come and check us out or a social worker would check us out to make sure we were okay.

00:06:44 Speaker 1

And it felt that life was really quite restricted, that I couldn't leave the city without informing the authorities and all that kind of stuff.

00:06:54 Speaker 1

And so that was part of my rebellion.

00:06:57 Speaker 1

And then I was introduced to drugs round about age of 14.

00:07:03 Speaker 1

So I started using things like purple hearts and black bombers and then gradually smoking hash and taking acid.

00:07:15 Speaker 1

And by the time I was 17, I was addicted to heroin, which completely changed my life.

00:07:23 Speaker 1

And that went on for 10 years.

00:07:27 Speaker 1

During that time I worked most of my addictive life.

00:07:31 Speaker 1

I kind of grew up with quite a good work ethic, but some of it was just coloured and tainted by the need for heroin.

00:07:42 Speaker 1

So all my money was spent on the drug.

00:07:47 Speaker 1

During that time I had three accidental overdoses.

00:07:51 Speaker 1

I used to work on oil rigs and ocean going supply ships, taking drill pipe out to oil rigs.

00:07:57 Speaker 1

So the money was really good.

00:07:59 Speaker 1

But I'd put myself onto an oil rig maybe for two or three weeks trying to deal with my addiction, trying to stop it.

00:08:07 Speaker 1

And I'd come off and my tolerance had dropped.

00:08:10 Speaker 1

So when I used, again I accidentally overdosed.

00:08:15 Speaker 1

So

00:08:16 Speaker 1

That happened three times overall.

00:08:20 Speaker 1

So it was quite interesting.

00:08:23 Speaker 1

It's funny, it's a funny thing when you're an addict, kind of death seems part of your existence.

00:08:28 Speaker 1

It's just part of life.

00:08:31 Speaker 1

You know, people around you are dying all the time, you know, through overdoses or accidents and such like.

00:08:41 Speaker 1

life, you're kind of living on the edge and because of the work I had, sometimes I was living a five-star lifestyle and the next time I'd be sleeping in a bus shelter, it was really kind of, it was a weird kind of life in some ways and various relationships I'd have in between all of that and

00:09:02 Speaker 1

But part of it was like when I was 17, some of my friends and I broke into a pharmacy to get what we needed.

00:09:11 Speaker 1

And eventually we got arrested and I got six months in a young offenders.

00:09:15 Speaker 1

And again, that was a survival course in there because you were dealing with some of the local gangs that would come in and trying to find your way through that process was really quite difficult.

00:09:31 Speaker 1

And coming out, coming back home, having done that, having experienced that, I was kind of, I felt quite a lot of shame about it, coming back and considering what my mum and dad had done for me, my foster mum and dad who tried to kind of look after me and all the rest of it.

00:09:51 Speaker 1

So in round about 1969 I left to go to London where life just got worse really.

00:10:01 Speaker 1

So this feels kind of quite a complicated part of the story.

00:10:05 Speaker 1

I was back and forth between Aberdeen and London, working on oil rigs, working on the supply ships.

00:10:12 Speaker 1

And one of the supply ships, I was living in Holland for about a year and a half.

00:10:18 Speaker 1

So I'd be taking stuff, drugs into the country to sell, mainly to keep my own habit going really.

00:10:26 Speaker 1

And it went

00:10:28 Speaker 1

It just kind of life went on from that.

00:10:32 Speaker 1

The last couple of years of my addiction, my brother was an addict as well, by the way.

00:10:38 Speaker 1

He also became a Christian the day after I got married, which was fascinating.

00:10:47 Speaker 1

But we were staying in a derelict room in Hackney in London.

00:10:52 Speaker 1

I had a sleeping bag on the floor and a cold water tap in the corner and that was it the last couple of years.

00:11:00 Speaker 1

And I was quite a proud individual despite, you know, in spite of my addiction.

00:11:08 Speaker 1

You know, I always kind of felt that there was something better and I always tried to live up to

00:11:15 Speaker 1

that.

00:11:16 Speaker 1

But my life of addiction took me through all sorts of crime and et cetera, et cetera.

00:11:22 Speaker 1

And that's where I was in the last couple of years of my addiction.

00:11:28 Speaker 1

I found myself begging on the street.

00:11:30 Speaker 1

I'd get a private prescription from a GP in Harley Street, but I couldn't afford to buy it out of the pharmacy, so I'd have to beg money to get the prescription out of the pharmacy.

00:11:44 Speaker 1

and life was just going downhill.

00:11:46 Speaker 1

I got busted again, did a few weeks in Pentonville and came out and accidentally overdosed again.

00:11:55 Speaker 1

My brother got me to hospital where I got recessed.

00:11:59 Speaker 1

And life was just gradually deteriorating.

00:12:05 Speaker 1

And I thought, I tried so many times to deal with the problem, but I woke up one morning

00:12:13 Speaker 1

And I thought I'm going to deal with this and I'm going to deal with this now.

00:12:16 Speaker 1

And I went down into Charing Cross, where I was a street agency that I used to visit now and again.

00:12:23 Speaker 1

And I said, any rehabs that you could recommend?

00:12:29 Speaker 1

And they handed me various leaflets.

00:12:32 Speaker 1

And I kind of looked and I thought, no, not that one, not that one.

00:12:36 Speaker 1

And I thought, I'll give this one a try.

00:12:39 Speaker 1

So I phoned them up to see if I could come down for an interview.

00:12:44 Speaker 1

This was a place called St Vincent's in Andover in Hampshire.

00:12:52 Speaker 1

I got invited for an interview and the way the process that they did was to give you an interview, then you'd go away and you'd phone them back in a few days to find out whether you were getting a place there or not.

00:13:06 Speaker 1

However, in between that I got busted again and had a court case coming.

00:13:12 Speaker 1

And I phoned them up and said, look, this is the situation.

00:13:16 Speaker 1

I've been busted again.

00:13:19 Speaker 1

Have I got a place here or haven't I got a place here?

00:13:21 Speaker 1

And they said, well, we would like to offer you a place, but you'll need to get off your court case.

00:13:27 Speaker 1

So I said to my solicitor, I said, look, this is the situation.

00:13:32 Speaker 1

I've been offered a place at rehab if I can get off of this.

00:13:36 Speaker 1

And so we went to court and told the judge that, you know, I'd been offered a place at rehab and the judge gave me a conditional discharge on the basis that I went to rehab, which is what I did.

00:13:52 Speaker 1

I got, I got, I mean, by this time I was using something like 350 to 500 pounds a week on heroin.

00:13:59 Speaker 1

I was really in quite a bad way.

00:14:02 Speaker 1

Got to rehab, I think it was a day and a half or 2 1/2 days after I got there that I was so sick with withdrawing that I left to go back up to London to get myself straightened out.

00:14:18 Speaker 1

By straightened out, I mean buy some drugs and

00:14:22 Speaker 1

feel okay again, and which is what I did, but I got into the, I had no money, I got into the motorway to hitch back to London, and I was so sick, the car pulled up and I said to the guy, I said, you're going to London, he said, well, this is the road to Exeter, mate, you know, so you're on the wrong side of the motorway.

00:14:41 Speaker 1

Anyway, I got back to London, got straightened out, I phoned the rehab again and they said, okay, come back, which I did, ended a script waiting for me to cover three months to gradually help me withdraw.

00:14:56 Speaker 1

And so I'm thinking about it now and I'm still quite emotional about it, you know.

00:15:03 Speaker 1

What I didn't know at the time, it was a Christian rehab, but they never pushed

00:15:11 Speaker 1

The staff there, would go to church on a Sunday, but they never pushed anything onto any of the guys that were at the rehab.

00:15:20 Speaker 1

The interesting thing is that the house parents at the rehab, they were new house parents and they came about a week before I arrived and they lived in Littlehampton and they were all Christians.

00:15:40 Speaker 1

And when I left, I was in rehab for a year and a half guys, which is a long time, you couldn't possibly do that now.

00:15:48 Speaker 1

But when I left, they left about a week after and it almost felt that God had sent them, for me, which was an interesting thing.

00:16:00 Speaker 1

But about a year after being at rehab, although I was physically off, I was still

00:16:07 Speaker 1

psychologically I was still really quite addicted.

00:16:11 Speaker 1

My original plan was to get clean and go back abroad and bring some more drugs into the country to make some more money.

00:16:19 Speaker 1

That was my original plan.

00:16:23 Speaker 1

However, I knew that wasn't going to work and I was lying in bed one night reading a book and I was kind of really struggling in my head around the addiction.

00:16:36 Speaker 1

And I shot up a prayer to whoever might be there, to get rid of this desire.

00:16:44 Speaker 1

And I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, and I knew he was coming to Earl's Court.

00:16:49 Speaker 1

And I said, oh yeah, and I wouldn't mind a Dylan ticket, you know, as you do.

00:16:54 Speaker 1

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I'm lying in bed and I'm thinking, no, the last couple of weeks haven't been too bad, you know.

00:17:00 Speaker 1

And lo and behold, my brother phoned the very next day and said, look, I don't know if you can get up to London, but I got a Dylan ticket for you.

00:17:07 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking, whoa, this is a bit kind of weird.

00:17:13 Speaker 1

And Dylan had just become a Christian at that time as well, you know.

00:17:17 Speaker 1

And what was interesting was I went to the concert in Earl's Court and people were shouting, you know, at Dylan about his faith and such like, because he started off with his new album.

00:17:30 Speaker 1

stuff, blood on the tracks and things, and Slow Trainer Coming was his new album.

00:17:39 Speaker 1

And so I got back to rehab and I thought, I've got to look into this just a little bit further.

00:17:47 Speaker 1

And the staff told me there that there was a place in Petersfield called La Brie, which was a

00:17:58 Speaker 1

an international school for students around the world.

00:18:04 Speaker 1

He had several places around the world where he taught Christianity to students and people who were interested.

00:18:14 Speaker 1

He was called Dr Francis Schaefer.

00:18:18 Speaker 1

So I said to the house parents, well look, I wouldn't mind checking this out a bit.

00:18:22 Speaker 1

And so they took me down to

00:18:25 Speaker 1

the Place La Brie, which is in a small village just outside Petersfield called Liss.

00:18:31 Speaker 1

And so I went there for the weekend to listen to some of the talks and did a whole library of cassettes on Christiani covering just about every subject you could think of.

00:18:46 Speaker 1

And so I listened to a couple of those and

00:18:49 Speaker 1

And I had, in one of them, something about the Holy Spirit, coming into people's lives.

00:18:54 Speaker 1

And by the Saturday, I went there on a Friday, by the Saturday, late afternoon, I was convinced that Jesus was alive, you know.

00:19:06 Speaker 1

And I thought, it's just like, what do I do about this?

00:19:11 Speaker 1

And all the students walked down to a local church called St.

00:19:17 Speaker 1

Saviour's.

00:19:18 Speaker 1

in the village of Liss.

00:19:19 Speaker 1

It was just a tin hut Anglican church, And I can't remember what the guy, the preacher was preaching on.

00:19:30 Speaker 1

But after it finished and people got up to leave, I bowed my head and asked God's forgiveness for all the stuff I had done.

00:19:41 Speaker 1

And the only way I can describe this is like a big hoover.

00:19:47 Speaker 1

sucking everything out of me and being filled up with light, the Holy Spirit, and the desire for a heroine just went in a heartbeat.

00:19:58 Speaker 1

And I thought, I mean, I didn't even really know what had happened to me.

00:20:02 Speaker 1

And I thought, wow, this is incredible.

00:20:06 Speaker 1

And I didn't tell anybody.

00:20:07 Speaker 1

And I'm walking back up the lane with the students back to La Brie.

00:20:12 Speaker 1

And I say walk, I mean, it felt like I was floating.

00:20:17 Speaker 1

And I can really say that all the leaves on the trees in the countryside walking up that lane had all silver linings.

00:20:26 Speaker 1

And I was trying to figure out what had happened to me.

00:20:30 Speaker 1

And I never told anyone.

00:20:33 Speaker 1

And that afternoon after lunch, one of the house parents came down to pick me up to take me back to rehab.

00:20:40 Speaker 1

And I didn't see anything in the car.

00:20:42 Speaker 1

I was still trying to work out

00:20:45 Speaker 1

What had happened to me here, And I got through the rehab door and I couldn't stop talking about Jesus to all these other addicts, and they thought, he's really, he's really gone this time, And I think I read the New Testament in a week or something, I just couldn't get enough.

00:21:08 Speaker 1

And

00:21:10 Speaker 1

By then obviously I realised what had happened.

00:21:12 Speaker 1

My whole life from that moment began to change and in such a way that it's really difficult to put a kind of context on it.

00:21:23 Speaker 1

And it was just such a dramatic experience from black to white to Damascus Road experience.

00:21:32 Speaker 1

You know, terminology doesn't really

00:21:36 Speaker 1

say the right thing, but it was so dramatic for me.

00:21:43 Speaker 1

That's something that I couldn't deny.

00:21:46 Speaker 1

I couldn't ever deny it because it was just so radical.

00:21:51 Speaker 1

And the thing is about when you start using something, a drug like heroin, it's such a radical drug that radically changes your life, changes who you are.

00:22:06 Speaker 1

that you need something radical to change it again, to get you out of it.

00:22:12 Speaker 1

Because you can try so many things.

00:22:15 Speaker 1

I tried clinics, I tried oil rigs, I tried ships.

00:22:18 Speaker 1

I've been various places around the world.

00:22:21 Speaker 1

I've tried all sorts of ways to deal with that addiction, but nothing worked.

00:22:29 Speaker 1

You know, back, you know, through part of that addiction, I was

00:22:33 Speaker 1

got into various gurus and Hare Krishna and ashrams and stuff like that.

00:22:41 Speaker 1

I've always been quite philosophical in my life and thinking that there's got to be something else here, you know.

00:22:48 Speaker 1

But none of that worked for me for whatever reason.

00:22:52 Speaker 1

I know now why it didn't work for me.

00:22:56 Speaker 1

But I always found it interesting that

00:23:01 Speaker 1

there are so many views in life.

00:23:03 Speaker 1

You can walk down so many paths.

00:23:07 Speaker 1

And some people find their own way, but actually none of that worked.

00:23:10 Speaker 1

But this did.

00:23:12 Speaker 1

And then I found out later there had been so many people at a church down here in Littlehampton had been praying for me because of the house parents who had come from Littlehampton that I didn't know about that I met afterwards,

00:23:30 Speaker 1

And so it's amazing what people's prayers can do without you even knowing that you're being prayed for, So I'm back at rehab and a couple of months later I start to get quite ill and I'm thinking, well this is great, isn't it?

00:23:48 Speaker 1

I've just come out of all this, just become a Christian and now I'm really quite ill and within a

00:23:54 Speaker 1

a space of four weeks.

00:23:55 Speaker 1

I lost about 2 1/2 stone in weight and by about 7:00, 8:00 at night, all my joints started to get really sore to the extent that people couldn't touch me.

00:24:06 Speaker 1

I was in so much pain.

00:24:09 Speaker 1

I'd go to my bed and I'd be sweating all night.

00:24:13 Speaker 1

My temperature would be about 103.

00:24:16 Speaker 1

And I got taken, eventually I got taken into Winchester Hospital and spent a month there.

00:24:24 Speaker 1

And they were trying to find out, what the problem was.

00:24:28 Speaker 1

They gave me a liver biopsy and discovered that I had inflammation in the liver through my drug use, etc.

00:24:39 Speaker 1

And started to give me steroids to deal with it.

00:24:45 Speaker 1

I mean, I think I was up and out of bed within about 24 hours after the steroids.

00:24:51 Speaker 1

And through various meetings with consultants, they said to me, well look, you're going to be on this for the rest of your life now.

00:24:59 Speaker 1

And I thought, you've got to be kidding me.

00:25:02 Speaker 1

I've just come off for 10 years of heroin, now you're telling me I've got to be on steroids for the rest of my life.

00:25:09 Speaker 1

So I was trying to process that, went back to rehab and eventually I came down to Littlehampton and the house parents at the rehab said, look,

00:25:20 Speaker 1

it's really time for you to go here.

00:25:23 Speaker 1

But we've got a flat in Northampton that you can use until you get back on your feet, which I thought was amazing.

00:25:30 Speaker 1

That was down in Bayford Road.

00:25:33 Speaker 1

But I got pleurisy and I became quite ill with that.

00:25:36 Speaker 1

So a couple that they knew called Eddie and Jenny Cooper, who were like, they were amazing to me.

00:25:44 Speaker 1

They owned a nursing home, a care home,

00:25:48 Speaker 1

who took me in for about six months until I got back on my feet.

00:25:53 Speaker 1

They were incredible people.

00:25:56 Speaker 1

And I should mention that the couple at rehab, the house parents were Mike and Rose Scribbin, who trusted me.

00:26:05 Speaker 1

They gave me, and that was the thing about, I said earlier that I didn't really trust people, but they gave me enough

00:26:13 Speaker 1

rope to hang myself, so to speak, in terms of trust.

00:26:17 Speaker 1

And from that, we developed a really good relationship of trust.

00:26:24 Speaker 2

Can you just clarify like what the role of the house parent is?

00:26:27 Speaker 2

Because I haven't ever heard that term before and maybe I'm being a bit, I didn't know that term, but what was their role?

00:26:33 Speaker 2

Like what did they?

00:26:34 Speaker 1

Well, their role was basically to run the house and look after the addicts in it and any other staff.

00:26:42 Speaker 1

that might be involved, volunteer staff or paid staff.

00:26:45 Speaker 1

I mean, there were only about a dozen addicts in this place.

00:26:49 Speaker 1

It was a big country house with its own grounds.

00:26:55 Speaker 2

So it's basically like having two parents, really.

00:26:59 Speaker 2

Oh wow, that's amazing, isn't it?

00:27:00 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:27:01 Speaker 1

And I mean, they were so good.

00:27:03 Speaker 1

I mean, their own children were there too, you know, so they brought their own children into that, which I have to say was

00:27:11 Speaker 1

Brave, I mean, I don't think I would have ever done that, because I mean, I was an addict myself, but some of the guys that were there, I mean, that was tough.

00:27:23 Speaker 1

I mean, when I went when I went into rehab, and I just, it's just a game of survival, and when I went in the rehab, I just said to the guys, listen,

00:27:37 Speaker 1

don't stand in my toes.

00:27:38 Speaker 1

I'm here one time.

00:27:39 Speaker 1

I'm not coming back.

00:27:40 Speaker 1

So don't get in my way, you know.

00:27:44 Speaker 1

So I'm coming in with that attitude because some of the guys were, they were just coming in for a few weeks, a few months, basically as a bit of reprieve from the lifestyle that they had.

00:27:58 Speaker 1

Well, I wanted to completely change my life.

00:28:01 Speaker 1

I wanted to deal with this once and for all.

00:28:06 Speaker 1

And the thing is about if you're going to deal with any addiction, you've got to stay completely focused and disciplined about what you're trying to achieve.

00:28:18 Speaker 1

You know, if you're on that pendulum, will I, won't I, you're never going to achieve it.

00:28:25 Speaker 1

You know, you've got to be completely focused and let nothing get in your way to

00:28:33 Speaker 1

how am I going to deal with all the obstacles, So you've got to find a way to do that.

00:28:39 Speaker 1

being at rehab, it's, you can go there for a bit of reprieve off the street life, etc., but there's so much to draw you back there, back into the street life, even coming down to Littlehampton when I became a Christian, you know, as a dealer in every doorway, you know, and if you're in that world,

00:29:02 Speaker 1

excuse me, you can spot an addict or a dealer, a mile away, so to speak.

00:29:08 Speaker 1

So I found that I had to completely change my life.

00:29:13 Speaker 1

So I got rid of any, I came down to Littlehampton, by the way, with a couple of carrier bags.

00:29:18 Speaker 1

That's all I had in life.

00:29:21 Speaker 1

But I got rid of all my music that I used to listen to.

00:29:24 Speaker 1

I didn't listen to it anymore.

00:29:26 Speaker 1

I got rid of all the clothes that I associated with my addiction that I'd been wearing.

00:29:33 Speaker 1

and tried to start a brand new life where I had to learn about money again, because money was just a tool for me to get what I needed, learn about a full-time job again, what was my future, where was I going to be, what was I going to do, who was I, and that sense of identity was really quite a major issue.

00:30:03 Speaker 1

I guess one of the things that I don't want to miss out here is that when you've been an addict for years, particularly if you started young, you really don't know who you are because your whole personality and mindset gets shaped by the substance and the lifestyle that you're in.

00:30:27 Speaker 1

And

00:30:29 Speaker 1

Trying to discover who you are is really quite a difficult thing.

00:30:33 Speaker 1

So at rehab, when you come off of all this stuff, it's a bit like a champagne bottle with a cork taken out.

00:30:41 Speaker 1

You've got all this stuff that's been suppressed inside you because heroin, alcohol, stuff like that, they're all suppressants.

00:30:49 Speaker 1

They're emotional suppressants.

00:30:51 Speaker 1

And although you grow physically, emotionally you don't, you know, because it's all suppressed.

00:30:57 Speaker 1

So when you come off of it, is like that champagne bottle with a cork taken out.

00:31:01 Speaker 1

All those emotions come to the surface and all the issues come to the surface that you then have to somehow try and negotiate, control, deal with and find your way through.

00:31:15 Speaker 1

Otherwise the tendency is to go and find some more drugs and suppress all that again.

00:31:22 Speaker 1

So that's part of the road of discovery.

00:31:26 Speaker 1

So going back to my childhood, being rejected by parents, who was I?

00:31:33 Speaker 1

Growing up with two different names, always having to justify my existence with authorities, why have I got two names, why this, why that?

00:31:44 Speaker 1

And the suppression of who I was through my addiction was all stuff that I needed to somehow come to terms with.

00:31:55 Speaker 1

So that's what I started to do when I came down to Littlehampton.

00:32:01 Speaker 1

And I was offered a job by a Christian who worked in a school as a part-time, I got offered a job as a part-time technician.

00:32:09 Speaker 1

Well, I know nothing about electrics or anything like that.

00:32:13 Speaker 1

So for me it was, okay, fair enough, I've got to get back into a work routine of some kind.

00:32:20 Speaker 1

So I did that for a while, but I really wanted to be a preacher.

00:32:24 Speaker 1

I was really on fire, for God.

00:32:27 Speaker 1

I mean, to me, Jesus was coming back the next day or even that afternoon.

00:32:32 Speaker 1

that's where I was at in my faith.

00:32:36 Speaker 1

And

00:32:38 Speaker 1

I would pray a lot.

00:32:39 Speaker 1

I'd get up early in the morning.

00:32:41 Speaker 1

I'd pray.

00:32:42 Speaker 1

Somebody was just trying to discover who I was.

00:32:47 Speaker 1

already involved with the Baptist Church down here.

00:32:51 Speaker 1

There was another little interesting thing is that the house parents who came up to the rehab

00:32:59 Speaker 1

used to run a Christian bookshop in Littlehampton who had sold it to a guy called Albert Mosedale.

00:33:09 Speaker 1

So I would pop in there, virtually every day actually, just consuming the books and talking to Albert.

00:33:21 Speaker 1

But I wanted to be a preacher and so I applied for a place at

00:33:27 Speaker 1

Elam Bible College.

00:33:30 Speaker 1

And again, another amazing guy in my life is a guy called Reverend John Wolfhew, who was a minister at the Baptist Church.

00:33:40 Speaker 1

And so he came up with me for the interview.

00:33:44 Speaker 1

I got a place there, but a couple of weeks before I was supposed to go, I decided I was starting to feel a little bit uneasy that maybe that wasn't quite what God's plan was.

00:33:56 Speaker 1

Now, by this time I'd got married, I'd met Sue, and that was kind of interesting as well, because I was still in this process of trying to find out who I was.

00:34:11 Speaker 1

And I remember being in church one Sunday and she used to teach us Sunday school kids and she stood up to take them out to the hall.

00:34:21 Speaker 1

And God said to me, She's for you, and I said, Yeah, but she's not my type, and I had been used to.

00:34:30 Speaker 1

something very different.

00:34:31 Speaker 1

And he said, she's for you.

00:34:33 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking, okay, okay.

00:34:36 Speaker 1

And I mean, be honest, I didn't even know how to ask a Christian girl out.

00:34:39 Speaker 1

You know, all my relationships had been of a completely different kind.

00:34:46 Speaker 1

So I eventually asked her out for a walk around Arundel.

00:34:55 Speaker 1

And it may sound really

00:34:58 Speaker 1

really strange, and it is in some ways, but I said to her, look, I'm not looking for a girlfriend here, I'm looking for a wife, And so if you're looking for a boyfriend, I'm not the one.

00:35:12 Speaker 1

And it kind of went on, but we developed a relationship.

00:35:17 Speaker 1

And during this time, it was

00:35:25 Speaker 1

We went on holiday after I decided that maybe Bible College wasn't quite where I wanted to be, that's not quite where God wanted me to be.

00:35:37 Speaker 1

And we went off on holiday and up to Wales for a couple of weeks and came back and there was a letter waiting for me from Albert Mosdale who had the bookshop saying that he was selling it, would I consider managing it?

00:35:55 Speaker 1

I just felt so much peace inside that I thought, I would.

00:36:02 Speaker 1

Although I'd never managed anything in my life, I thought, why not?

00:36:07 Speaker 1

So God opened that door there and we went off to a place called Downs Bible Week, it was going at the time.

00:36:17 Speaker 1

And I'm trying to find the timeline for some of this, but it's all in this kind of time zone somewhere.

00:36:27 Speaker 1

And went off to Dan's Bible Week and Terry Virgo was one of the guys that was speaking there.

00:36:35 Speaker 1

And I'm sitting in one of the rows with all the people and Sue was next to me.

00:36:41 Speaker 1

And I heard this voice and I said, I turned and I said to Sue, I says, did you just say something?

00:36:46 Speaker 1

And she says, no.

00:36:49 Speaker 1

But the voice was the prophet on the platform is about to prophesy to you.

00:36:55 Speaker 1

And Terry came onto the platform and started to speak about David in the cave of Edullan.

00:37:02 Speaker 1

And I mean, I was like glued, absolutely glued.

00:37:07 Speaker 1

And through it, God said to me that all the in debt, distressed and disillusioned are all going to come knocking at your door.

00:37:16 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking, okay, thank you, God.

00:37:19 Speaker 1

What am I going to do with that?

00:37:22 Speaker 1

And he said, I'm just closing you in now, like you did with David in the cave and shutting you in.

00:37:30 Speaker 1

because you need training and you need teaching.

00:37:34 Speaker 1

And that's when the bookshop really came into view, that God was just putting me into this little cave of a Christian bookshop where I had every possible book I could possibly ever want to read and learn about serving.

00:37:55 Speaker 1

serving people, serving a community.

00:37:58 Speaker 1

And through that door came Christians from all walks of life.

00:38:02 Speaker 1

And I had not long become a Christian, but they all started asking me for advice for this and that.

00:38:10 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking, this is like really weird.

00:38:14 Speaker 1

And one morning God woke me up and he said, I've given you the word to sustain the weary, you know, from Isaiah.

00:38:22 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking, okay, it's difficult to, maybe for, it was difficult for me at the time, but maybe difficult for people to get a grasp of this, that I had just come from this totally different world into this life of church and Christianity to suddenly start to find out

00:38:45 Speaker 1

what was going on and for people that had been Christians for years coming in to ask me for advice.

00:38:53 Speaker 1

And so that's what I did.

00:38:55 Speaker 1

And gradually I put a table and a couple of chairs at the side of the bookshop where I just sit and have a coffee with people and have a chat with them.

00:39:04 Speaker 1

And at this point, John Wilthew, Reverend John Wilthew, the minister of the Baptist Church, came to me and he said, look, Ray,

00:39:13 Speaker 1

We've decided we'd like to send you if you want to go on a counselling course.

00:39:20 Speaker 1

And I thought, well, and we are going to pay for it, And I thought, well, this is amazing because I've got nothing anyway.

00:39:29 Speaker 1

So I went off on a biblical counselling course with Selwyn Hughes, who was a well-known figure at that time.

00:39:38 Speaker 1

And

00:39:42 Speaker 1

life just kind of developed from there.

00:39:46 Speaker 1

I was still in the process of discovering who I was.

00:39:53 Speaker 1

And again, God woke me up one morning and said that you're a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

00:40:03 Speaker 1

In other words, you're going to live forever.

00:40:06 Speaker 1

You've got an eternal life.

00:40:08 Speaker 1

And today I've become your father.

00:40:10 Speaker 1

And I'm thinking,

00:40:13 Speaker 1

Okay, this is heavy, heavy stuff.

00:40:17 Speaker 1

But it was amazing.

00:40:18 Speaker 1

I mean, it was like revelation, all this stuff.

00:40:22 Speaker 1

And the Holy Spirit took me to Ephesians chapter 1 and pointed out where I'd been chosen and adopted into God's family.

00:40:34 Speaker 1

Now, the key thing about this, was an amazing turning point in my life.

00:40:41 Speaker 1

Because the key thing is that I've been fostered all my life.

00:40:47 Speaker 1

And as a foster child, you've got no rights.

00:40:51 Speaker 1

Okay?

00:40:51 Speaker 1

You own nothing.

00:40:53 Speaker 1

So even though you grew up with the same parents, foster parents all your life, you've got no rights over anything.

00:41:01 Speaker 1

So if they die, you can claim nothing because you're not legal.

00:41:09 Speaker 1

But when you're adopted, you've got exactly the same legal rights as the bloodborne children.

00:41:16 Speaker 1

So at this point, God was saying to me that I have adopted you into my family and I'm giving you a guarantee of the Holy Spirit as a deposit, which is what Ephesians says.

00:41:30 Speaker 1

But

00:41:31 Speaker 1

At the same time, he's saying, because you're now adopted and I'm adopting you, you've got exactly the same rights as Jesus Christ, my son, because now you're in my family.

00:41:41 Speaker 1

Now that was radical for me.

00:41:44 Speaker 1

That completely changed everything in my view of who I was and my relationship to my Father in heaven.

00:41:53 Speaker 1

The interesting thing is that adoption is only mentioned twice in the Bible.

00:41:58 Speaker 1

And

00:42:00 Speaker 1

The Jews didn't really do adoption.

00:42:04 Speaker 1

You were either in the family book or you weren't.

00:42:09 Speaker 1

And the Romans introduced adoption to the Jews.

00:42:13 Speaker 1

And what they used to do was they'd take a faithful slave in the house, some of the wealthier ones, and they'd give them a new name.

00:42:26 Speaker 1

and they give them a new set of clothes and they'd maybe put a mark on them or give them an earring or a ring to identify them with the family.

00:42:35 Speaker 1

But they also give them a future and they gave them an inheritance.

00:42:41 Speaker 1

And essentially that's what God had done for me.

00:42:44 Speaker 1

He'd taken my life from his slavery that I'd been in, terms of addiction and gave me a new set of clothes, gave me a new name.

00:42:56 Speaker 1

gave me a new mark, filled me with the Holy Spirit, and told me that I was now his child that had been adopted into his family.

00:43:05 Speaker 1

So that was absolutely life-changing for me.

00:43:10 Speaker 1

And from that process, I would start to meditate on things like Psalm 139, that God saw me in the womb before I was born, etc.

00:43:23 Speaker 1

And Hosea chapter 5, where God says that when you bent down to Ephraim, he led them because of human kindness, just like a real dad does to their own children when they're teaching them to walk, you know.

00:43:35 Speaker 1

And God was saying, I saw you through all of those.

00:43:39 Speaker 1

stages, And that would just, that just blew me away.

00:43:45 Speaker 1

It completely, completely changed my life in terms of my confidence in my faith and who I was in God.

00:43:56 Speaker 1

And so in a way, this story is a bit about, who am I, if I was putting a title on it because I didn't know who I was.

00:44:07 Speaker 1

And then I found out who I was.

00:44:13 Speaker 1

And so I was in that bookshop for seven years.

00:44:18 Speaker 1

And in a six year, God said to me, I'm just taking you out a wider sphere of influence now.

00:44:25 Speaker 1

And I bumped into someone who was leaving a drug and alcohol charity.

00:44:36 Speaker 1

And I never, be honest, I never really wanted to work with addiction at all, but it seemed to be the way that God was leading.

00:44:45 Speaker 1

And so they said, why don't you phone up the boss and get an interview?

00:44:51 Speaker 1

So I got an interview and I got the job and I found myself coordinating all the drug projects and alcohol projects across Sussex.

00:45:00 Speaker 1

East and West Sussex.

00:45:02 Speaker 1

And I spent years doing that, working with families of addiction addicts and running day centres for addiction.

00:45:14 Speaker 1

And it kind of went on from that.

00:45:17 Speaker 1

Did another counselling course, worked for a Ministry of Justice for 14 years, developed my own counselling practice.

00:45:28 Speaker 1

had this woman, Sue, that wasn't my type, gave me two beautiful children.

00:45:39 Speaker 1

And we've been together 44 years now.

00:45:42 Speaker 1

So for somebody, it was never my type.

00:45:45 Speaker 1

It's quite a long time to be together.

00:45:49 Speaker 1

And I've got five beautiful grandchildren from that.

00:45:53 Speaker 1

I'm still

00:45:55 Speaker 1

live expecting God to change things, to do things, to surprise me and hopefully use me in terms of any work that you might have to change people's lives.

00:46:11 Speaker 1

I think, you know, what I discovered was I know what my calling is in God and I've never

00:46:21 Speaker 1

When I soon found out what my calling was in terms of comforting God's people and having a word to sustain the weary, I've been at complete peace about my life, that I don't have to strive in terms of to be like someone else or achieve someone else.

00:46:41 Speaker 1

I'm not looking at anyone else to, wow, I'd love that job.

00:46:47 Speaker 1

because often in church people are looking for a platform, and that's never been an issue for me.

00:46:54 Speaker 1

So when I do, when I'm working with people, I tend to work from a place of peace and I'm not sitting there anxious or striving, oh God, give me a word to say to this person, give me an answer for this person.

00:47:10 Speaker 1

I'm just expecting God to use whatever words comes out of my mouth, you know.

00:47:16 Speaker 1

And

00:47:17 Speaker 1

And it's a bit like, in some ways it's a bit like doing this, that, I'm hoping that for somebody who just might find something in this that might help them or inspire them to get free or to look for Jesus, to seek God somehow, that their life might also be changed.

00:47:45 Speaker 1

for the better, Hi everyone, I'm Gem.

00:47:51 Speaker 3

And I'm Ash.

00:47:53 Speaker 2

And we really hope you're enjoying this episode today.

00:47:55 Speaker 2

If you could like, subscribe and share, it really helps us reach the right people.

00:47:59 Speaker 3

And if you've been blessed by this episode, please let us know in the comments.

00:48:07 Speaker 2

So

00:48:09 Speaker 2

With heroin addiction, I don't know loads about it, but to be free from heroin overnight and never want it again, that's not normal, is it?

00:48:19 Speaker 1

No.

00:48:23 Speaker 1

I mean, I was free from it for about a year, but psychologically, physically, I was free of it.

00:48:29 Speaker 1

Psychologically, I was still addicted to it.

00:48:33 Speaker 1

was a constant thought.

00:48:35 Speaker 1

And the life of an addict is

00:48:39 Speaker 1

It's 24-7.

00:48:40 Speaker 1

I used to go to bed thinking about it, and I'd wake up in the morning thinking about it, and that would be my whole day.

00:48:47 Speaker 1

where am I getting my next hit?

00:48:50 Speaker 1

and it's such a radical drug, but it just changes your life completely.

00:49:01 Speaker 1

You will, when you're an addict, you will do anything, nothing else takes its place.

00:49:10 Speaker 1

you will do absolutely everything and anything to get what you need when you're an addict.

00:49:18 Speaker 3

Well, I just think, I'm just trying to think how to phrase it already, but I just, I can see a pattern of how Jesus has been in your life the whole time, even though at the beginning you may not have seen that.

00:49:30 Speaker 3

I just think, and the fact that, you know, he put this cup in Littlehampton

00:49:35 Speaker 3

for a year, just when you're there and stuff like that.

00:49:37 Speaker 3

I just, I love that about your story.

00:49:39 Speaker 3

Just, I can, even though you've gone through so much, but Jesus is always there.

00:49:44 Speaker 3

And I'd just love you to comment on that.

00:49:47 Speaker 3

Like, I'm sure you've got lots to say about that in your life.

00:49:50 Speaker 1

Well, it's kind of, you know, when you look back at these things, you know, you can see God's hand in it, you know, just, you know,

00:50:02 Speaker 1

going to rehab, I mean, I had tried to deal with my addiction so many times that I've forgotten how often and I just couldn't quite get away from it.

00:50:14 Speaker 1

And that morning I woke up in that derelict room in Hackney, saying to myself, I'm going to deal with this now, in itself was, you know, I'd never felt like that before, that even that was a new feeling.

00:50:30 Speaker 1

And

00:50:32 Speaker 1

to go down to a street agency that I used to pop into now and again and come to a Christian rehab without even knowing it was Christian.

00:50:41 Speaker 1

That's how I guess out of my face I was most of the time, and what am I going to hear?

00:50:53 Speaker 1

And the judge letting me offer that to go to rehab and

00:50:59 Speaker 1

And then his house parents coming down there about a week before I arrived, who, were just incredible people to sacrifice their life and their children's lives in that way that most people wouldn't even think about, And then to give me a flat in Littlehampton and

00:51:27 Speaker 1

to get connected with the church and the bookshop and just God's.

00:51:34 Speaker 1

I mean, when I moved out of Eddie and Jenny Cooper's care home, it was a time, I'd been there six months, I needed to get out, I needed to start to find my own way forward in life.

00:51:49 Speaker 1

And I walked into the centre of Littlehampton and there used to be a little news agent

00:51:57 Speaker 1

in the centre of town beside the crossing there, and they used to have a little billboard thing on the outside, the news agent, people would put an advert in.

00:52:07 Speaker 1

And I'm looking at this and looking to see if there's any rooms or a flat or whatever.

00:52:12 Speaker 1

And I didn't see anything.

00:52:14 Speaker 1

And I just remember saying, God, I've got to get a place to live.

00:52:18 Speaker 1

And I turned around and here's this estate agent, Hobdens, across the road.

00:52:23 Speaker 1

And I thought, oh, I'll pop in there.

00:52:25 Speaker 1

And I went into the

00:52:27 Speaker 1

the estate agent and I said to the lady at the desk, I says, got any flats for rent?

00:52:31 Speaker 1

She said, well, as a matter of fact, there's one just along the road here, And I said, but how much is it?

00:52:36 Speaker 1

She says, well, it's a tenner, And I thought, what, a tenner a week?

00:52:42 Speaker 1

And she says, yeah.

00:52:42 Speaker 1

She says, you want the keys to have a look?

00:52:45 Speaker 1

And this was opposite the United Church in Littlehampton there.

00:52:49 Speaker 1

And so I went and had a look and there was 2 rooms, a bedroom, living room, kitchen, a bathroom on a landing.

00:52:56 Speaker 1

And I thought, this must be kind of weird.

00:53:01 Speaker 1

So basically I got this flat for 10 quid a week.

00:53:06 Speaker 1

I mean, I couldn't believe it.

00:53:07 Speaker 2

That's America in itself.

00:53:09 Speaker 1

And I thought, can life be this easy?

00:53:15 Speaker 1

And so I was there for some time and that's where, when Sue and I married, we moved into.

00:53:23 Speaker 1

And I mean, even that was interesting because

00:53:26 Speaker 1

getting married.

00:53:27 Speaker 1

I had nothing, and I had two carrier bags.

00:53:30 Speaker 1

That was all I had of stuff.

00:53:33 Speaker 1

And we're going out together and I'm thinking, well, you either want me to marry this lady or you don't.

00:53:44 Speaker 1

And so if you do, then you're going to need to show me that.

00:53:48 Speaker 1

You're going to need to prove this to me.

00:53:50 Speaker 1

And this one Saturday morning I left

00:53:55 Speaker 1

the flat, and I'm walking down to where Sue lived, and as I left the place, a wedding carriage came around the corner, being with horses in cars, somebody was obviously getting married, and I'm thinking, Oh yeah, OK, you know, and I walked out and I switched the telly on when I got to Sue, and there was an Indian wedding on it, and I'm thinking, OK, I think I'm being told something here, you know, because this is weird.

00:54:23 Speaker 1

And so to and time is kind of moving on here.

00:54:26 Speaker 1

So it's kind of difficult to put a time link into this.

00:54:32 Speaker 1

But as we're going out together and I said to God, I said, well, look, to really prove it, you know, I've got no money for rings or anything like this.

00:54:42 Speaker 1

And Sue and I were in touch with a couple who had been missionaries out in Africa.

00:54:51 Speaker 1

And she got a phone call from the lady, the missionary, and said, look, I've just had a letter from my sister in Africa.

00:55:05 Speaker 1

Our mother died some time back and she has sent

00:55:13 Speaker 1

my mum's ring, wedding ring, because she doesn't know what to do with it over there.

00:55:18 Speaker 1

And I was praying to God what to do with it.

00:55:22 Speaker 1

And I just felt God say to me to give it to you and to give you the ring from my first marriage also.

00:55:31 Speaker 1

So we got two wedding rings that said, do what you want.

00:55:35 Speaker 1

They either fit or you can sell them and get what you want.

00:55:39 Speaker 1

And so I'm thinking, look, we think we're getting married.

00:55:45 Speaker 2

I love that.

00:55:47 Speaker 1

And that was how life just seemed to be.

00:55:54 Speaker 1

And I could, when I think back on it now, it's difficult to contextualise it all, and fit, months and times and stuff.

00:56:05 Speaker 1

But it's just been

00:56:07 Speaker 1

It was just incredible.

00:56:09 Speaker 2

An overall hand on your life all the time.

00:56:11 Speaker 3

And the kindness of God as well.

00:56:12 Speaker 3

Just even the Bob Dylan tickets you mentioned as well.

00:56:14 Speaker 3

I mean, that is just incredible.

00:56:18 Speaker 3

You just have to laugh and stuff like that because I've heard so many stories of this sort of stuff.

00:56:23 Speaker 2

Yeah, it's just amazing.

00:56:25 Speaker 2

I mean, like with what you do now, counselling and your therapy and stuff like that, like are you like a Christian counsellor therapist or do you see anybody and how do you?

00:56:35 Speaker 2

How does that work?

00:56:37 Speaker 2

Because obviously that your life is changed through God, but obviously you can't, people need to find that themselves, don't they?

00:56:46 Speaker 2

How does that work for you?

00:56:47 Speaker 2

Could you put a little bit of context into that?

00:56:49 Speaker 2

Because I just find that really interesting.

00:56:50 Speaker 1

Yeah, well, I see anybody and everybody.

00:56:54 Speaker 1

It doesn't really matter to me who they are.

00:56:58 Speaker 1

So I'm what they want me to be at the time, if it's Christians.

00:57:02 Speaker 1

I mean, I've

00:57:03 Speaker 1

counselled Christians who don't want me to be a Christian counsellor, and I've counselled non-Christians who want that stuff, But I found that because of the stuff I had done in my life that I'm not proud of, I know God's used it all, but I'm not proud of it, that I've been in no position to judge anyone, So

00:57:30 Speaker 1

It doesn't matter who I see or what they've done.

00:57:34 Speaker 1

I'm not there to judge it.

00:57:36 Speaker 1

None of it affects my salvation.

00:57:39 Speaker 1

I'm there to serve and offer whatever I can offer to them because I'm not somebody that believes that I need to fix it.

00:57:52 Speaker 1

Everybody's got their own answer to their own life.

00:57:55 Speaker 1

My role is to help facilitate change.

00:57:58 Speaker 1

for them, and that's what I do.

00:58:02 Speaker 2

And I think we're actually, we're made for community, aren't we?

00:58:05 Speaker 2

And I think that is like a community thing and lots of people, whether you believe in therapy or not, like I think it is so valuable and God's made us to be there for each other and they're starting to prove now that community, people with really good community live longer, don't they?

00:58:21 Speaker 2

And I think that's what we're built for.

00:58:23 Speaker 2

We're made to help be there for each other as well.

00:58:27 Speaker 1

It's all about communication, Yeah.

00:58:30 Speaker 1

And God spoke to me recently from Psalm 133, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.

00:58:41 Speaker 1

And it's there he bestows a blessing.

00:58:44 Speaker 1

Now, whether that's the Christian community or the wider community, the important thing is that we dwell in unity and that we can be at peace

00:58:56 Speaker 1

with one another and support where it's needed and encourage people where it's needed.

00:59:04 Speaker 1

Because we have to truly bring God in, not just our Christian community, the Christian family, but we have to be able to express some of that love, some of that care, some of that peace, some of that unity.

00:59:18 Speaker 1

to the wider family, because everybody is made in God's image.

00:59:23 Speaker 1

Yeah, every human being.

00:59:26 Speaker 2

It's not a secret club.

00:59:27 Speaker 2

No, it's not a secret club.

00:59:29 Speaker 2

We all have the ticket to get it.

00:59:31 Speaker 3

Is that where a lot of this sort of stuff stems from?

00:59:32 Speaker 3

Like I just got the word identity.

00:59:35 Speaker 3

Like you struggled with your identity.

00:59:38 Speaker 3

And do you think, do you see that a lot in your job?

00:59:41 Speaker 3

Is that one of the core?

00:59:43 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:59:44 Speaker 3

Problems that we're facing.

00:59:45 Speaker 1

Absolutely.

00:59:47 Speaker 1

mainly a lot of attachment issues, people's attachments from childhood struggling, well, who am I?

00:59:56 Speaker 1

What do I do?

00:59:56 Speaker 1

I mean, I've worked with Christians who have been Christians most of their life, but still don't know what their calling is, don't know who they are in God, you know.

01:00:04 Speaker 1

And I thought, wow, that's kind of weird, because that was one of the, when I became a Christian, that was

01:00:11 Speaker 1

I mean, I think I prayed for six months to a year just to discover who I was in God and what I was being called to.

01:00:18 Speaker 1

And I think for a lot of people, it's about, what am I, who am I, whereas for me, it's more about how am I, and how do I want to be as a person, as an individual, as a Christian, as a human being.

01:00:38 Speaker 1

And that's what

01:00:40 Speaker 1

I kind of offer to most of the people that come through my door, how do you want to be?

01:00:44 Speaker 1

It's not what you want to be or who you want to be.

01:00:48 Speaker 1

It's how do you want to be as a person, you know, and how are you going to achieve that?

01:00:54 Speaker 1

You know, what are the things that you need to do to make the changes for you to be the way you want to be, you know?

01:01:05 Speaker 3

Ray, tell us what happened with your liver.

01:01:08 Speaker 3

Because you told us that you were taking, you had to take these tablets for the rest of your life.

01:01:12 Speaker 3

What steroids, what did God do?

01:01:14 Speaker 1

Well, you know, I used to go back and forth to Winchester to see the consultants every couple of months.

01:01:22 Speaker 1

And they told me that, you know, this is going to be, they'd put me on the highest dose of steroids that they could, to the extent that

01:01:31 Speaker 1

my face was already starting to get moon-shaped, which is what happens with long-term use of steroids.

01:01:39 Speaker 1

And this was going to be me for the rest of my life.

01:01:42 Speaker 1

And I thought, it can't be.

01:01:44 Speaker 1

I've just spent all this time.

01:01:47 Speaker 1

You've just set me free from heroin, and now I'm going to be on steroids the rest of my life.

01:01:52 Speaker 1

And so I went, there's a meeting taking place at Hove Town Hall.

01:01:55 Speaker 1

It was a place where we used to go to regular, had monthly meetings there.

01:02:01 Speaker 1

And I went to this meeting where a guy called Colin Ockert was speaking.

01:02:06 Speaker 1

He was the main founder of Kingdom Faith Ministries.

01:02:10 Speaker 1

And the hall was packed because he was an international speaker, Christian speaker.

01:02:15 Speaker 1

And after he did his talk, he started going round the main hall with words of knowledge, just pointing various people's direction about what God was going to do for them or what he was doing now.

01:02:29 Speaker 1

And he pointed in my direction and said, God's just healing, And my back went really hot for about 24 hours and I never took any steroids from that day on and never have.

01:02:46 Speaker 1

And the consultants back in Winchester just couldn't

01:02:50 Speaker 1

quite get their head round it.

01:02:53 Speaker 3

I wonder how many times they see stuff like that.

01:02:56 Speaker 2

That is amazing.

01:02:57 Speaker 2

Well, we're not sure what's happened.

01:02:59 Speaker 2

I don't know.

01:03:00 Speaker 3

We must have got.

01:03:00 Speaker 3

Well, I've had stories of metal plates disappearing and things like that, you know, and they must be baffled, these doctors.

01:03:07 Speaker 3

You know, they train a long time.

01:03:09 Speaker 3

My brother's a doctor, you know, and they do a lot of training and work and they're probably just completely baffled by that one.

01:03:15 Speaker 1

Yeah, Well, Sue's dad was a GP, you know, so it

01:03:20 Speaker 1

he was kind of, I mean, he became a Christian himself, but he was quite amazed also, But when I think when God's got a purpose for you, he seems to somehow just open the doors.

01:03:37 Speaker 1

you don't have to search too hard for it.

01:03:41 Speaker 1

He just opens doors for you when he wants you somewhere.

01:03:46 Speaker 1

when he wants you to be doing something, he just opens the doors for you.

01:03:51 Speaker 1

And somehow it just seems quite easy.

01:03:54 Speaker 1

It's when we try to push those doors ourself that, we struggle to get through them, So I've always tried to rest.

01:04:06 Speaker 1

Actually, if God hasn't told me to move, stay where you are, until he tells you to move or tells you to do something,

01:04:17 Speaker 1

But yeah.

01:04:20 Speaker 3

I think now's a really good time to pray, isn't it?

01:04:24 Speaker 3

We'd just love to ask you to pray for anyone listening to this, to your story, who might be affected by drugs, but also who might have identity.

01:04:34 Speaker 3

I don't want to say problems, but just identity, not knowing who they are really.

01:04:43 Speaker 3

and who their father is and that they, the revelation you had about being adopted into his family.

01:04:51 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:04:52 Speaker 1

And for me, that was just a key, such a key turning point.

01:04:57 Speaker 1

And, as I said, when you're fostered, you've got your own nothing.

01:05:03 Speaker 1

You know, nothing is yours.

01:05:04 Speaker 1

You've got no rights to anything, you know.

01:05:08 Speaker 1

But when you're adopted, it's a legal document.

01:05:12 Speaker 1

it happens through the courts, And the original language in Ephesians, when that part of it is expressed, was written in legal language in the original, And it's always the greater who adopts the lesser, And so that's what God was doing for me.

01:05:33 Speaker 1

But once you're adopted, you have exactly the same rights as the blood-borne children in the family.

01:05:41 Speaker 1

So when it comes to a will, it gets equally shared.

01:05:46 Speaker 1

You have rights, and fostering, you don't.

01:05:53 Speaker 2

What an amazing thing it is to adopt, Yeah, absolutely.

01:05:57 Speaker 2

Yeah.

01:05:59 Speaker 1

And, for anybody that's doing, that kind of thing, fostering, it's just an amazing, an amazing role.

01:06:12 Speaker 1

to take on in life, because you don't know what you're going to get.

01:06:15 Speaker 1

And, to be quite frank, I gave my parents hell.

01:06:20 Speaker 1

I mean, I was really bad news, But I managed to change it and rectify it and.

01:06:30 Speaker 2

If you pray, Ray, that would be amazing for anyone listening.

01:06:34 Speaker 1

Yeah, Father, we just want to thank you that you are our Father, that you are truly God.

01:06:41 Speaker 1

We thank you that you sent Jesus into the world.

01:06:45 Speaker 1

The person that you loved the most, you sent into this world to save your creation, Lord, us as people.

01:06:55 Speaker 1

And so, Father, as I just finish here, I pray for anybody that might be out there listening to my story, my testimony of what you've done in my life.

01:07:04 Speaker 1

Father, I pray in Jesus' name.

01:07:06 Speaker 1

that you would speak into their lives and bring about your plans and your purposes for them, that they might know your salvation, your love, your grace, your mercy, and your peace in their lives.

01:07:22 Speaker 1

In Jesus' name.

01:07:25 Speaker 1

Amen.

01:07:29 Speaker 2

If you've just watched this episode and you're wondering, how do I give my life to God?

01:07:33 Speaker 2

How do I become a Christian?

01:07:34 Speaker 2

We'd love to lead you in a really simple prayer.

01:07:36 Speaker 2

It really is all it takes.

01:07:38 Speaker 2

Jesus wants to come into your heart.

01:07:39 Speaker 2

And yeah, it's just a very simple sorry, thank you, please.

01:07:43 Speaker 2

So we're going to pray now.

01:07:44 Speaker 2

If you want to do that, it'll be great.

01:07:47 Speaker 2

And you can always e-mail us and let us know and we'd love to support you in that.

01:07:52 Speaker 3

Let's pray together.

01:07:56 Speaker 3

Father, I'm sorry.

01:07:58 Speaker 3

that I've tried to live my life without you.

01:08:02 Speaker 3

I'm sorry for all the things I've done in my life that haven't been right.

01:08:08 Speaker 3

I thank you, Lord, that you came and you died for us.

01:08:12 Speaker 3

Even if we were the only one, you would have still done it because you love us so much.

01:08:16 Speaker 3

Thank you that now we can be called your sons and your daughters.

01:08:21 Speaker 3

We are children of God now and that we can have a relationship with you.

01:08:28 Speaker 3

Please come into my life.

01:08:30 Speaker 3

I want to know you.

01:08:32 Speaker 3

I want to know the Father.

01:08:37 Speaker 3

In Jesus' name.

01:08:39 Speaker 3

Amen.

01:08:40 Speaker 2

Amen.

01:08:41 Speaker 2

Thanks for listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

01:08:44 Speaker 2

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01:08:46 Speaker 2

The testimonials and stories shared reflect the personal experiences and unique journeys of our guests.

01:08:51 Speaker 2

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