Newlife Church

I’ve always been looking but in the back of my head it sat empty. I used to have to go to Sunday school when I was young. I didn’t want to but I had no choice. I was in housing commissions and it was a pretty rough area. If I said I was going to church, I probably wasn’t because it wasn’t cool, but I always had a big hole in my life. A hole in my soul.

I filled it with alcohol until I was an alcoholic and I drank hard for 27 years. Alcoholics and drug addicts can understand that… they’re looking to fill that hole. But I didn’t have the guts to be a Christian. You don’t talk about Jesus in the pub.

When I finally got sober, I thought I found God in AA. But I didn’t find it there. Tried free-masonry and I couldn’t find it there. But over the years I’d been popping in to church. But I was always the hard bloke, I didn’t want to be soft, because in the back of my head, I couldn’t afford to be soft. I didn’t want to be a weirdo.

I’d walk in the door and hope I find it. So I go in to church. And then I’d go back the next week. And there was always that emptiness all the time. I dont know what I was expecting, someone to wave a magic wand, but it never happened.

If I had’ve known then for Jesus to open my heart then that would’ve been a different story. But I went through Alpha and it did happen. Somehow Alpha opened my heart.

I sat through the whole thing, probably because there’s a free feed. By the time I finished it, I wanted to do it again only this time with an open heart. And the second time I went with a whole different attitude. And I was listening different, and it filled me more.

I learnt to listen to understand, instead of listening to respond. I just came to listen. And then I could make up my mind.

I still have a long way to go and I still have a lot of doubts, but I’ve got people I can talk to and now I like going to church. I can accept love now, and I couldn’t do that before because it was all about me. And I realise I can actually love somebody else. And that feels pretty good because that’s the hole I’ve had for years.

It was a lonely place. But it’s not anymore because I’m full now.