2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things pass away, behold all things become new.

Except for attending a couple of Sunday school lessons when I was very young, maybe about 7 or 8 years old, I had no religious background, no religious teaching and only ever went to a church with the school on special days like Ash Wednesday or Christmas.

No one in my family was remotely religious, except my paternal grandmother who was Roman Catholic but she was not a practising one.
 

By the time I reached my teenage years, I had rebelled against society and whilst I was never a violent person, I could not keep my hands off other people’s property. If something was not nailed down it was fair game.
I began to spend time with a group of lads, pretty much like myself. All of us were brought up on council estates and all of us suffered from the same problem, itchy fingers, always thinking of ways of thieving things that did not belong to us.
Looking back now to those days, I can see God’s hand on me, even then.

Of the four of us, one ended up in a Borstal remand centre, one was sent to the Isle of Wight for nautical training, a correction facility and the third, who was a bit older was sent to Walton prison.
I was the only one that never got prosecuted.

By the age of sixteen, I had changed my circle of friends to a more law abiding type. It was the early sixties, the time of rock and roll. I spent every night bopping at local dance halls, of for this I needed money.
This circle of friends had no effect on my attitude and my actions did not change.
I still felt that if I was going to acquire anything in life, I would have to take it.

I hated living at home, it was always a reminder of poverty and problems.
My parents split up when I was fourteen and my maternal grandmother came to live with us. The household was always in debt and money was always tight. Anything in the house that was worth anything ended up in a pawnshop.
Even the blankets on the beds were pawned and replaced with brown paper and an old army overcoat.
To this day I never understood why they never cut the brass buttons off first, it was so uncomfortable.
Self esteem was not something that this promoted.
All I wanted to do was leave home.

I left school when I was fourteen, because my fifteenth birthday landed in the middle of the six weeks school holidays. I left with not a qualification to my name, although I had become a master at truancy.

I was expected to go to work down the coal mines, the same as most of the men in my family. No way was I going underground to earn a wage.
As soon as I turned fifteen I was fortunate enough to find work as an apprentice Tool setter and this set the course of the rest of my working life.

Things didn’t change much,  I had to tip all my wage up at home and received half a crown pocket money, twelve and a half pence in today’s money.
 

One of the disturbing memories in my life was the death of my grandmother by suicide.
I was almost fifteen years old and I came home from school one day and found her dying, having taken five bottles of Aspirins.
It had a profound effect on me and I began to experience frequent blackouts, which lasted until  I was about twenty one years of age.
The house became extremely depressing and I could not wait for the time when I could leave home.

As I grew, I developed an argumentative nature where religion was concerned and would argue with anyone that put forward the idea of a God. Even with no knowledge of the Bible, I would argue with Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and whoever said they believed in God.
I would relish an argument, putting forward my atheistic, evolutionary belief.
 

It was at this time in 1964, I met a wonderful girl that was to make big changes in my life.
It was a very quick courtship and in August of that year we married. All I had was the clothes I stood up in and six pounds in my pocket.
We went to live with my wife’s parents.

This family was completely different to mine.
Nice house, children well looked after and most of all, honest.
They weren’t religious or anything, just good sound people.
However, sadly, this did not change me. Even the birth of our two beautiful girls did not change my attitude or my antics.

It was about 1970 when I had my first encounter with Christianity. It was when a young teenage lad, who was a friend of my wife’s family, asked if he could call for our two girls on a Sunday, then about four or five years old and take them to Sunday school. My wife and I agreed.
Of course this was very convenient for me because I used to spend my Sundays in the local working men’s club having a few beers and playing snooker.
Of course when there was anything on at the church where the children went to, times of Easter, Harvest, Christmas etc, my wife would badger me to go and watch the children perform. I hated it.
I used to come out of the club and reluctantly meet her at the church, were I insisted we sit on the back row so I could escape quickly. These church people would hug and kiss, it was all so embarrassing.

Then the children used to ask if I would read them Bible stories at night and sometimes to say a prayer. I used to pacify them, after all, I thought, it did no harm and to me, the stories were no different to fairy stories anyway.

My life was in a mess, I was always up to mischief, gambling and always trying to make spare money doing things that was not legal and my wife was always scared that the police would be knocking on our door.
One evening after drinking with my brother we engaged in something illegal and I ended up in A&E with a badly cut arm. My wife threatened to leave me and take the children, she had had enough.
I knew that I needed a change of life style.
I knew that if I didn’t get my life on track our marriage would be over and I certainly did not want that. She was the best thing that had come into my life.

My wife’s sister lived in Canada and we decided that if we went to live in Canada, maybe that would help our situation. A new start, a new life.
My wife went back to work to save enough money for the air fare to Canada and we started all the preparations to go.

In the meanwhile, we had started to visit a friend of my wife’s, a nurse, the sister of the teenage lad that took the children to Sunday School. Oddly enough she was married to a policeman. I often thought, If he only knew what I was and what I was up to, he would have my collar.
It turned out they were Christians from the same church.
Every Tuesday evening, my wife and I would go for some supper with this couple and of course I would question their faith and put forward all the reasons why I would never become a Christian.
Little did I know that God had begun in earnest to draw me to Himself.

I continued to go to the church, reluctantly, on special occasions and also to pick the girls up from Sunday school.
I figured it a good opportunity to make some money.

At this time, I used to go to Cheetham Hill warehouses in Manchester  to buy things to sell on at a profit.
I figured that these Christians were an easy target, I mean, they were gullible enough to believe a load of rubbish, surely me, with my gift of the gab could take advantage of them and pass on some of my wares.
I used to wait outside the church for them coming out and would begin my sales pitch. I had cuff links, purses and watches hanging inside my coat, quite a Jack the lad.
What I did not know was that God was playing me at my own game.

I can’t say when it was that I began to believe in this God that they were talking about but I began to warm to these people. Instead of arguing all the time, I began to ask more and more questions.
They certainly had a lifestyle that was far superior to mine and I thought if only our life was like that.

Of course this couple would tell us that Jesus Christ could change our lives and put all our priorities in the right places.

This, with the weekly visits to the couple on Tuesday’s, the message of Christianity began to sound more and more plausible.

One Tuesday evening, my wife for some reason could not come with me so I went alone.
I was getting to the point where I was beginning to understand what the Gospel was and how I needed to be converted, if my life was ever going to be different.
I came to the point in my life, like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. It was as though Jesus was saying the same thing to me. “Jeff, why are you kicking against the pricks”.
God had been pricking me and my conscience for weeks. It was time to submit.

We had a good talk that night and the couple explained what I needed to do to be saved.
That I needed to acknowledge my sin and confess and repent and receive Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour.

One thing was certain, it did not take much to be convinced that I was a sinner. That much was pretty obvious.
I did not consider myself a good or nice person. I did not like myself very much. I knew I was a hypocrite, I knew I had broken most of the Ten commandments. I had not committed murder but as Jesus said in 1 John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer:
No one knew me like I did. Except God of course.
 

That night, the 1st of September 1971, I repented of my sins and committed my life to Christ.

I knew that if it was going to be real and if I was going to be serious about it, that I would have to confess it to everyone.

The Bible says, "If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Christ, you will be saved".
 

The day after, I went to my place of work and told all those that I worked with that I had become a Christian.
Needless to say, they thought I was mad. I was ridiculed and laughed at, then and for quite a long time after.

However, eventually, they began to accept it as fact. Why? Because I really had been converted, my life changed so much that it was noticeable to them all.
The selfish, hypocritical, dirty mouthed thief was gone. He was dead. A new man emerged.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things pass away, behold all things become new.

So much so, that I returned a suitcase full of stolen gear back to the factory. My boss just laughed at me, he thought it was hilarious. I mean, it was normal for workers to help themselves.
I tried to make amends where I could.
I stopped thieving, I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking, I stopped swearing, both filthy communication and blasphemy, I stopped gambling, I stopped telling filthy jokes, all of which was necessary for me to witness the fact that I really had been changed.

To this day, I can’t understand the withdrawal symptoms of nicotine addiction, for I never experienced any. After smoking and average of forty cigarettes a day for sixteen years, I just quit and have never yearned for one to this day.

In the place of these vices, I began to study the scriptures, ask more and more questions and share the Gospel with everyone I could and became known as “Brother Jeff” in the place where I worked, which I am sure was meant as a laugh to them.

Looking back to those days now, I see why I was considered mad. It was the time of the Jesus movement and Gospel stickers were the in thing. Of course I had them all over my lapels and my bible, I was constantly handing tracts out. In my enthusiasm, I once carried a ten foot cross on my shoulder from our village to the next town about four miles and insisted on passing the factory where I worked.
I used to sing and testify on a weekly open air meeting on the local market square and I used to see people from my workplace look at me as though to say, ”what a hypocrite”.
It was understandable. It took many years for that to change.

A week after me, my wife got converted as well and in 1972 my wife and our eldest daughter and I were baptised by total immersion in the local baths.
Our youngest daughter was baptised a couple of years later in a local Baptist church.

Christ transformed our lives.

In a miraculous way in 1972 we bought our own house, with the money we had saved, for Canada, we used it as a deposit. This is a story for another time.

God certainly worked miracles in our family, turning beer, cigarettes and betting slips into furniture, children’s clothes and shoes and even a car.
 

From being fourteen years old, I sang in pubs. I used to be a singer in the pubs and clubs around the area, to earn a bit of extra money.

God certainly has a sense of humour. In the years that followed, I became part of the evangelistic team in the church, I formed a Gospel group and went to other churches and fellowships singing and testifying to God’s saving grace. I became a Deacon in that same church for fourteen years and one of the tasks was to count the weekly collection and put it in the safe.
Who would have thought it, that me, of all people would be trusted with a duty like that.
 

No need to run away to Canada for a change of life, God had done it in our home town.
 

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1971. Most of my family have come to faith in Christ and many others were influenced by the Gospel through house groups that we used to hold in our home.

I am convinced that if God could save someone like me, He can save anyone.

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