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I grew up in a religious, working class home. To me, God was somebody distant, somebody way out there, someone who wasn’t interested in my life.
And yet I had a hunger and a thirst for the reality that I knew was God.
I even went on a missionary trip to Scotland. We went through the inner city of Glasgow, knocking on doors. Some people slammed their doors in our faces; some people were just very polite. But the majority of people had absolutely no interest. One day we went to the top of this block of flats and we said, “We’ll just knock on this last door.�
A dear old lady opened the door and welcomed us in, almost as if she were expecting us. She even offered us tea. When we sat down I noticed all the photographs around the room. I asked her, “Louisa, who are the people in the photographs?�
“These are all people who have come to know Jesus Christ,� she said. She began to talk about Jesus with us, as if she knew him personally—almost as if he lived there in the room with her. She, too, was a missionary and her gentleness of spirit had a huge impact on my life.
When I went back to Ireland, I got involved in doing things for the poor. But I still felt unfulfilled. I really struggled, until my girlfriend, who is now my wife, came home one evening and said she had committed her life to Christ.
I went upstairs, knelt at my bedside and started to pour out my heart to God. I said, “God, I need you in my life.� There was no dramatic experience, but for the first time I felt peace invade my life. For years I struggled with confession, I struggled with sin, I struggled with guilt. And that night a peace I had never experienced before came into my life and I knew Jesus was real. I began to weep as I realized probably for the first time in my life that Jesus loved me—Jesus died for me, Jesus cared about me. God became so tangible, so real, someone I could relate to, someone who was near, someone close at hand. That was a turning point in my life.
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