I was sitting in the toilet crying. I was 15 years old and I had just whacked myself in the face with my shoe until a bruise came up. I had entertained a though of suicide now for about 4 months, I was going to take a piece of wire and… well I think you get the picture. I thought to myself, If I don’t do something now I will be dead. I searched my heart for a solution. My auntie once told me to talk to my guardian angel if I was sad but I didn’t have one to my knowledge, I wrote off God because I felt I had done too many bad things for him to want to help me. I remembered about this hero for God, this soldier and leader of an army, who defeated Satan and sent him down to Hell in the name of God. Do you know his name? I spoke in a loud whisper to the archangel Michael, I cried to him and asked him if he could please ask God for permission to come down and save me, or at least send someone who isn’t that busy who can, because I was going to die.

Well things started to get better, after year 10 I moved to a state school and I was very happy. I got a girlfriend and went and started doing nursing. I believed that my cry for help was the thing that saved me and I stopped doing all that horrible stuff to myself. I believed in my God, not the God that everyone else believes in, but my god the god in the Bible, as I knew him. He was different to the God everyone else believed in. I started also mixing into my belief system a lot of Druid magic, astrology and also some Germanic runes.

Over the next year I had no need for God, I had a job, a keen sense of spirituality, a girlfriend and I was at university. Well in time, I lost my girlfriend, I quit my job and got one I didn’t like, I started failing uni and I was getting depressed again. I slowly spiraled out of control. My depressed thoughts started to come back and I found myself back where I had started, suicidal and wanting to die. I struggled continuously for about a year, during that time a friend of mine called Alex, who I’d known for a while, suddenly reviled to me he was a Christian. I started meeting his Christian friends and I would chat to them about God. A lot of things I didn’t like hearing, a lot of things they said didn’t make any sense to me but I tried to understand. I wanted God to save me like Michael did the time before (or so it occurred to me at the time).

One day while Alex was driving me somewhere in his car, I thought I wanted to give church and God another go. So I said to him ‘Alex, I think I might come to church with you this Sunday.’ Well Alex nearly crashed the car. I didn’t know what for at the time. Later he told me that he was asking God who needed his prayers the most, and he got an intense urge to pray for me. I came to church with him. I felt out of place and alone there, but I tried to keep an open mind and get as much out of it as I could.

At the same time I found more Christians walking across my path. A friend from uni turned out to be a Christian and also her sister who I made friends with and also a great friend from work. The last two on this list were monumental in my decision to take on Christ as my savior. Oliver my friend from work expressed, with passion and love, how God is good and how we all need Him. Tara, my friend from school’s sister also explained God in a way that I had never heard of before, she made Jesus human to me. Tara and Oliver’s love for me and my love for them, was the deciding factor. I trusted them and knew they would not lie to me.

Tara gave me a book, ‘Stomping Out The Darkness’ by Neil T. Anderson. This book made me cry, I remembered the God of my childhood and realized what I’ve been missing my whole life. I missed my beloved God, the God who answered my prayer and who I spoke to for comfort as a child. This book reintroduced us.

One night about a month later, I was being bombarded with depression. I was at a party and I hit rock bottom, for the second time. I stood by myself on an oval and did something I hadn’t done in about six years. ‘Lord,’ I said out loud. ‘I know your there, can you hear me? I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t.’ I looked at my shoes and started to cry. ‘I’m here,’ I said through the tears. ‘I’m here and I want to tell you something.’ I took a deep breath to hold back my emotions. ‘I want to tell that I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done that has hurt you. I know that I have sinned a lot, and that I don’t deserve anything from you, but I want to tell you something else.’ I paused to gather my thoughts. ‘Lord, you know me better than anyone. You know I don’t trust people easily. Well I’m here right now on my knees. I am at the end of my strength. I cannot survive any more. Even though I have no proof and nothing to tell me that you are real, I am making you a promise right here, right now. I am going to trust you with my life. I have no control over my situation any more and I don’t want to die.’ I started to cry more. I put my head in my hands and sobbed, ‘I know you don’t work this way, but I wish you could show me that I’m going to be alright.’ At that very moment I looked up in the sky, and a brilliant streak, a huge shooting star with a tail as long as my arm lit up the night sky. In complete shock I feel literally to the ground and said out loud, ‘Lord, I’m going to take that as a sign.’ I got up and rejoined the party.

Over the next few months I started going to church regularly. I lost Tara as my ‘God teacher’ so I prayed for another one and got a friend called Suzie. I became part of the music team. One April night I was having coffee with Suzie and we were talking about God. All of a sudden Suzie said, ‘Josh, I want you to say a prayer with me. A prayer that gives over control of your life to God.’ Well I was suddenly struck with tears, and the tears were followed by fear and that fear made me want to run as fast as I could for as long as I could. I had in my heart that I DID NOT want to say this prayer. Suzie being nearly as stubborn as me persisted. We went to a private place and despite my gut wrenching fear I said the prayer with her.

As soon as I’d finished, the fear went away and I was giddy and drained. I felt this feeling in my chest and it was very strange. Suzie said, ‘now we are going to buy you a bible’. We went down to the Christian Bookshop in Greensborough, the door said that it closed at 6pm and it was now 6:45pm. Much to our surprise while we were peering in, a lady came to the door. She opened it and asked if we needed any help. ‘My friend here has just become a Christian and we were wondering if we could buy a bible for him,’ Suzie asked politely. ‘Sure,’ the lady replied, ‘You’re really lucky, usually I’ve gone home by now but I had to stay back to finish folding these fliers.’ She pointed to a table with pieces of paper strewn across it. We looked at the Bibles and I chose one that I liked. We approached the counter and bought the bible and left thanking the lady for her kindness.

I started to try and put my new faith in God into action to get me a job I liked and my own place. Just as I was getting frustrated with my no result, God came through for me. He got me job looking after kids, it was a live-in position in a house in Greensborough. Two prayers answered in the one. It was very difficult for me in that job, extremely difficult. I kept saying to myself, ‘God gave me this job, God promises never to hurt me and never to give me anything I can’t handle.’ So I stuck it out. I juggled work, which took up 95% of my time, and my church commitments. Constantly looking towards God for what to do next. God was all I had to keep me sane. I started having experiences where I would be talking about God to people. My mouth would run away with me, and it would be like I had no control over what I was saying. I would say things that even surprised me in how well thought out they were. I felt the Holy Spirit take over and I felt totally exhilarated by my experience. Three times that happened.

One night I was outside at about two in the morning, I had been talking to God for about two hours. I was talking to God about my new girlfriend, Skye who lived in Sydney. I just lost myself in my prayers. I was reading how important it was to repent, and if I ever felt the presence of evil to say out loud, ‘I am a child of God, evil cannot touch me.’

I started to repent my sins to God and I repeated over and over that sentence to ask God to chase evil from me. I started to get intense pins and needles throughout my body. I felt a presence, a presence I recognized from my childhood. I knew it was God. I said out loud, ‘I know you’re there, I just want to tell you that I wish I could hug you right now’. All of a sudden in my minds eye I saw a man, standing behind me to my right, about three meters away. I turned quickly to look, but he was gone. I turned back and he was there again. I couldn’t tell what he looked like I could just feel his goodness and love for me. I started to cry and I thanked him for coming.

Another day, I was at the milk bar. The man ahead of me was short ten cents. I looked in my hand, and a thought came into my head. You have ten cents Joshua. Without a thought the ten cents in my hand went on the counter, ‘I have ten cents,’ I said. The man and the girl behind the counter looked at me extremely startled. The man thanked me and tried to give me something worth ten cents. I said ‘Nah, don’t worry about it,’ I was so embarrassed. I walked home.

When I got home I was bored, I had a few hours off and I couldn’t find anything to do. Skye was busy and I could get a hold of anyone else. I said aloud to God, ‘God, I’m lonely please help me’. My phone rang and it was Beck (my Christian friend from Uni), she invited me over to her house. On the way there in the car, I was thinking how much I tell God I love him, but I never tell Jesus. So I said out loud, ‘Jesus, I’m sorry I don’t tell you I love you. I want to say right now that I love you so much and that I hope in my heart that you know that.’

The pins and needles came again. I started to get a nervous excited feeling in my chest. Then in my minds eye, like before I saw a man sitting in the seat behind on my left. I gasped and started to choke with tears and said ‘Hello again, welcome back.’ Then he appeared on my left in the front passenger seat. I looked but he was gone but came back when I turned to watch the road. I could see his eyes and a mouth nothing else of his face was noticeable. His eyes very so intense, he had tears of joy in his eyes and a smile on his face. I said to him ‘Why? All I did was give that man ten cents.’ His eyes smiled more and he looked so proud of me and he looked at me with so much love. He reached out his hand and touched me on the shoulder. I began to cry, and I couldn’t stop. He went away and I pulled over, because I couldn’t see any more through my tears. I wiped my eyes and continued my trip with a fantastic feeling in my spirit. I told one or two people about this, and I noticed a renewed fire for God.

(NEXT PAGE)