An unexpected call to a new direction in life.

I had been working in the big factory for almost fifteen and a half years and had probably unconsciously believed that I would spend the rest of my working life there.  The pay was good, the working conditions were good and I was part of a company pension scheme that would hopefully help out if I ever reached retirement.  I was settled and reasonably comfortable with my life.

That was until one day whilst operating the state of the art C.N.C. machine God spoke into my heart unexpectedly and told me that he wanted me to stop working with machines and to start working with people.  At that moment I had absolutely no idea what God had in mind or whether or not I was actually hearing from God.  My immediate response was to dismiss the inner voice from God and continue with my relatively comfortable life.

There was plenty of opportunity to work extra hours of overtime and I took most of the opportunities offered to me.  In fact there was a period in my life when four things dominated my life, work, squash, family and God.  The order that I have placed these four things in are probably an accurate order of the priorities in my life at that time.  During my childhood years I had hardly been out of the country, the furthest would have been a school trip to Dorset in England and a cross community trip to London that almost ended in a mini riot when the Roman Catholic boys would not stand for the national anthem at a big theatre event in London.

I wanted to give my children opportunities to travel to nice places and the only way I could do that was to work extra hours to pay for it.  On reflection I may have not been as wise as I could have been, I think now it would have been more beneficial to my wife and children if I had spent more time with them at home rather than doing twelve hour shifts sometimes seven days a week just to take them somewhere nice for two weeks in the year.

The other activity in my life that I almost failed to mention was that of playing squash.  I mentioned earlier that sport was very important to me as it was the one thing in my life that I was any good at and made me feel good about myself.  I cannot remember how I was introduced to the game of squash but I can honestly say that as I once lived to play football at this period in my life squash very powerfully took its place.  So much so that I would spend hours and hours on a Squash court by myself practicing different shots and strengthening my weak backhand.

In my early squash days I was humiliated by two men who played competitive squash for a local team.  My partner did had not turned up and these two men had finished playing on the other court and had come to see if the other court was free.  When they saw me on the court by myself they offered to play me a game and I innocently accepted.  They ran me ragged and I came off the court dejected and very angry.  A man who I had never met before observed the destruction I had just endured and introduced himself to me.

He was a local man who had a business in Australia and was home on holiday for a few months.  He for some reason was as angry as I was because of the humiliation that I had just endured at the hands of the two men.  He told me that he did not like what they had done to me and asked me if I wanted to take squash seriously, my reply was yes.  He took my phone number and told me he would be in touch.  True to his word he contacted me and he became my unofficial squash coach.  He was a far better player than the two men who had destroyed me and being a more than willing pupil I quickly began to improve.

He advised me to Join a squash club in Portadown where he played quite a lot and get to know the best players and get as many games as I could with them.  He returned to Australia and promised to look me up when he returned the following year.  There was no doubt that I had improved greatly and I got way ahead of myself in thinking that I was now ready to take on someone who played for the squash club that my good friend had recommended to me.  I would sometimes see this man’s photo in the news paper with a write up about the squash team that he played for.  It just so happened that he was my former teacher in the Technical College that I referred to earlier and was one of the very few teachers that I liked and had any time for. 

I contacted him and asked him quite arrogantly if he would like to play me a game of squash.  To my delight he said yes and I suggested booking the court for an hour but he said half an hour would be enough.  My former teacher had taken me for many school lessons but he was soon going to take me for a lesson that I would never forget, even till this day.  He was a very quiet man and had a pleasant way about him he was also a very good tennis player but there was no sense of arrogance from him.  I wish that had been the case with me.

We greeted one another on the court and began our first game, I won’t bore you with the details of how the game unfolded but the score at the end of the first game was 9-0 to him, the second game and third game surprisingly ended with the same scores, 9-0. 9-0. The strange thing was that I was not angry with this man as I had been with the other two, even though he had demolished me I did not feel humiliated because I knew that he was not trying to do that to me.

I do think however that he sensed a certain arrogance and confidence in my ability that was not warranted and he like any good teacher felt it his duty to correct me and boy he did.  I had still not grasped the difference in the standards in squash players and the standard that I thought I was at was nowhere near as good to what I thought that it was.  He thought that by giving me seven points up and the serve that somehow I might be inspired to get the next two points and win, dream on as they say.  The scores of the next three games were 9-7/ 9-7/ 9-7.

To say that I enjoyed the hammering would not be accurate but I enjoyed playing a good squash player and was even more determined now to become the best that I could become.  He also encouraged me to join the squash club that my Australian friend had recommended, I did and from then on I gradually became addicted to squash.  The more proficient I became as a player the more time I would devote to personal practice and seeking games with the best players in the club who I knew I had no chance of beating but with each defeat I would learn something and become a better player.

 You have probably guessed by now that I was very passionate about sport, passionate to the degree where squash in particular had become an idol in my life without me recognising it as so.  I will finish my squash adventures by telling you hopefully without boasting, that I eventually played for the first team in the club and played division two squash.  I humbly share that I later on met up with the two men who had humiliated me.  It was at a local squash competition.

Who am I kidding, I am not being humble at all, I took great joy and delight by running them into the ground, it was pay back of the highest order but I was beat by a better player in the final.  My good friend and coach came home from Australia the following year and he contacted me and we played our game.  I was never sad after winning a game but I was that day, I had beaten my mentor but I think he was proud that I had taken his advice and become possibly as good as I could be.

Sorry for being diverted from what I was originally saying about God speaking to me at work but for some reason I felt I had to.  I learned a lot about myself during my squash years, some good and some not so good, maybe that is for another time.  I tried the best I could to ignore and dismiss the inner voice within me that was directing me away from working with machines and towards working with people.  I told myself that I was too comfortable to chance giving up my secure job and I was lucky to have got the job there in the first place due to my lack of qualifications.  I had other excuses and reasons for dismissing this inner voice as well.

God has many attributes and one of them is persistence.  The inner voice would not go away; no excuse or reasoning that I could come up with would silence the voice of God in my heart.  Finally I prayed to God and reasoned with him, I simply told him that I could not make the decision on my own to leave the big factory and step out into something as vague as being told by an inner voice.  I told the Lord that if he really wanted me to leave and go and work with people then it would be up to him to somehow do it because I was afraid to take that step of faith and believe him for whatever that meant.

Even though I was afraid to go into something new to me I had an even greater fear of disobeying the revealed will of God to me.  I had covenanted with God when I was eighteen that I would be his witness and never by the grace of God refuse him again.  Have you ever heard the old saying that, “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform”?  Well he was about to start his mysterious ways and his wonders to perform in my life.

Life changing decisions 2.

Sometimes someone will ask you and important question unexpectedly and you are lost for an answer.  This was almost the case one evening when I was working on the three to eleven shift in the big factory.  The man who worked in the next machining centre to mine came up to me towards the end of the shift and asked me this question, “Do you believe that you can get right with God just before you die”?  The question took me by surprise, I sensed that the answer I would give would for some reason prove to be of vital importance to this man but I did not know why at that time.

The question took me by surprise because we had not been talking about God and the man had never showed any interest in God as far as I was concerned.  I simply said a very short silent prayer and asked God to give me the right answer for this man.  Instantly in my mind I was looking at three crosses, it was the scene at Calvary where Jesus was crucified between two other men.  I knew the background to this scene and I shared the story with the man.  I told him of how the two men conversed with Jesus as they were dying an agonising death.

I told him how one man mocked Jesus but the other one asked Jesus to remember him.  Luke 23:42-43.  “Then he said, Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise”.  I told the man that based on this scripture and also Romans 10:13, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” I believed that a person could get right with God just before they died.  The man’s reply to me was, “I’m not sure if I can believe that Jim”.  I explained to him that I did not think it wise for anyone to wait until they were dying before getting right with God as not everyone has time to make that call to God.

That was the end of the conversation and in the following days the subject was never mentioned again.  Some weeks later we were back again on the three to eleven shift it was the fourteenth of November 1991 to be precise.  Three of us travelled together regularly and shared the expenses between us, the man who had asked me the question was one of the three.  At the end of the shift I was the first one out to the car park, I am not sure if the car was open or if I waited for the driver to open it but I can remember distinctly going to get into the front seat and something inside me telling me not to but to get into the back seat.  I wanted to sit in the front because the man who had asked me the question about God was a lot taller than me and I usually let him sit in the front seat, I knew that he would give off if he had to sit in the back seat and I wanted to mess with him a bit.

As I was about to open the front door of the car and get in the feeling inside me was so strong against getting into the front seat that I gave in to it and got into the back seat.  I had no idea why the feeling not to get into the front seat was so powerful but a few minutes later that decision saved my life.  I will not go into all of the details but our car along with the car in front of us got caught up in a terrorist ambush and two men in the car in front were shot and killed, one died immediately and the other a few hours later.

The man sitting in the seat in front of me was also shot and died a few hours later, I think four or five bullets came into the car but only one of us was hit.  I held his head as the driver of our car raced as quickly as he could to the nearby hospital.  I was in shock and comforted the man as best I could before he became unconscious.  A few days after the ambush my mind went back to the time when the deceased man asked me the question about whether it was possible or not to get right with God just before you died?  I hoped with all my heart that he did get right with God before he died.

For weeks after the ambush I was well and truly messed up in my mind.  At first I struggled with believing that I had cheated death by not sitting in the front of the car, I felt guilty that I had survived and my friend had not because of my decision where to sit.  To make things worse the man’s wife had a baby shortly before the tragedy of his death.  When I met her coming out of a shop I did not know what to say to her and believed that she probably blamed me for his death even though she knew nothing about me changing my mind as where to sit in the car.

I went from believing I had cheated death to not being sure if I was really alive and not just imagining that I was.  Probably the best way I can describe how I felt is to say that I thought I was in the state that Patrick Swayze was in the film Ghost.  I would sometimes sit and watch my family go about their lives and think that I was there with them but I was part of a different world, the world of the departed.  I seemed to go into myself and I did not really want to engage with people.

As far as I know I was the first one who was involved in the ambush who went back to work.  I could not sleep at night as I would constantly see vivid pictures of the event unfolding in my mind.  I could not face going back to church for some reason, I had lost my desire to seek God and have fellowship with his people.  I could not stop believing that if I had survived the shooting I had no right to be alive, somehow I had changed my destiny and the other mans as well.

I was tired and irritable from lack of sleep and just wanted to be left alone.  It was during one of my early morning TV sessions that I had an emotional break through from an unlikely source.  I was flicking through the channels when I stumbled on a documentary about the NYPD in America.  A huge policeman was being interviewed and he suddenly broke down in floods of tears.  What had happened was he and his partner were called to a robbery in progress and they decided between them who would take the back door and who would take the front door into the premises.   

The police man who went through the front door was shot dead by the robber.  The robber got away and the other police man survived, but the surviving police man believed that he had cheated death by choosing the back door and not the front door.  The interviewer then proceeded to tell the survivor that what he was suffering from was something called survivors guilt.  I had never in my life heard this term before but it felt as if something inside me embrace it and I found a strange comfort from it.  As I listened on it became more and more clear to me that this was something that I was suffering from.  I was not responsible for my friends death, the gunman was.  It would have made no difference where I sat if he had not fired into our car.  This may sound very simple but it was the beginning of a slow recovery for me.

Piece by piece my shattered emotions began to come back together again.  I knew my friends in church were praying for me but I was still not ready to engage with them in fellowship.  One of my closest friends in the church called me one Sunday morning and asked me if I was going to church, I replied no without hesitating.  He then asked me if I would like to go to the Mourne Mountains with him for a walk, without hesitating I said yes.

He had faithfully guided me up and down most of the Mourne Mountains over a period of time and we enjoyed each other’s company.  The weather was cloudy but dry as we ascended one of the smaller mountains.  When we reached the top the visibility was very poor and we proceeded to eat our light lunch.  Suddenly one of the most spectacular scenes that I had ever witnessed in the Mourne’s appeared before us on the top of the mountain.  The valley below us was very dim and dreary when suddenly it seemed that a giant hand had reached down from the sky and plucked a large hole out of the clouds and the valley below us was filled with glorious sunshine.  What had been dim and dreary became filled with a great beam of beautiful sunshine.

In that moment God spoke into my heart and assured me that he was going to do that inside me, he was going to shine his wonderful light into the darkness inside me and clear away the clouds that had been hanging over me for weeks.  The sad part of that story is that my friend broke his ankle on the way down the mountain.  It was around Christmas time and he would be off work for around six weeks without pay.  I can remember telling him not to worry about buying a turkey as I would provide one for him but I did not think he took me serious.

The garage where I got my petrol had a weekly draw coming up to Christmas and they gave out raffle tickets when you bought a certain amount of petrol.  Friday was usually the day they put the winning ticket numbers in the window.  I needed petrol and called in, going through the door I looked to see the ticket numbers from the draw and low and behold there was one of my numbers.  I put the turkey into the car and went straight round to my friends house, I put the turkey at the side of the house and rang the door bell.

He came to the door on his crutches and I asked him if he had bought a turkey yet, he said no he hadn’t because I had promised him that I would get him one.  By the look on his face I think he thought that I had changed my mind.  I disappeared around the corner, grabbed the turkey and presented it to him; there was a different look on his face now.  It did my heart good to be able to do something for him as he had done something good for me.  Praise God for thoughtful friends. 

Life changing decisions.

It was while I was working in the big factory that I became a twenty six year old orphan.  The date was the fourth of February 1985 it was approximately 1.30am on a Sunday morning and I was in bed sleeping when the phone rang.  At that time we had one little girl called Michele and another child was due very shortly.  I got to the phone as quickly as I could hoping that I was the only one that had heard it ringing.  I don’t recall ever having a phone call before at that time of the morning and I was thinking that someone had dialled the wrong number.

When I answered there was silence for a few seconds and then a voice asked me if I was Jim Fugard, I replied yes and a slurred voice that I could hardly make out replied, “Your daddy has just dropped dead in the Legion” then the man hung up the phone.  My wife Helen had heard the phone ringing and asked as quietly as she could without waking the child if everything was alright.  I went back up the stairs and told her what the drunk man had said to me, I was unsure what to do because I was not properly awake and was not sure if I was dreaming.

We decided that the best thing to do was to phone the police and ask them if any sudden deaths had been reported, I phoned them and they said that they had not received any information about anyone dropping dead in the British Legion.  I could not believe that someone would call and make up such a story but we could not get back to sleep.  My father had no telephone so I could not call to check if the call was a cruel hoax or not.  The only other thing to do was get dressed and call round to his house and see if everything was ok.

I was dressed when the door bell rang and a shudder ran through my body, I sensed that the call was not a hoax but was genuine.  I opened the door and a young Police constable tentatively asked me if he could come in, I knew before he said anything that my father had died.  He was very sympathetic and told me that my father had dropped dead suddenly with a suspected heart attack.  He asked me if I could go with him over to the mortuary at Craigavon Hospital and formally identify my father.  I don’t know if that was standard practice or not but I was glad of his offer to bring me over as at that time we had no car of our own.

Everything was happening so quickly and I do not know what state my emotions were in, I think I was hoping that I would wake up in the morning and it would all have been a bad dream but sadly it was reality.  As I identified the dead man as being my father the mortician tried to comfort me by telling me that my father was probably dead by the time he fell to the ground, to be honest at that moment in time it was not much comfort.

When I returned home I could not go back to bed as I was struggling with what I was going to say to my younger brother and sister and I cannot remember what I said to them.  My father was fifty four when he died and I was twenty six at the time.  I guess the alcohol abuse and the cigarettes had taken their toll over the years but it was still a great shock and totally unexpected.

The weather on the day of the funeral could not have been any worse, the rain was torrential and was being driven horizontally by the strong wind, everyone who attended was soaked because it was just too windy for an umbrella.  As we were leaving the grave yard a man met me at the gate, I could not make out his face at first as the hood on his coat obscured his identity.  When I was close enough to him he extended his hand towards me and told me that he was sorry for my loss.  It was my Roman Catholic friend from the D.O.E. 

I had no contact with him since leaving the D.O.E but his presence at the grave yard meant more to me than he will ever know.  From that time on I dreaded the month of February coming round, it became a time of the year when I felt really miserable and often would not feel very well.  Now there were two deaths to remember in February, the twenty first and the fourth.  One of the things that saddens me is that our second daughter Christina was born the following month and they never met each other.  Christmas time in particular could be difficult when we visited my wife’s parents and I could not take our children to my parent’s home.  Thank the Lord Helen’s parents are still with us and it is a joy when our children and our grand children come together as family.  

I had settled in well within the big factory, I was quite confident now spraying and finishing off the fork lift trucks but once again I was about to be taken out of my comfort zone.  The factory was booming and there was a shortage of people for the machine shop so I personally decided to check our application forms to see if anyone in the factory had prior experience running machines.  It was decided that I had enough experience so I was moved out of my department into the machine shop.

I had to start all over again and learn new skills that I was not sure I could cope with.  I had never seen any machines like this before; they were C.N.C. machines, C.N.C. meaning computerised numerical control.  I really felt that I was out of my depth, this was precision engineering and I was not familiar with, engineering drawings, ring gauges, micrometers, verniers and other precision measuring equipment.  I considered leaving but I had a mortgage to pay and a wife and two young children to provide for so I prayed for help and persevered.

Gradually I became more proficient at what I was doing, I envied those men who had the ability to grasp new things quickly, I was the tortoise but I always seemed to eventually get over the line.  I was always careful in what I did, my motto was better to be slow and sure.  My diligence was rewarded, if you could call it that by putting me on a brand new state of the art C.N.C. machine.  I had never seen anything like it before, I was mesmerised by what it was capable of doing and the speed at which it did it.

I talked earlier about learning life lessons in work situations and the machine shop had plenty of life lessons waiting for me to discover.  I will only share a couple.  On one occasion the plant manager was showing some important people around the factory and he liked to show off his state of the art machinery.  He was a man who took no prisoners as they say and his presence on the shop floor spread around the factory like an earth tremor.  On this occasion he came into my work centre with three or four visitors in tow and was talking them through the machining process of a vital component on the fork lift truck.

He suddenly got very excited and called me over to the large window on the side of the machine where you could observe the machining process and told me in no uncertain terms to stop the machine and fill up the coolant tank as it had apparently run dry and the tool that was cutting the metal had no fluid going onto it and he said it would soon burn out.  This was one of those rare opportunities in life to get one over on the top dog; this was in my opinion an arrogant man who sometimes pretended to know more than he actually did, especially about C.N.C. machines.

The important visitors may have been impressed with the boss’s apparent knowledge but a few rye smiles were soon to be seen.  I took great delight in giving him a lesson on thermal cracking.  You may well ask, thermal what?  Yes thermal cracking.  The tool that he was referring to was a mill cutter that faced the metal before the other tools did their bit, what he did not know was that this tool was designed to cut the metal when it was dry, putting coolant on to it would damage the cutting inserts.

The science is simple, the cutter rotated at a tremendous speed and if coolant was applied it would cause a heating up and cooling down effect, all done very quickly but with damaging effects to the cutter.  In effect what would happen was hot, cold, hot, cold, hot cold and so on, the result would be that the rapid change in temperature would make the inserts on the cutter brittle and they would eventually crack and break up.  

The all knowing boss had to eat humble pie and suggested to the amused onlookers that this must be new technology that he had been unaware of. 

So what is the life application that God showed me from this experience?  Very simply this, often in our lives things can quickly change from things being good to things being bad.  We can be healthy today and sick tomorrow, things can be all right in our families today and all wrong tomorrow.  We can be in good employment today and be out of a job tomorrow.  We can be in high spirits today and in the depths of despair tomorrow.  This up and down experience can damage us emotionally and spiritually, we sometimes hear people say that they feel that they are cracking up.

We read of a man in the Old Testament called Elijah, he was a powerful prophet of God but there came a time in his life when he was on top of the mountain and then suddenly hit an all time low or a dark valley experience and he just wanted to die.  The story is found in 1 Kings 18:16-40 and 1 Kings 19:1-4.  We are told in 1 Peter 5:8 “Be alert and of sober mind.  Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring Lion looking for someone to devour”.  The Devil will use high and low experiences to try and break down Gods people.

When we are aware of our enemy’s tactics we can prepare for the onslaught and pray intelligently for God to bring us through the battle stronger and not weaker.  Apparently during the second world was the Gestapo employed a tactic whereby they would release a prisoner that they had tortured without any success and as soon as he arrived home to his family they would immediately re arrest him and start the torture all over again.  I personally believe that mental torture is the worst form of torture and the Devil knows where and when to strike.

God has given to us spiritual armour; part of that armour is the helmet of salvation.  The helmet will protect our minds and our peace.

Isaiah 26:3.  “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you”.    

The big fire and the big factory.

It was on a Saturday morning and I was working overtime in the printing factory in Portadown.  The foreman asked me to watch the big printing machine and I assumed he was going for his break, he suddenly came running back to the machine and hit the emergency stop button and told everyone to get out of the printing room immediately.  I did not know what was wrong until I suddenly noticed black smoke coming into the printing room.

We left immediately taking none of our belongings with us, the knitting department was on fire and the fire was spreading rapidly through the factory.  Before long most of the factory was ablaze and thick black smoke filled the sky.  I had never seen a fire like this one before, soon fire engines seemed to arrive from everywhere.  One of the firemen came over to the group of men that I was with and asked us if everyone was accounted for, we told him that all the printers were out but we did not know who was working in the other departments.

The scene was quite chaotic some firemen were rolling out hoses others were putting on breathing equipment and asking about entry and exit points in the factory.  Suddenly a man came staggering out of one of the main entrances into the factory, he was gasping for breath and white foam was coming out of his mouth.  The fire men gave him what I presume was oxygen and asked him if there was anyone else inside but he could not talk to them, I think he went to hospital.

Finally the fire chief got the departmental foremen together and it was found that they could all account for their men.  The fire was out of control by now and we stood helpless and watched our livelihood go up in smoke.  It suddenly dawned on me that the keys for my car were in my coat in my locker in the small cloakroom in the printing department, I had made plans that afternoon to go and visit someone in prison and I did not want to let them down so I needed to get my keys.

I then proceeded to do one of the stupidest things I probably have ever done.  I told a colleague that I was going into the factory to get my keys and he thought I was joking.  I told him the route I was taking and if I was not back in a couple of minutes to tell the firemen the route I had taken.  I entered the building from the far side of where the fire had started, there were no flames visible yet at this side of the building just thick black smoke.  It was not long before I had to crawl on my stomach towards the cloak room because the smoke was so dense, it was not as bad down at floor level but when I reached where my locker was I had to stand up and open it.

The heat and smoke were intense when I stood up, I could not open my eyes and I was running out of breath, I would not have found my locker except it was the last one against the wall at the end of the cloak room.  I felt for the keyhole and fortunately found it quickly and retrieved my coat and keys.  I was at the point now where I could hardly breathe so instead of crawling out I took a chance and ran with my hand against the lockers and wall to guide me out into the corridor.  I could have tripped or ran into something but I did not.  What a relief to breathe fresh air and leave the thick black smoke behind.

My colleague was just about to tell a fireman of the stupid thing I had done when I emerged.  Like many people I had watched the adverts concerning what to do in a fire, “Get out, get the fire brigade out and stay out” but knowing what to do and actually doing in when you are in that situation are two different things.  Most of the factory was completely destroyed and for the first time since leaving school I found myself out of work through no fault of my own.  Sometimes in life what we perceive as a disastrous situation can actually turn out to be of benefit later on but we don’t see that at the time.

I was not looking forward to signing on at the D.H.S.S. filling in forms and answering questions about your qualifications and what work you would like to do.  My Pastor had told me to take all my concerns to God in prayer and I was taking his advice in bringing my employment situation to him and asking for his help in finding work.  One of my good friends in the church told me that there were jobs going in a large local factory where he worked.  This was one of the biggest employers locally at that time and probably still is today.  They had a good reputation for pay and working conditions and many people sought to get in there.

My friend got me an application form and I filled it in, to be perfectly honest I felt that I had wasted my time as once again all of the important boxes concerning education and exams past were N/A.  It is hard to explain how demoralising I found this, it made me feel useless, inadequate and incompetent.  Another good friend in the church also put in an application form at the same time but he was educated and was currently doing engineering studies and I thought that if any one of us would get a job it would be him.

To my surprise I got an interview and the man who was asking me the questions asked me why I had not completed any of my exams.  I simply told him the truth that my mother had taken her own life when I was sixteen and I could not face going back to school.  He asked me other questions about previous employment and work experience and almost seemed to be answering questions for me and stating why I might be suitable for the job advertised.  Next I got an invitation to go and complete a medical examination with the company nurse and shortly after that I was offered a job.

Unfortunately my friend in the church did not get a job with them and I think he felt hard done by when he found out he was by far better educated and more qualified than I was.  God had much better things for him; he was called into full time ministry and is a Pastor in England.  I had never been inside a factory of this size; it was huge and a little frightening.  My job was to get forklift trucks ready for final inspection and shipping.  This meant spraying paint and sticking decals onto the truck as well as fitting other components.

I knew absolutely nothing about spray painting and thought that they had mistakenly started me in the wrong department but there was no mistake this was it.  The foreman presented me with what I would need to do my job and this included two brand new spray guns, when I told him that I had never used one before he looked a little surprised but sympathetic and then took the time to show me how they worked and how to take them apart to clean and keep them working properly.  The work was to a degree intense and precise, if it was not to the proper standard the inspector would keep sending it back until it was.

Thankfully they put me alongside another man who knew what he was doing and I started to learn new skills.  There are always opportunities in life to learn new things and I was to learn many things from working in this huge factory.  One of the most important things that I was to learn about spray painting was that proper preparation of what you were about to paint was critical.  If the surface you were painting was not completely clean and free from contamination then the paint would react and you would have to clean the surface and start all over again.

The life lesson that I learnt from painting was that there are no short cuts.  There were times when I was against the clock and I tried taking short cuts by not sanding damaged paint down to the bare metal and priming it, the result was that I would lose time due to a reaction.  I found that God would often take a scenario like this and spiritualise it to me.  To have a right relationship with God there are no short cuts, we need to take time to pray and read his word and listen to what he tells us.  When we do this we get good results, when we don’t do this we often end up with things in a mess.  I would spend the next fifteen and a half years in this huge factory.  I will share some of my experiences during that time some of them are good and some are not so good. 

As a little taster I will share briefly an experience I had as a first aider in the factory.  This story came back to my mind for some reason recently when I was taking a class and the tutor asked us to share a negative experience from life.  I was working on the three to eleven shift and I noticed one of the fork lift trucks driving by with the over head exhaust shield missing.  I noticed it mainly because the company had paid for me to obtain a health and safety qualification and I was becoming more tuned in to hazards and risks.

The hazard here was the fact that the exhaust shield was missing and there was the potential for an accident to happen, the risk was that someone could get badly burnt if they touched the hot exhaust pipe.  I was busy doing something at the time and my intention was to tell the foreman in the department to see that it was fixed.  In my business I completely forgot to tell the foreman, it went completely out of my mind until one of the workers came to me for first aid treatment. 

He was holding his hand and was in obvious pain.  When I looked at his hand there was a large piece of skin missing from his palm, I asked him what had happened and he described how he was talking to one of the fork lift truck drivers and he put his hand out to lean on the truck and he placed it on the hot overhead exhaust pipe.  His hand stuck to the pipe and when he pulled it away the hot pipe pulled the skin of the palm of his hand.  I felt so guilty at that moment because this man’s pain and suffering could have been avoided if I had done what I should have there and then.

The life lesson that I learned was not to put of till later what needs done now.  How often have people intended to act or respond to something that God has shown them and they have failed to do it and someone gets hurt, maybe even themselves.  There is a big word called procrastination, it simply means “postponement, instance of putting something off till later, deferment, delay”.

In the spiritual context I would like to encourage you not to procrastinate, if God shows you something and asks you to do something about it don’t wait till later do it now.

When I worked in the D.O.E. a man once said to me that one day he would get right with God, but not yet.  He made it quite clear to me that at that time his life was taken up literally with “wine ,women and song” but when the time was right he would get right with God.  I tried to explain to him the folly in that kind of thinking but sadly it fell on deaf ears.  One Monday morning not long after that I found out that he had been killed at the weekend.  Someone had a row with him and his friend, I am not sure if it was in a club or a pub but he followed them in his car and drove over the both of them.  One was killed instantly and the other was critically injured but survived.   

The old proverb says, “Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today”.  God’s word says, “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart”.  Friend if God has or is showing you something that he wants you to do please do it now and avoid any guilt or regret later.

The Lords continuing provision.

I was working in a textile printing firm in Portadown when a friend told me that there was a job going in the Department of Enjoyment, better known as the D.O.E..  It was the D.O.E. water department and they were looking for people to work alongside fitters and electricians.  I mentioned earlier that it was always embarrassing for me to fill in application forms for employment as I had no qualifications or exams passed to write down.

On this occasion my family friend told me to turn up at a location for an interview with the plant manager, I had never met the man before but he seemed very keen to give me the job.  I am sure I had to fill in some documentation but I cannot remember doing it.  My official title was an electrician’s helper.  The man I was to work with was around my own age, he was a very friendly intelligent man and during the next four years we would become good friends. 

There is nothing special in becoming good friends with someone except this man was a Roman Catholic and before my conversion to Christ I had no time for Roman Catholics.  The truth is I had no bitterness or hatred towards this man whatsoever.  The old had gone and the new was still working inside me, he came from a countryside background and had not been exposed to the things that were happening in the towns between rival factions.

We would sometimes talk about our different experiences and beliefs but we would never argue or become contentious towards one another.   During our conversation one day he asked me could I drive, he seemed a little surprised when I answered no.  He asked me if I would like to learn and I said I would but the driving lessons were quite expensive and I had no car of my own.  He was driving a relatively new car and offered to let me learn in his car.

He lived not far from Armagh and he got me the forms for my provincial driving licence, I got the L plates and away we went.  On one occasion I overheard another man on the plant where we were based tell him that he was not right in the head letting me learn to drive in his nearly new car but he persisted with me until he was issued with a works van and I learned to drive in that.

We really had a great time working together, I cannot share some of the things we got up to during those four years as to the best of my knowledge he is now the boss over the electrical and maintenance department in a different location.  If by chance he should ever read this he will know some of the things we got up to and the friendship that grew between a Catholic and a Protestant.

During those four years I can only remember two occasions when things got a little tense between us.  The first occasion was at Christmas time when the men from the plant would gather in the Ashburn Hotel for their festive drink.  When he invited me along I refused to go and for some reason he felt aggrieved, I had not previously shared anything with him about the domestic violence that I witnessed while growing up and the fact that alcohol was to blame as far as I was concerned.  He had no idea how much I detested it.

He did not want to take no for an answer and was insisting that there was no harm in taking a drink, this began to irritate me to the point where I asked him if he had ever seen his father choking his mother and beating her black and blue.  He snapped back at me that he never had and seemed genuinely offended that I would suggest such a thing for his father to do.  My reply was short and to the point.  I told him that if he had witnessed his father doing to his mother what my father did to my mother he would perhaps see alcohol in a different light.  His persistence came to an end.

The other occasion where a little tension arose was when one day he asked me to completely clean out and tidy the van while he sat and did nothing to help.  I don’t know why this really bothered me because he would ask me to dig trenches for cables and track walls for electrical wires and I never once had an issue doing it but for some reason this annoyed me.  I have always tried to be a conscientious worker and I got stuck into this van.  Everything came out of it one way or another; any delicate stuff was set out the rest was thrown out with attitude.  When it was emptied and swept clean I felt it would only be right to wash it out, I will not lie because what I did was not really to purify the van but in a totally childish way get my own back for him making me clean the van.

I got some very potent bleach and applied it to the inside of the van without diluting it down.  There is an old Scottish saying when it comes to trying to describe something that is not easily described, “Its better felt than telt”.  On this occasion it was a case of, “It is better smelt than telt”.  I put all the stuff back in as quickly as I could because I could hardly breathe inside the van, in fact it was probably dangerous to do so.  I popped my head into the maintenance building and told him it was done and then I disappeared.  I had timed my work so that it would be finished at quitting time.   

I went home with a real sense of achievement and a one up attitude but it was not too long until I went on a guilt trip for what I had done, it was childish and possibly dangerous.  I was not really looking forward to seeing my friend, or possibly my former friend the next morning.  I was always in the maintenance building before him and was waiting nervously for his arrival, I heard the van door close and in he came.

His eyes locked on to me like an Exocet missile ready to take out its target and he called me names that I had not been called for a while and then he smiled at me.  He then told me how he had to drive home from Lurgan to the other side of Armagh with all the windows down and how he was almost choked with fumes and frozen at the same time.  He did ask me why I did what I did but I could not give him a sensible answer.  The reality in life is that sometimes something or someone gets under our skin and we may react in ways and do things that do not make sense.  I think I grew up a little bit more after that experience.

After four years I had to leave the Department of Enjoyment as a certain lady prime minister introduced cut backs and spending in government agencies.  When I was leaving my Roman Catholic friend presented me with a beautiful family bible from the workers on the plant.

We sometimes hear people talk about swings and roundabouts; I left the D.O.E. on Friday and started back in the textile factory that I had previously worked in on the Monday.  I had seen my old job advertised in the paper just before I was about to finish in the D.O.E. and went over to Portadown to get an application form.  I met the printing manager and asked him for an application form and he asked me if I could start as soon as my other job finished.  No form to fill in, no visit to the unemployment agency, no running about trying to get work.  I thank God for his faithfulness and provision for my life both then and now.

Some people have been very kindly contacting me through our church web site to encourage me to keep writing my story, thank you.  My intention is to keep writing until there is nothing more to write.  Hopefully that will be a while.

The Lords provision.

In my mind I am coming up with all sorts of reasons why the good looking blond haired girl should not turn up.  I had convinced myself that there was nothing interesting or appealing about myself, I had a very poor self image and an equal lack of self esteem.  I really believed that I did not have very much to offer anyone.

Around this time I was to discover what it felt like to be lonely.  My father had been convicted of an offence that occurred when he was drunk and he was sent to prison.  I cannot remember how long his sentence lasted but I think it was more than a year.  I thought it would be easier to live at home without having to contend with an alcoholic father but I was to learn differently.
              
On one memorable occasion I had been invited to a birthday party by a girl in the church, there were quite a lot of other young people from the church there as well.  The house that the party was held in was quite beautiful, there was an outdoor pool, large garden and the interior of the house was immaculate.  I tried not to feel envious of the host but I lost the battle.  Everything looked perfect and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with my idyllic surroundings.  As the night progressed I felt more and more out of place.

I was glad when the party was over, or at least I thought I was until I returned home.  When I opened the door I entered a cold dark environment, everything was very quiet.  I thought that I liked quiet, I did for a while but there comes a time when you crave company even if it is perhaps annoying at times.  I switched the light on in the living room and the very first thing that caught my attention was the large square carpet in the middle of the floor that had a huge hole in the centre of it.

From there I focused on the glass front fire that had no life in it but it too had a large hole in it caused by my dad when he tripped on the carpet when he was drunk and his hand went through the glass front and he very severely burnt his hand.  From there the yellow tainted paint work and wallpaper that was the result of much cigarette smoke also came into focus.  This was far removed from the decor of the house where the party had been but in a sense it was more comfortable here, this was the lot that I felt I rightly deserved.

Suddenly I found myself being challenged by God, I was having a very powerful pity party but God was having none of it.  He began showing me that I was ungrateful for the things that I had and I needed to stop focusing on the things that I did not have.  He reminded me that there were many in the world with no solid roof over their head, many would have been glad of a carpet, even one with a hole in it.  I said sorry and thanked God for what he had provided for me and the pity party came to an abrupt end.  Giving thanks to God for what we have and not moaning about what we don’t have is far more pleasing to God.

Would she or wouldn’t she turn up.  I walked very nervously around the corner to the church not really holding out much hope that someone would be there waiting.  I did not want to feel embarrassed and almost did not go but the thought of her turning up and me not turning up felt worse than the embarrassment.  To my surprise and some relief there she was waiting at the gates of the church as arranged by her friend.  I cannot remember much about our first real conversation together but it was not as scary as I had envisaged.

I gradually felt more and more comfortable being with the blond haired girl and we started to see each other regularly.  Her background was entirely different from mine.  She had two Christian parents and was brought up in a good home, she was a bit of a home bird and I was the outdoor type.

I had stopped playing football but had started playing cricket for a local team called Victoria.  I started in the seconds and soon progressed to the first team as wicket keeper, there seemed to be something inside me that loved to dive all over the place.  A good test to find out if a girl is seriously interested in you is if she turns up to watch you play cricket on a Saturday afternoon.  Almost every home game she would be there watching me play.

Things were getting serious; I was invited to her house for dinner.  I think her parents just wanted to check me out, it was a memorable experience.  Her mum was a good cook and baked good stuff as well, the problem was that one of the vegetables on my plate I had never eaten and could not stand, it was cabbage.  Her mum had no idea that I detested the stuff but she knew and told me to leave it.  Someone had told me that first impressions were very important so I somehow managed to eat the cabbage and diplomatically declined seconds.  I think her mum made it a personal mission to try and fill me out as they say.

To shorten the story the blond haired girl called Helen became very precious to me.  We were spending more and more time together, she left her parents church as did her friend and attended and became members of my church.  I introduced her to fishing and shooting but her home bird tendencies won the day.  For the first time in my life I could really connect and share many of my feelings and difficulties with a girl that cared about me and accepted me for who I was, with my many as yet unsolved issues.

I really believed that God had provided me with someone who I could possibly share the rest of my life with until out of the blue and for no reason that I can remember I told Helen that I would have to break up with her.  She was devastated and broke down wanting to know what she had done wrong.  I tried to explain to her that she had not done anything wrong but the problems lay solely with me.

I don’t know why it suddenly happened but I was overwhelmed with the fear of me getting married, having children and me then turning out to be like my father and making every one’s life a misery.  I could not cope with the possibility of that happening and the only solution that seemed logical to me was never to get married and have children.  The other thing that I could not face up to was the possibility of Helen cheating on me and deserting me.  My past childhood experiences were starting to rob me of my future. 

I think Helen spoke to our Pastor about the situation and we met together and discussed the way I was feeling.  As usual he had the right words to say from scripture and he reassured me that in Christ I was a new creation and he could help me to live a life that was pleasing to him and be free from the bondage of sin.  His talk worked, we were married on the 7/9/1979, thirty five years ago this year.  God provided us with two wonderful girls and also four wonderful grandchildren.  We thank God for the family that he has provided for us and for the blessings that they all are to us.

“To God be the glory great things he has done”.

The girl with long blond hair.

When I was still training twice a week at Glenavon F.C. I would sometimes see a girl with long blond hair walking past the football ground.  She was always on the opposite side of the road and I don’t think she ever noticed me.  I was never really all that interested in going out with girls, there were more important things to do and for some reason I never felt overly interested in dating seriously.

I did go out with a couple of girls but there was never anything serious.  Before becoming a Christian my time was completely taken up with football, fishing and shooting.  I loved being out in the countryside, there was peace and tranquillity to be found in abundance and there was never any harsh words or domestic violence to cope with.  Now that I was spending more time at the church something had to go out of my full schedule and to my amazement it was football.

I think it is accurate to say that I stopped playing seriously when I was approaching eighteen.  I was playing for Glenavon seconds and Sunnyside at the time and was on top of the world that I was playing in the second team.  I got into the team when the regular goalkeeper had to go to England due to his work.  He was away for a couple of months from my recollection.  I can still remember the feeling of elation when the manager came around the dressing room at the end of a match and give the players a pound.  I could not believe it that someone would pay me to do something that I absolutely loved to do, in fact at that time I would probably have paid to play for my town club.

I felt small when I was playing in the under eighteen league, in the B division I felt like a miniature pigmy.  I will never forget one day when we played Dungannon Swifts away from home, their players looked like giants to me.  As I mentioned before that opposing teams would comment to one another about my height and they would often try to lob the ball over my head but I had no problem jumping and reaching the bar.  What I lacked in height I gained in agility and determination.  During the match Dungannon got a corner kick and my position was always the same, I had both backs guard a post each and if the ball would come into the six yard box I would go for it.  Their centre forward was massive, it was David v Goliath but I was confident in my ability to jump and take the ball of his head.  The corner kick came into the six yard box, I ran and jumped and took the ball of the giants head.  Boy did I feel good, sadly the good feeling ended abruptly as I found myself hitting the back of the net with the ball still in my hands.

He hit me full whack while I was still in the air and who knows where I might have landed if the net had not stopped me.  I gathered myself out of the back of the net and put the ball down for a free kick only to be told by the referee that he had given a goal.  Like the rest of my team I could not believe it, I chased the referee up towards the halfway line protesting against his unbelievable decision but he did not change his mind.

Eventually the regular goalkeeper returned from England and I was dropped without any explanation so I went on the huff and stopped training.  I was told that if I did not train I would not be allowed to play but my stubborn streak manifested itself quite proudly and I held my ground.  On the Friday night before the match the next day my manager came to the door checking if I was ok to play on Saturday.  I told him no because he had told me that I could not play if I did not train and I had stopped training.  He told me he would make an exception for me but I still said no and that was the end of my football career.

I was not sure how I would cope with football no longer being such an important part of my life but I did not miss it at all.  I was becoming more and more involved in the local church of the Nazarene and my time was given to working in the church in whatever way I could.  There was a very good Friday night youth club in the church and there would often be around eighty young people milling around.  There were three table tennis tables down stairs and badminton and football up stairs.

Do you remember the girl with the long blond hair that I mentioned earlier, well one Sunday night she turned up at our church with a friend.  I thought I was dreaming, I had never been up close to her before as we always passed each other on the opposite side of the street.  She was beautiful, I tried not to stare at her but I could not help myself.  I knew absolutely nothing about her, where she lived, what her name was or anything else.  I was still quite shy around girls and I made no effort to communicate with her because I was afraid of embarrassing myself.

We had a youth fellowship in the church that met after the church service and both girls started to attend that as well as the youth club on Friday.  They had been coming for a couple of weeks and I still had not had a conversation with her.  One night I found myself playing doubles with her at badminton, we were on the same side and her friend and my friend were on the other side.  My timid little heart was pounding with both excitement and fear, what would I say to her if she spoke to me?  It did not take long before disaster struck, I hit her full smack in the eye with the shuttle cock and she left the hall with her friend, in tears.

I was worried that I had damaged her eye but also that she would avoid me now.  Thankfully they both returned to the hall and I went and apologised to her, that is my first memory of speaking to her.  I think it was a couple of weeks after this that her friend who was also good looking came up to me in the church foyer and asked me a direct question that nearly sent me to glory.  She asked me what I thought of her friend, did I like her, would I like to go out with her?  I thought that I had suddenly been struck dumb, no words would come out of my mouth and I felt the blood rushing to my head and I was aware that my face was glowing like a red traffic light in the dark.

Eventually I said one of the stupidest things that I could have said, I said something like, “I suppose she is all right”.  It was a Homer Simpson moment, “D o, h”.  She told me that her friend liked me and would go on a date with me if I was willing.  I was taken by surprise and found it hard to believe that this beautiful girl could see anything interesting or appealing in me.  My feelings of low self worth and low self esteem were still a real stumbling block to me; I had no real self confidence either.

I can remember making up all kinds of excuses as to why I had no spare time to meet her but her friend was very persistent and she could think quicker than I could.  After processing all of my excuses she said to me that I would be free on Saturday evening.  That was the only time I had not made an excuse for and she had picked it up.  Before I knew it a date had been arranged between me and the beautiful girl with the long blond hair.  I did not sleep very well that night, I was worried that she would not turn up the next day and if she did what would I say to her.  What was unknown to me at this time was that I had a deep potentially crippling fear within me that would only manifest itself in the months that lay ahead. 

The rough and the smooth.

In the film Forest Gump there is a scene when Forest, who was played by Tom Hanks, is sitting on a bench alongside a lady.  He has a box of chocolates on his knees and he makes a comparison between life and the box of chocolates.  From memory he says “Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you might get”.  That is a simple but often accurate description of how life can be.

I don’t know about you but when someone offers me a sweet from a box of chocolates I always look to see if my favourite ones are there, I seldom look at the piece of paper that comes with the chocolates identifying what all the chocolates are in the box.  Most of us know what we like or dislike, one of the problems in life is that there are many circumstances and situations that we find ourselves in where we seem to have little or no choice and we don’t like it.  Sometimes life runs smooth but suddenly life can turn rough.

This was my experience as I returned home from a layman’s conference at Lake Windermere in England.  A group from the local church of the Nazarene in Lurgan headed off to the annual conference, I was in my late teens at the time.  Before coming into the church I never had many opportunities to travel very far from home but since joining the church opportunities were beginning to open up.  The scenery was stunning, I think I am a countryside man at heart, I find being in the countryside is often therapeutic for me.

This being my first conference I did not know exactly what happened during the weekend but as it happened each church was expected to participate by giving a testimony, doing a musical item or whatever else they could.  One of our senior laymen approached me and asked me to give a word of testimony and without any consideration I immediately said no.  Even though I had been a Christian for two to three years now there were still many fears and insecurities that I had still to overcome.  Being in the company of so many strangers made me a little uncomfortable and I certainly did not feel comfortable sharing my story of conversion with them. 

The man who asked me to testify seemed a little shocked at my negative response but he did not try to talk me round to doing something that I was not happy with and I was glad that he was wise enough to discern my position.  Not everyone has this wisdom and sadly some people have been put off getting involved in church life because some well meaning person tried to force them into doing something that they were not perhaps ready for at that time and they did more harm than good.

We had a great weekend of fun and fellowship; I slowly came out of my protective shell and began conversing with some of the strangers around me.  The highlight for me was the Saturday night when the different churches did their thing.  Some of the singing may have left a little to be desired but it was listening to the different stories of how individuals had come to know Christ that captivated me.  No two stories were the same, people with different family back grounds, some good some not so good but the joy of belonging to Christ was evident in them all.

During one of the testimonies I felt the Lord speak to me and challenge me concerning my spiritual life and my total commitment and full surrender to his will and ways for my life.  I was also very sorry that I had turned down an opportunity to witness for my Saviour.  I was sharing a room with a man who was very wise and he had become to me a source of great encouragement within the local church.  I told him what I felt the Lord was saying to me concerning being more fully consecrated and committed to the will and ways of my Saviour. 

We knelt at the side of the bed and prayed together and it was there that I asked the Lord to take complete control of every aspect of my life and use me for whatever purpose he chose.  I remember making a covenant with God to never again refuse to witness for him if I was asked and the truth is that since that time over thirty years ago to the best of my knowledge I have never refused to be a witness if at all possible.  The Lord also gave me a wonderful personal promise at that time; it is in Genesis chapter twelve.

1, The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will      show you.

2,     “I will make you into a great nation

       and I will bless you;

     I will make your name great,

       and you will be a blessing.

3,     I will bless those who bless you,

       and whoever curses you I will curse;

     and all peoples on earth

       will be blessed through you.”

The words in that scripture that God really impressed upon my heart were the words, “I will bless you and you will be a blessing”.  “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you”.  With all my heart I believe the promises of God to be true, I know God has blessed me, I believe that God working through me has blessed others.  I do not say that to take any glory for myself but all honour and glory goes to God because I know that the only truly good thing in me is him.  

I, have seen God bless others because they have been a blessing to me, I believe in the favour of God.  We read in Genesis thirty nine.

2, The LORD was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 3, When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, 4, Joseph found favour in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. 5, From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the LORD blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.

Rightly or wrongly I believe that those who intentionally bless Gods children will receive blessings from God themselves and those who would intentionally hold back blessing or hinder blessing from God’s children then God will withhold blessings from them as well.

On the last day of the layman’s convention which was on Sunday I had a strange encounter with a little man whom I think spoke with a Welsh accent?  I was coming down the stairs for breakfast and he grabbed my arm suddenly and said to me, “You know son that after a time of great blessing there will come a time of great tribulation”.  That was all he said, he let go of my arm and walked off and I don’t remember seeing him again.  To be really honest I thought that there was something wrong with him, I had no idea what he was talking about.  At least not then.

Before I had left for the conference life at home was quite good, my dad had not been drinking for some time and as I said earlier when he was sober he was a very quiet man but when drunk he could have been very nasty and unpredictable.  I arrived home on that Sunday evening and my dad was not in the house which surprised me so I went up the stairs to unpack my case.

When I went into my room and switched the light on there were two suit cases on the floor and woman’s clothes scattered over my bed.  I was totally confused, my first thought was that my dad had met someone and brought her home to live with us, beyond that I had no idea what was going on.  Later on that night however all would be revealed.  The door opened and in walked three people, all of them drunk.  One was my father but the man and woman who followed him in were complete strangers to me.

In an instant I went from feeling great, calm, relaxed, fulfilled into someone who felt like exploding and destroying everything and everyone around me.  The anger that I thought was going away evidently had not gone away, it was lying dormant waiting to be ignited and seeing my father drunk again was the spark that ignited it.  I soon found out who the other two characters were, the woman was my dad’s sister from England and the other man was her boyfriend.  She had apparently left her husband and was now living with this man and they were sleeping in my bed.

They tried to be friendly with me but they were not my friends, they had taken my father out to a pub and he was now drinking again, I saw them as my enemies and who knows but for the grace of God I might have treated them much harsher than I did.  It was at this point that what the little man had said to me on the stairs started to make sense.  The weekend had not only been a great blessing to me but it also had been a defining moment in my personal relationship with God.  Up to that point I had no doubt that Jesus was my Saviour but that weekend I had invited him to be Lord and master of my life, I wanted to live more for his will and less of my own.

This was the tribulation after the blessings; I was beginning to learn more about the tactics that our enemy Satan uses against God’s children.  Not only is he a liar but he is also a thief that tries to steal the blessings of God from us through trying circumstances and situations.  But for the insight and warning that God had given to me through this little man I might have done something I would have regretted.  If you read the story of Elijah on top of Mount Carmel and what happens immediately after that experience you will see a man of God who literally had a wonderful experience of the presence and power of God but because of a situation in his life he finds himself sitting under a tree wishing that he was dead.

1 Kings 19

1, Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2, So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

3, Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4, while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”

I gave my father an ultimatum and told him if these two people were still in the house tomorrow that I would not be back, I would go back to living with my grandparents.  Even though he was drunk either he or the other two got the message and left the next day.  Things in the home were not so good now but God had blessed me and drawn me closer to him during the weekend away with the church.  God was strengthening me and preparing me for things that lay ahead.

Praise God for the smooth and pleasant experiences we have in life but be mindful that after blessings tribulation will come, the rough will be following closely.  Forest Gump was right with his analogy of life, life is like a box of chocolate and we do not know what we will get from one day to the next but the difference for the people of God is that he does know what each new day will bring and he gives us his grace to live one day at a time. 

A new beginning and new friends.

There is a verse of scripture in 2 Corinthians 5:17. (NLT) that says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life has gone; a new life has begun”.  When my new life began on 25/2/1975 I was not immediately aware that I would lose many of my old friends. Those who I would have gone rioting with and those I would have done my underage drinking with would quickly fade away from my life.

 The only old friends that I seemed to be in contact with were those from my football world.  I don’t think any of my old friends really believed that I would stay a Christian very long; they maybe thought that I was just mixed up in my head because my mother had taken her own life.  I am very pleased to say that they were wrong, thirty nine years later I am by the grace and mercy of God still walking with him and he is more real to me now than he was then.

Old friendships faded and new friendships were formed.  The thing with friends is that there are friends and then there are FRIENDS.  I am not sure exactly what age I was when I met this new friend, I would say either seventeen or eighteen but not for certain.  If it were to save my life I cannot remember how or where we met but we came together somewhere.  What I do remember is going with this Godly man to some church meetings where he would preach and I would give my testimony.  He was a great encouragement to me in my new faith in Christ.  Looking back I think he perhaps saw something in me that I did not see in myself?

Sometimes in life you will meet someone significant who God has brought across your path for some reason or another, I believe that God brought this man across my path not only to encourage me but to prayerfully and also in tangible ways help me find God’s purposes and plans for my life.  One day I came home from work to find a large box of Christian books sitting on my door step and I had no idea who left them there.  I suspected that it was someone from my church but I was not sure.

In the box there was a note that is currently in my bible, this is what part of it says.  “Dear Jimmy, take these books as a gift from God rather than a gift from man.  It is best if you don’t know whom God used in this service so that man is not thanked but only God is praised”.   The letter concludes by saying, “May God strengthen you and guide you”.  2 Timothy 2:15. This is what the scripture says.

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth”.

At this point in my new journey with Christ I honestly had no idea what would be ahead of me in life but those words would prove to be very meaningful to me in the years that lay ahead.  At some point in our friendship we lost contact for a number of years until many years later I found myself at an important crossroads in my life and I believe God showed me very clearly to renew contact with this man and ask him to pray with me for direction for my life.

During our conversation for some reason I felt led to ask him about the box of books that quite a few years earlier were left on my door step.  When I asked if it was him he just smiled at me.  I would be jumping many chapters in my story if I were to go into details of what happened after our renewed friendship.  I will say this though, he is still a significant friend that prays for me and has helped me in so many ways.  God bless him.

I truly thank God for all the people that he has allowed me to meet and become friends with during my thirty nine year journey as a Christian.  Two of those greatest friends have been my first Pastor and his wife in Lurgan church of the Nazarene.  MR and Mrs Spence.  They made me feel not only part of their church but also a part of their family.  They looked out for me in different ways and gently nurtured me in the things of God.  I was only disappointed in them once, when they left Lurgan and went to Canada to minister there.  I have forgiven them now, not that there ever was anything to forgive.  I thank God he brought them back to Lurgan.

I can remember Mrs Spence coming up to me one Sunday and asking me if I had seen the poster on the church notice board concerning what was then called International Institute.  What that meant was that every four years the Nazarene youth would meet somewhere for a week of fun and fellowship.  That particular year they were meeting up in Italy.  Mrs Spence asked me if I was interested in going to it, I pretended I was not interested but that was not strictly true.  I would have loved to have attended but financially there was no way I could afford it, I would have been around eighteen to nineteen at this time.  

Once again Mrs Spence approached me and suggested that it would be a wonderful experience for me to go and meet up with other Nazarene youth from all over Europe, this time I told her the truth that there was no way that I could afford it.  She then told me that a couple of people in the church wanted to pay for me to go.  I did not know what to say but she was very persuasive and I accepted the offer.  To be honest it did not take much arm twisting.

That trip was one of the highlights of my Christian journey.  To meet up with young people from all over Europe and listen to their stories of faith and find that we were all a part of the family of Christ was amazing.  There were five from our church that I can remember going, two girls and three boys.  Just because you become a Christian does not mean that you can’t do a little messing around and of course we did our fair share.

There were a few memorable moments; we were thrown of a bus because we were not wearing tops, only shorts.  The police in Monte Carlo shouted at us for not wearing tops, they did not seem to realize that back home you hardly ever got the chance to take your top off, here was scorching sunshine and we were being told everywhere to keep your top on.  Monte Carlo was something else, I think I became aware for the first time of how the world is ill divided.

Our trip of a lifetime was almost cut short as one of the organisers of the trip threatened to send some of our group home.  They apparently did not see the funny side of one of our antics.  What had happened was to us hilarious but then we were on the giving and not the receiving end of the antic.  To cut a long story short we drenched quite a lot of young people who were asleep on the outdoor tennis court around two thirty in the morning.  Due to the heat at night many of the young people decided to sleep outside and we saw an opportunity for some major mayhem.

We had become friendly with a young lad from Italy whose job it was to look after the grounds of the place where we were staying.  We noticed him putting sprinklers around the place to keep the vegetation from burning up in the heat.  We asked him to show us where the pump was for the sprinklers, he had no idea why we wanted to know and we did not tell him.  Then one night we positioned the sprinklers around the tennis court where many of the young people were sleeping and turned on the pump.  We unfortunately could not stay and witness the mayhem first hand but our imagination was good enough.  There were girls screaming in different languages, most of the boys apparently thought it was great but the leader from Scotland was not amused.

We had beaten a hasty retreat into our dorm and shortly after someone had found out how to turn the sprinklers off the lights were switched on in the dorm.  A very irate Scottish man for want of a better term through a wobbler.  We of course pleaded like dumb Irish hillbillies not knowing anything.  The game was up though because one of our boys was quite tall and his feet were hanging over the end of the bunk bed and he had not taken the time to remove his trainers when he scurried into his bed.  He could not explain why he went to bed wearing his trainers.

We should have known better because the bible does say that your sins will find you out.  The man was very serious about sending us home but after we apologised sincerely he calmed down.  O to be young again.