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Real-life stories: Perpetrating violence or crime

Young, Violent And Homeless Offender Turned Drug Dealer Turned Repentant

I had had a very unstable childhood which resulted in my getting into bad company very early on in life, and by the time I was fourteen I had been expelled from three schools and had served my first term in a young offenders' institution.   I had by then also become a heavy user of LSD and amphetamines.

Prison did not frighten me;  I made a lot of friends there, and learnt even more tricks of the criminal trade.    Upon release, I got involved in bigger crimes.   My life alternated between breaking the law, whatever form that took – whether burglary, robbery, stealing or violence, and spending time in prison.

Eventually, I was banned from entering Hampshire.   I had just turned sixteen.   I was then sent to live with my father who repeatedly threw me out of the house in his fits of drunken rage.   I ended up sleeping rough.

Looking back, I can now say that the grace of God kept hounding me.   I remember one night, trying to keep warm while sleeping next to a generator at the back of a supermarket.   I remembered that there was a house nearby which was occupied by Christians.

A strange feeling directed my steps to the door of the house.   It was about 3 o'clock in the morning.   I stood outside the door and muttered, “God, if you are real, give me a warm bed”.   At that instant, a man opened the curtain and invited me into the house.

He offered me the couch with a duvet and made me a cup of hot drink.   This kindness shown did not make one bit of difference to me, and my life continued in its downward spiral.

Some time later, I tried to go back to college to finish my high schooling but I couldn't, and ended up becoming a drug dealer and all the crimes associated with it.   I made quite a profitable business out of this and eventually found myself delving into areas I could not handle.

Drugs had damaged my mind and thinking.   So in order to sort myself out, on my 21st birthday, I went to the Isle of Wight.   One day, I met a man at the Social Services who invited me to church.   I attended the services a few times, but the lure of old ways was far too attractive.   When I left the Isle of Wight after about a year, my life had not got any better.

Several years later, I met a girl who had been renting a room in my mum's house.   She told me that she was a Christian, and gently shared her faith with me.   We became good friends over the following months but then I went away on a travelling holiday to Israel, to live in a Kibbutz.

I wanted to live the 'high life'.   One day, a man named Matthew told me about Jesus and what He could do for me and that He loved me.   I was touched and moved.

A couple of weeks later, I found myself calling out to God.   I fell prostrate on the floor.   The grace and power of God had disarmed me.

I felt a deep love flowing through me.   I cried out to God and asked Him to forgive me the life of sin I had been living.

It was nothing of my making, but God transformed my mind and thinking in an instant.   Glory be to Him for His infinite mercy.

Soon after, I was baptised in the River Jordan, and on my return from Israel I married Jing.   Unbeknown to me, she and her friends had been praying that I would find faith whilst in Israel. Truly, God is faithful, and He has blessed us with our daughter, Elisa.

Where sin had increased, God’s grace had abounded all the more.

 

Dean Lambert-Mosley


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