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[Stuart] This God loves Stuart Harvey
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just exactly who he is.
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I don't have to change
to be something I'm not.
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I just have to listen, and
read, and learn who he is.
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Hi, I'm Stuart. This is my story.
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I just lived a selfish, Stuarty life,
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hating people, hating the world
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and living from one Saturday to the next
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just for my drink, for my football.
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That was the only thing in life mattered.
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Not family, not friends,
not church, not God.
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Just my drink and my
football every Saturday.
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Sunday morning was a bluff morning.
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I had to get up, come to church.
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I have two young sons.
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Well, they were young
then, they're big now.
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But I had to get up on Sunday morning
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and make my effort, go to church
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because I did want them
to see me, growing up--
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going to church because they
were big mimickers of Daddy,
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and whatever Daddy done, they done.
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And I could see that from an early age.
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I wanted them to see that
Daddy goes to church,
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And I would sit in the church
a lot of Sunday mornings
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shaking, like literally
shaking, panicking,
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I was gonna faint halfway
through the sermon.
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Thinking, please sing the last hymn,
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please close in prayer early,
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I gotta get outta here and get air in me
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and go home and get the fluids into me.
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The drinking was getting
serious and the football and
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there was actually one
time coming home from
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a match down south in Dublin,
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and I was just in a bad way,
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I'd had a bad weekend, just really drunk.
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My family were there, I
got them into the stand,
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and once I got them in,
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I was away to meet the guys,
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and go on to drinking and
whatever else we got involved in.
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And coming home from
that a wee guy asked me,
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"What are you doing?
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"You could have been in
jail the other night,
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"Or you could have been
killed and what about
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your wife and those two boys."
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And that just sparked
something and I thought,
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Lord, how did I get this low?
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That was my lowest point in life.
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How did I get there?
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And I thought, I really do need to take
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this God thing seriously
and really need to discover
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who this Jesus really is.
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But I felt that I didn't
know how and I just...
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One day walking on the moors,
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I met a guy from the
church and he'd asked me
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where I was at spiritually.
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And I said, look, I'm struggling
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and I said, I'm watching
other people in church
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and I can see what they have got,
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but I don't know how to get there.
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And I feel I need to spend
me and you time with God,
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but I didn't know what that was about.
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So that's when I started
a journey with him.
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Every fortnight, I was
meeting him and we started
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looking at who God is, who Jesus is,
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who the Holy Spirit is,
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and how I go about discovering
what it means to me.
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For me now, I suppose
the main thing for me now
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is that I want to tell everybody else.
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I just feel I've discovered
something that so many
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even Christians maybe
don't fully understand.
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But so many people out there
haven't a clue what's going on.
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So I've started sharing my faith
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with the guys from the football
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that I used to be involved with.
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And I became a street pastor which is
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a big part of my life now.
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I'm out in Belfast and
Ardoyne, North Ireland,
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serving God round the
parks or in the streets.
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Anytime from seven in the evening
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to two, three in the morning.
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From drinking in the streets
to now praying with people,
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sharing with people, and
telling them about real joy.