00:01
[Stuart] This God loves Stuart Harvey
00:03
just exactly who he is.
00:05
I don't have to change
to be something I'm not.
00:08
I just have to listen, and
read, and learn who he is.
00:13
Hi, I'm Stuart. This is my story.
00:17
I just lived a selfish, Stuarty life,
00:21
hating people, hating the world
00:22
and living from one Saturday to the next
00:24
just for my drink, for my football.
00:26
That was the only thing in life mattered.
00:27
Not family, not friends,
not church, not God.
00:30
Just my drink and my
football every Saturday.
00:33
Sunday morning was a bluff morning.
00:35
I had to get up, come to church.
00:36
I have two young sons.
00:37
Well, they were young
then, they're big now.
00:39
But I had to get up on Sunday morning
00:41
and make my effort, go to church
00:42
because I did want them
to see me, growing up--
00:44
going to church because they
were big mimickers of Daddy,
00:47
and whatever Daddy done, they done.
00:49
And I could see that from an early age.
00:51
I wanted them to see that
Daddy goes to church,
00:54
And I would sit in the church
a lot of Sunday mornings
00:57
shaking, like literally
shaking, panicking,
00:59
I was gonna faint halfway
through the sermon.
01:03
Thinking, please sing the last hymn,
01:05
please close in prayer early,
01:07
I gotta get outta here and get air in me
01:08
and go home and get the fluids into me.
01:11
The drinking was getting
serious and the football and
01:14
there was actually one
time coming home from
01:16
a match down south in Dublin,
01:17
and I was just in a bad way,
01:19
I'd had a bad weekend, just really drunk.
01:23
My family were there, I
got them into the stand,
01:25
and once I got them in,
01:26
I was away to meet the guys,
01:27
and go on to drinking and
whatever else we got involved in.
01:31
And coming home from
that a wee guy asked me,
01:33
"What are you doing?
01:35
"You could have been in
jail the other night,
01:37
"Or you could have been
killed and what about
01:40
your wife and those two boys."
01:42
And that just sparked
something and I thought,
01:43
Lord, how did I get this low?
01:45
That was my lowest point in life.
01:47
How did I get there?
01:48
And I thought, I really do need to take
01:50
this God thing seriously
and really need to discover
01:53
who this Jesus really is.
01:55
But I felt that I didn't
know how and I just...
01:57
One day walking on the moors,
01:59
I met a guy from the
church and he'd asked me
02:00
where I was at spiritually.
02:03
And I said, look, I'm struggling
02:05
and I said, I'm watching
other people in church
02:07
and I can see what they have got,
02:09
but I don't know how to get there.
02:10
And I feel I need to spend
me and you time with God,
02:12
but I didn't know what that was about.
02:14
So that's when I started
a journey with him.
02:18
Every fortnight, I was
meeting him and we started
02:20
looking at who God is, who Jesus is,
02:22
who the Holy Spirit is,
02:24
and how I go about discovering
what it means to me.
02:29
For me now, I suppose
the main thing for me now
02:31
is that I want to tell everybody else.
02:33
I just feel I've discovered
something that so many
02:35
even Christians maybe
don't fully understand.
02:38
But so many people out there
haven't a clue what's going on.
02:41
So I've started sharing my faith
02:43
with the guys from the football
02:45
that I used to be involved with.
02:47
And I became a street pastor which is
02:50
a big part of my life now.
02:51
I'm out in Belfast and
Ardoyne, North Ireland,
02:54
serving God round the
parks or in the streets.
02:56
Anytime from seven in the evening
02:59
to two, three in the morning.
03:00
From drinking in the streets
to now praying with people,
03:03
sharing with people, and
telling them about real joy.
