And Then I Met God – John McGoldrick
An amazing powerful life-testimony of a transformation of a life.
John McGoldrick – Scotland
Hard Times
I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland’s compact hilly capital and at eighteen months of age, one family adopted me. They had one boy, four years older than myself. I would often wonder why they adopted me, and I pondered over what it would feel like to belong to a family who actually wanted me. My parents were Catholic, religious and hardworking, my father worked as a maintenance foreman for the railways, my mother was a housewife, but somehow or somewhere they had lost the ability to love, or maybe they never knew what love was.
At the age of five, they made it clear that I was unruly and unmanageable and they put me into a home run by nuns, allowing me to come home every other weekend. I liked the nuns who were kind, but I remember having to take the bus home on my own in the dark. Who on earth puts a young child on a bus on his own at the age of five? I remember feeling so scared and so very alone and abandoned. This continued until I was twelve when my time at the convent came to an end. I was so sad to say good-bye to the nuns, as they had become my family.
I was excited, however, to be returning to live at home, although I was not happy at the thought of being bullied by my brother who hated me with a vengeance. I sought the love of my mother so badly, I wanted to prove to her I was good enough to love and good enough to keep. However, at the back of my mind I no longer believed that I was worthy of love, after all, it wasn’t just one mother who had given me away but two, and inside I believed myself to be unlovable.
We left Edinburgh and moved to Dundee, a beautiful coastal city in eastern Scotland. I went to a school where I just didn’t fit in I needed support and help from my parents but once again they sent me away, this time to an approved school for bad boys. This school was unlike the convent, as the children were all tough, hardened with criminal records. I learnt bad language, how to steal cars and joy ride, it was fun, I was finally fitting in and belonging, I had friends who cared about me.
Sadly, my mother died of a heart disease when I was thirteen, just a short while after I had been sent away, I was devastated but I had my friends and I had acquainted myself with drugs and alcohol, so my feelings were taken care of. I left this school at sixteen years of age. My qualifications were of a criminal nature, grand theft auto, burglary, and so on, not much to put on a CV!
The Rugged Road
I went home to live with my father for a couple of years until I was eighteen and then moved away to start a life of drugs and crime.
I went to prison many times, that was part and parcel of living a life of crime. I hated the sound of those creaking huge prison gates shutting me in for yet another long, lonely, and cruel stretch, but drugs and talk of crime were as easy accessible inside as out.
One night, drowning in despair, I felt I had had enough. I managed to steal a razor blade and with the intentions of ending my life, I cut into my veins deeply, watching as my life flowed out onto the cold stone floor. I didn’t die, but after some time in the infirmary I was returned, but this time stripped naked and put on suicide watch, my humiliation and hatred for my life became much stronger than before. I lost regard for my life and the lives of others for when I left prison I immediately got involved in an armed robbery in a jewellery shop, where I stuck a revolver into the mouth of an innocent man, shot him, and watched him die, I feeling nothing. We were caught, and I stood silent as the judge sentenced me to my longest term ever, I made up my mind there and then, if I made it out, I would never return and I didn’t.
Years went by, and although I stayed clear of trouble, I felt trapped, I may just as well have been in prison, there was no hope, no future, and everything appeared so pointless and even relationships meant nothing to me, it was as if my life took on a meaningless empty void. However, once in a while, my thoughts would go to the only time in my life when I felt a glimmer of hope, a time when the nuns spoke about a man called Jesus. There was something about that name that shone a light into the dark recesses of my soul, but I did nothing about it, however, unknowingly, Jesus did, and started opening new doors for me.
The Power of the Cross
I met and became friends with a Christian lady and I started going to church. One day as I was about to go to work, the pastor’s wife who had come over for a prayer time with my friend, started to pray and as I stepped out of the house, the Holy Spirit fell on me and I was moved with such joy and wonder, I started to praise God and felt an amazing deep love for Him. I never experienced something like this before!
A few months later, I was baptized and my life became unrecognizable, the Blood of Jesus transformed me, each day was full of powerful good possibilities, doors opened for me in all areas wonderfully and miraculously. I became co-owner of a restaurant, I got married and I became involved in working for the homeless. I also started visiting prisons and I was able to give hope to the hopeless. This time it was me who was given authority to enter high maximum security prisons to help prisoners, and this all because of Jesus!
I know myself to be a highly valued child of God, a co-heir with Jesus, my sins are forgiven and I stand righteous, truly loved and desired by my Father God, nothing can separate me from His great love for me. And that is what I want to share with you, you also are so desperately loved by God and He wants to come into your life and set you free. He wants to open up doors of opportunity for you, God wants a loving relationship with you, and there is nothing more magnificent in this world than the Love of the Father.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”(1 John 4:9-10)
John is quiet, and in all his toughness, gentle as he follows hard after his Savior. He is Janet’s husband, (whose testimony is shared earlier). He has a prison ministry, and visits prisons to give prisoners hope, in Scotland, and is dedicated in all he does! As he was the co-owner of a restaurant, he also is excellent in bakery!
Rita
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