A former drug addict who found God while taking heroin has shared her inspiring testimony in a video for Christianity Explored.
For 18 months, Debs struggled with the ordeal of trying to come off the incredibly addictive drug, confessing that “life just went from bad to worse”.
Then, at a friend’s flat, her life was turned on its head.
‘Real trouble’
Debs recalls that (while looking for some matches) she found a Gideon’s New Testament and, still “high on heroin”, began reading.
She said: “I’d never read the Bible before, and I just read there that I was in real trouble, that there was a living God to whom I owed an account for my life, this life that I had just trashed.”
“I saw in the Bible that I was in real trouble with a real God”, she said.
Good Friday
One Good Friday, Debs went to church. On hearing Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion, she broke down in tears.
“What I heard was that he had died on the cross for me. All the things that I had done, and the punishment that was coming my way, he had taken on the cross.”
She continued: “It was for me that he was forsaken. He took my forsakenness. And I sobbed. I just burst into tears. He’d done that for me”.
She added: “I walked out of there knowing that God is my Father”.
Transformed
Debs said that her life changed from that moment on, and that God has transformed her over the past nine years.
“As I look back over the time that I’ve been a Christian, God has changed me from the inside out. I just see that God has healed and restored every single area that I had single-handedly trashed.”
‘Freedom’
She said that before she met God, she had lived her life on her own terms, but has found “there is real freedom and real joy in living for God, and on his terms”.
“I love him with all my heart, my soul, and my strength, and I love others. And for me that’s what makes life worth living.
“I can’t thank him enough for what he’s done for me”.