The full story of how I became a Christian. By Stan of Stans Gym.

I was born in May 1958 and by God's grace I was born again in April 1990. Praise Jesus forever, I hope this encourages you to also trust Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. I pray that your heart will open to God as you read this.

Although my parents were not Christians they had loved me and raised me to have morals and a belief in God. Growing up and attending local rough schools caused me to begin to fight back from a very early age. As I got older I just became quicker of the mark. A rebellious and vengeful way of life suited me and it earned me worldly respect. My mothers sister my aunty Betty whom Jesus had saved, had spent time explaining to me the Gospel of Salvation. Of how God had become a man and had therefore lived a sinless life, and that the name of this man was the Lord Jesus the Christ, who was the prophesied Jewish Messiah. Aunty Betty had told me how the bible teaches that Jesus gave up His life to die for my sin on the Cross. I knew I was a sinner, that was obvious. Aunty Betty rejoiced when she told me that Jesus fulfilled the Holy Scriptures by rising from the dead on the third day. Betty explained that the bible said, that the road that I was on, was the wide road that leads to destruction, then Judgment before God, and then eternal punishment in the lake of fire. Aunty Betty told me strait. Stanley John you need to be saved. Jesus came to forgive you and to save you and to give you eternal life in Heaven !....Then Aunty Betty asked me the really big question. Do You believe ?.. As a young lad I remember thinking to myself. Yes I believe. I then said with certainty. Yes I believe. Aunty Betty rejoiced and said. Then lets pray. Woe I thought, and said. You said I just had to believe. Aunty Betty explained that when someone believes, they pray asking Jesus for forgiveness, and they repent by turning away from sin, and they give up their lives to Jesus, and they confess Jesus as their Lord. I remember thinking. But I can't stop fighting and sticking up for myself. I cant live this Christian life. I thought to my self. No sex before marriage. I cant live like that. So I spoke up. Not what I was really thinking. But what would allow myself to wriggle out of the whole thing. I looked Aunty Betty in the eye and said to her. Aunty Betty I am happy as I am. I repeated this over and over un till she gave up. I walked away remembering only what suited me. I blocked out all the warnings of punishment for my sins, but was happy that God loved and cared for me. After that I hardly ever thought about God, only occasionally when I wanted something. I ended up nearly always in trouble at school.
My parents did all they could to get me a good education, they were always disciplining me and trying to guide me, but my rebellion increasingly gave them a hard time. My parents were kind and very hard working, as they still are today, but as a lad I just didn't fully appreciate them.

Aunty Betty Herbert. Here on the Left in 1995 is a my Aunty Betty who originally brought the Word of God to me. Lord bless her in Jesus Name. Praise God for obedient saints, who press on with the sharing of the gospel of Salvation in Christ. Romans 10 vs 11-15. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel.

As a lad girls and motor bikes and my mates were my life.
I was brought up to love motor cycles. My dad gave me his Triumph 500 on the day I passed my test on my 17th birthday. All my mates had bikes.
In July 1976 I had a tragic road accident when I was out riding with all my mates. After getting a chinese take away. I pulled away on my bike and drove down the road to go around my mates Simon Winter's house. The rest of my mates who were all on faster bikes than me had stopped at the chippy quite a way behind me. We must have all pulled away about the same time, all going in the same direction down Corbets tey road in Upminster Essex. We had traveled this route many times. We would carry on down the road until we would get to Gaynes Park road and then we would turn down it to go to Simons house. That summers night at about 9 pm I didn't have a worry in the world. I thought to myself. I know I will take a short cut. So I hand signaled right and went to turn down the Approach. As I turned our lives changed forever. My friend Richard Burton on his Kawasaki 500 with my best friend Andrew Goff riding pillion was about to overtake me at 90 miles per hour. I was hit broad side so hard that it bent my bike in half. Our three bodies flew through the air, me being hit like a snooker ball. We all landed and lay there as dead men and Richards bike burst into flames. As with any life this was a horrendous loss. These were fine young men. Richard Burton was 18 years old and Andrew Goff was just 17. Both died that day. As you may assume this not an easy story to tell, but I know I must for the glory of God. Here below was my best friend Andy Goff.

Andrew Goff was one of my best friends from Gaynes School in Upminster Essex. Andrew was considered an electronic genius when he was at school. When Andrew was Just 15 years old, he built his own disco unit with fade controls and everything. Andrew understood electricity in a big way. Andrew was loyal and great fun. It's at times like this even after all these years. That I still miss him. Andrew had loving parents and two sisters called Cathy and Wendy. A really nice family. Andrew is missed by all.

At the moment of the accident there were two realities.
What I experienced was at the point of impact. I fell as if drawn by gravity straight down to the ground into a sprinters position. My landing position was as if in the starting block entering a race. One leg back, one leg bent and fingers touching the ground. I immediately got up and walked a few paces towards a tree on the curb and sat down and watched the bike burn. I had no idea that I was no longer in my physical body. I remember walking, taking strides and like normal touching the ground with my feet as I walked. I remember felling light and completely untroubled. As I sat there I experienced complete peace. I didn't see any of my friends or any body else. Just the road and the bike burning. Suddenly a dark cloud that filled the entire sky came down towards me, and this drew my attention, so I immediately looked up. As I looked up the Lord spoke to me. His voice was masculine filling the sky, yet he spoke gently directly to me out of the cloud. I knew this was the Almighty. What He said caused me to become immediately aware of my situation and out of my fear of death I began to scream No. I was thinking in absolute panic. I want to live. My scream began as I sat by the tree on the curb. In a flash I was back in my body still screaming the same one word No. The first thing I saw once back in my body was ambulance lights going around. Once in Old Church Hospital in Romford Essex, I was told that I had broken my right leg and my right arm. As they were stitching me up, I remember feeling such a loss of my friends. When they said I had broken my leg I thought. I know that I have not broken my leg because I was just walking on it.

The hospital was right I had indeed broken my right leg and arm.
After a stay in hospital I was released to come home, and I was looked after by my mum and dad. At the Police Inquest every one said the accident was not my fault, but as you may imagine, I badly blamed myself. I often wished that I had died with them. I felt that I shouldn't have lived. Once I had physically recovered, I got back on with things but I had changed. My attitude was to live as if I could be dead tomorrow, and that if I died, so what. I would think, I have still lived longer that my mates and that I ought to be dead anyway. This destructive way of thinking accounted for much of my personality. I could be dead tomorrow became a reason for doing all sorts of crazy things. Today I am very thankful that I didn't die. Now I realize that had I died. I would have died in my sin. I would have come before God, and would have been answerable for all my sins and rejection of Jesus Christ. I would have come before Jesus Christ Himself at the last Judgment and my sin would have condemned me. The bible says in Revelation 20 vs 11-15. I would have been cast into the lake of fire for my sin. I would have been deserving everlasting punishment. Praise God I lived.

Knowing God was real didn't make me a Christian.
Sin continued to rule my life. My out of the body near death experience didn't make me godly. I just became more arrogant when talking to my Aunty Betty about Heaven and hell and the bible. I would tell her. I have been to Heaven. You haven't. There is no such place as hell. The truth is. I hadn't been to Heaven. I had just experienced a heavenly feeling while out of my physical body. At that time, I could not allow myself to continue to believe in hell due to my friends death. Their death alone was painful enough, and as I knew they weren't Christians, it was easier in my mind, to block out hell altogether. So to ease my own guilt. I would shout. There is no hell. My Aunty Betty had to put up with a lot of disrespect, but she faithfully continued loving me and praying for me and sharing God's Word with me when she was down.

To regain physical strength in my leg and arm I began weight training.
I left home at 18 and turned my flat in Upminster into a Gym. With my bed in the corner I developed a well equipped training area for my friends and myself to work out. My dad built me my first incline bench. After work and in my lunch hour there I would be. Lifting weights. This was the beginning of Stan's Gym that would soon move to my garage and then to where it is today. I trained hard, I was very dedicated and became a competitive body builder in the early 80s. I went through a divorce that was my fault. Lost a lot of money that I deserved to lose. At the time Body Building had become my life. After competing twice without drugs and after nearly 6 years of drug free training, I did a stupid thing. I thought If you can't beat them then join them, and I started taking steroids. I thought I was on top of the world. I was very strong. I was big. I felt powerful and I was living a single mans life and I had a few quid. I thought I was unstoppable. Violence had been an occasional way of life and I was sure. I was in control.


I was building my life upon sand.
Steroids had made me much stronger than I would have been naturally. An old injury in my left shoulder began to play up and eventually stopped me from lifting weights as regularly. Slowly my shoulder joint got worse until eventually I was forced to stop training. To start with I just trained around the injury but after a time I realized that it wasn't getting better, only worse. So I stopped. Occasionally I would be seen in the gym but eventually I just gave up trying. My foundation for my life had been my weight training. My life was built on it, and now it was gone. I stopped taking steroids because of all the dangerous side effects and also there was no point because I couldn't train. My mother had warned me as a boy, not to take drugs, but now steroids had opened the door. I start taking dangerous recreation drugs. In the late 80s when the rave sean hit England. There was sometimes 15000 people on Extacy and LSD and speed dancing in fields at where house parties till 9 in the morning. I was there. This time I really did think I was on top of the world. Dancing on massive speakers, 15 feet above the crowd. Out every night, acid parties. Then crashing asleep for it seemed like days, then more drugs and away again until I dropped. By this time drugs and women had become my life. My health and my mental health was quickly deteriorating. I had continued to reject Jesus as my Lord and I was on a very slippery slope going further and further into sin. Even though my Aunty Betty had a few years earlier, led me through a sinners prayer to Jesus. I hadn't become a Christian, because I hadn't repented. My way of life was slowly killing me, I became just a shadow of my former self. Manic depression set in and I was really in trouble. Violence. Aggression. Vengeance. Paranoia.
All the bad destructive things became my way of life.

I was desperate to change but I couldn't.
By April 1990 I had come to the end. I thought about surgery. I though. If I could get my shoulder fixed then I would be able to get back lifting weights. I then reasoned with myself. Then I would have good reason to stop taking these drugs and get back to my old drug free training days. In this I was hoping that my joy would return and that I would be rid of this devastating depression that I was in.

I had a Miracle.
At around 2 am on a Sunday morning in April 1990 I came back to the Gym early, I was depressed, I was desperate, I intended to do something about my shoulder. I lay on the floor in my office thinking of surgery. I wanted the best surgeon. I was prepared to borrow money to go private and get my shoulder fixed. I quite suddenly fell into deep despair. Thinking to myself. O this is going to take ages, I want it done now. Then I suddenly saw the light. I thought to myself. God knows all about me. I then cried out to Jesus from the bottom of my sinful heart. I cried out in repentance. Jesus take my life. Please forgive me for all my sin. Immediately I became aware of the awesome presence and the peace of God. I felt transparent before our Holy God. I felt like an open book. I cried out Lord heal my shoulder so that I can do what you know I want to do. I had this overwhelming desire for the first time in my life to do good. To live right. At that moment the Holy Spirit gave me the gift of faith for me to know that Jesus had healed my shoulder. As I drifted of to sleep. I knew without a shadow of a doubt, my shoulder was healed, and that Jesus was now in my life, and that He was now my God and my Savior.

Jesus had healed me but more importantly Jesus had saved me.
Having spent nearly 32 years separated from our loving God. I am now so thankful to Jesus Christ for dying for my sins on that cruel Cross at Calvary. Jesus our Risen Savior has given me Life and Life to the Full. No longer do I suffer from manic depression. No longer is violence my way of life. No longer am I vengeful. No longer am I quick to fly into a rage. No longer am I unforgiving. No longer am I paranoid. No longer am I a drug addict. No longer do I smoke drugs or even cigarettes. No longer do I argue against the bible. No longer do I prefer my sin. No longer do I live as I used to. Jesus saved me. Our Lord gave me a brand new life. I was born again of the Holy Spirit. I deserve death and eternal punishment but God is merciful. I deserve the lake of fire and God's Wrath, but my Jesus has given me eternal life in Heaven and His love. Isn't God wonderful. Isn't He merciful.

What's really Important.
Build your life upon Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Rock. Jesus is the only solid foundation. Put His word into practice and live. My near death experience back in 1976 and my testimony may be interesting to hear, but what's really important is the word of God and His promises and warnings to you and me. Now Jesus has sent me to tell everybody the Good news about God’s love and His awesome plan that He has for peoples lives and for their eternity. You must be born again. No arguments. Jesus said in John 3 vs 3. Most assuredly, I say to you. Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. I argued with Jesus for years. Praise God I didn't die. Time is short. An opportunity to give your life tomorrow is not promised. Some people say to me, well half of me believes, and half of me doesn't believe. Listen carefully, I'm now talking to your believing side. Call on Jesus !

Now is the time. Today is the day of Salvation.
Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead. You will be saved. Call on Jesus right now with a repentant heart. Ask Jesus to forgive your sins. Say Jesus take my life. Mean it and Christ will come into your life and make you brand new. I pray that in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that you will enter into Life in Christ right now in Jesus Christ's Name. Call on Jesus while you can right now.

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