“WE’D BEATEN up this security guard” says John, 42. “He was lying on the edge of the street and I booted him in the head, cracked it on the kerb. This woman screamed ‘Murder!’ and I ran off.

“Later, the police stopped us. The woman identified us and I was sent to a detention centre for six months. I was 15 at the time. This stuff was just the norm for me – and when I heard the bloke was going to be okay, I never thought anything more of it.”

John had been brought up as a good Catholic boy, but “lost interest” and got into his own thing in his early teens. He drifted into petty crime – thieving and fighting.

“I had the mindset that I had to be stronger, faster, fitter than anyone else” says John. “I became obsessed with sport – boxing and weight training – so that when I went looking for fights I’d know I was invincible”.

John became a heavy drinker and in the late eighties he was getting into three or four fights a week, “fists, weapons, whatever”. By 1989 John describes himself as having a “real desire to hurt, to kill”. You wouldn’t want to have met him in a dark alley.

But something inside John was niggling at his conscience.

“In about 1991 I began to dislike the person I’d become,” remembers John. “I wished I could start over again, be different. But I couldn’t see a way out of the life I was living.”

This nagging feeling grew and John began to hate what he was doing, who he was. Bit by bit, John started to reach out to God.

“I’d heard some Christian preachers say that you could actually know the Lord,” says John. “Underneath it all, I still believed in God. I just didn’t know how I could get to know Him”.

John started to seriously examine his life and want change. He began to “pop into churches” to be quiet and pray. As he asked God into his life, he started to change.

He knew that he needed the support of other Christians if he was going to make it, but John just couldn’t settle in any of the churches he tried out. Getting desperate, he prayed “God show me”.

Shortly afterwards, he was walking through a park when he stopped and stared at a building with the words “Jesus Army Centre”. He’d never heard of it before. Later that day, a friend said to John, out of the blue: “Why don’t you try going to the Jesus Army?”

So he did. That was January 2004 and John describes life since then as “amazing experiences of God”. Having found God and found friendship with the Jesus Army, John has become a warm, friendly, passionate Christian with a burning desire to help others to find the love of God. You’d like him.