He'd hit rock bottom. After an evening of snorting coke at a mates', Pete staggered down the street hearing a babble of crazy voices inside his head, blabbering nonsense.

"This is it" he thought, "I've lost it. Time to top myself."

A whisper of childhood faith surfaced. In desperation, Pete prayed, "God, please help me!"

Suddenly all the mad voices stopped; a very different voice replaced them. Pete felt God saying that he could change, could leave the mess of his life and start again.

"I cried my eyes out" says Pete. "My life changed from that moment."

Pete's life hadn't always been so dramatic. His early childhood, on a council estate in Hull, was "poor, but happy". School was "friendly, a relaxed 'no uniform' place". Sunday school was where Pete first believed in God. Life was simple.

He didn't even know that his mum and dad were taking heroin.

Help came when the family visited Pete's aunt and uncle who were church leaders, and Pete's parents became Christians. The family moved to be part of the Jesus Army. Pete remembers a "few good years", going with his dad to help put up the Jesus Army's big tent for summer festivals, and playing the large ground of one the Jesus Army's Christian community houses in Birmingham.

Sadly, Pete's parents left the church when Pete was about 12 and a downward spiral for the family followed. Pete's older sister got into drugs. Pete first smoked cannabis at 13.

When his sister had a baby and his parents split up all around the same time, Pete gave up on school. "I couldn't be bothered" he admits.

But a positive influence in Pete's life was the Christian holidays that his aunt and uncle took him on. On one of these holidays, in Cornwall, Pete had had quite a powerful experience of God, which led to him being baptised as a Christian.

Back home, Pete found it hard to keep his faith alive. Before long the buzz of knowing God was replaced with something more readily to hand: ecstasy and the rave scene.

At raves, arms in the air and pilled up, Pete felt something like he'd felt when he was baptised. But, deep down, he knew it was a cheap fake next to the real thing.

One of Pete rave mates, Paul, was a bit of a seeker and was friends with none other than the Jesus Army people that Pete had known in his childhood. Reluctantly at first, Pete went with Paul to some Jesus Army events.

But it took his brush with insanity and death on the night after he'd snorted coke for Pete to realise where he really belonged.

After that, Pete knew - really knew: "My life had found its direction, its meaning."

Some things still took a while to catch up. "I'd stay at the Jesus Army house in the week and get drunk at the weekends" he grins, rueful.

But that was more then three years ago. 2007 was the last year he took an illegal drug. At RAW, the Jesus Army's youth event that summer, Pete smoked his last ever cigarette. Later that year he moved into the Jesus Army house - full time. Good things are happening in Pete's family, too: "We're in the same big family" says Pete, "and God's working on us."

Now Pete speaks of having a vision to lead a house of his own and to help other find the same life-transforming power that he has.

"I've got one thing to say to young people out there who are wondering what life's all about" says Pete: "Come and belong."

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