00:02I love this man so much. He's one of my best friends in the whole world, and it's all yours,
00:06bro. To the glory of God, let's hear your story.
00:09Thank you. Can you hear me?
00:10Right, so my name is Rhys.
00:14There we go.
00:15I have never held a mic before, but that's okay.
00:18We're going to get it done.
00:19So, like Daniel was saying, it is a matter of giving your life to God.
00:25My journey isn't to glorify me, but it is to glorify God.
00:29And it is not to say how good I am, but how probably bad I was to how good God
00:37is.
00:38Sorry to disturb this worship session, but let me try.
00:43So, I started. I'll take you back a little bit, if that's okay.
00:48I started when I came over to Melbourne from Manchester, England.
00:52Represent, no, I do.
00:54Came over, and I went through a bit of a hard time because I left the family.
00:58It was actually, in my head at the time, I was 11, and in my head, I got dragged away
01:02from the family.
01:03I was like, why are you taking me from my grandfather and all these people?
01:08Obviously, my mum was doing it for us, but it left me in a place of anger and joyless.
01:15I thought, you know what?
01:16As a young man, I was like, stuff his arm.
01:20Do you know what I mean?
01:20And I rebelled against my family, my school, pretty much everything you can possibly rebel against.
01:25Just out of, you know, me ego, and I guess I was too young to understand the world at the
01:31time.
01:32But, that led to fighting.
01:36I'm not going into too much detail, but we'll say fighting.
01:39And then that led into, you know, the wrong group of people to then get influenced well.
01:46So, you know, into the drug scene, drug, taking, dealing, a load of stuff.
01:54And I thought, you know, at the age of about 21, sorry, 21 years old, I moved to Bairon Bay.
02:02Again, this is all about Christ.
02:03This is before Christ, right?
02:05This is BC.
02:07And I went to Bairon Bay, and that is a spiritual place in itself.
02:12And I was like, man, I've got to grow.
02:14So, that was a step forward to me.
02:15I was trying to grow.
02:16Go, you know what?
02:17I'm messed up in the end.
02:19Let me try and grow.
02:20So, I temporarily worked for like 10 minutes of, I guess, a relief of the heart.
02:24And I think we can all say that the heart is just heavy these days.
02:28I think, I don't know.
02:30I was going through it, and I can never really say I was that joyful.
02:34But this was just a really bad tale for me.
02:37And I'm sitting there going, like, what's going on?
02:39Like, is it just me?
02:41And it felt like it was just me.
02:43It got to a point where I couldn't even, to just tell you the state of mind I was in,
02:48not, you know, but it was a point where I couldn't even ask for a coffee at the cafe shop
02:54because the anxiety wriggled shell of a human being, which is what I became through following the heart.
03:00They say, follow the heart, follow the, you know, do whatever you want to do,
03:04and you'll be sweet.
03:06You'll be happy.
03:06But for me, that was not true.
03:09Anyway, fast forward.
03:10Long story short, I was, I was messed up, yeah.
03:13And I was a shell, even through the spirituality, in the, without Christ in the center,
03:18mind you, breath work and that is Christian as well.
03:21It's in the Bible.
03:22But without Christ in the center, didn't do much for me.
03:24So, got a bit of trouble with the police.
03:27Was on bail for about a year and a half.
03:29Came down to Launceston about four years ago.
03:32Right?
03:33Launceston.
03:33Beautiful place, right?
03:35Came down to Launceston.
03:37And then, long story short.
03:40Long story short.
03:41Again, still broken for about a year here.
03:44I'm cooking me steak.
03:45So, this is the one night, right?
03:46I'm going to sit.
03:47I'm cooking me steak at 8 o'clock at night, 2023, right?
03:50Now, this is my experience with God.
03:53I was sitting there cooking me steak.
03:55And I'm listening to a podcast between a Christian man and a Muslim man.
04:00And they were both disagreeing and agreeing on many points, right?
04:04About the similarities and just lots of things they were talking about.
04:07And it was quite an interesting podcast.
04:09But, they're sitting there and one thing that caught me here,
04:12as I was sitting there cooking me steak, you know,
04:15is they both agreed on, if you didn't worship something above yourself,
04:20then you end up worshipping yourself.
04:22And the idea was worshipping yourself through, like, the worldly things,
04:26like lust and, you know, sex and alcohol and all these things that I was,
04:31as a young man, doing, you know.
04:34And that just made a lot of sense to me.
04:36So, I was like, okay.
04:37So, they're saying, you know, if you worship something above yourself,
04:40then your flesh is no longer, you know, the pain, the falling on your side, right?
04:45So, I was like, okay, sweet.
04:46And I put my hands out like this.
04:48And I said, I said, what I said, I said, go on.
05:00I said, sweet.
05:01If that's the case, then I'll give my life to God.
05:05I was not really understanding what I was doing.
05:08But I've been to you for a couple of times when I was younger,
05:10so I was like, ah, it's sweet.
05:11So, okay, I'll give my life to God right now.
05:13I'm in my kitchen.
05:15Cookie steak, steak's burnt now.
05:18I go on in.
05:19I'll give my life to God.
05:20And God showed up in the kitchen out of nowhere,
05:24hot flash straight from the top of me,
05:26straight down my body, right?
05:28And everything got lifted.
05:41So, I was lifted to a place where, like, I was like, what the, what is going on?
05:46Fell to the ground, five hours, tears, crying.
05:49I'm a crybaby now, that's all right.
05:51And I fell to the ground, I'm crying the eyes out,
05:54and going, what is going on?
05:56And I remember a chaplain that used to pray for me when I was younger,
06:01Paul Spiro, anyway, but, yeah, he's a great lad.
06:04And I called him up saying, like, I'm in the kitchen, like, what's going on here?
06:08Like, what is this?
06:08And he goes, this is God.
06:11And, you know, and that's it.
06:14I was like, okay, sweet.
06:15So, three years later, I'm standing here today.
06:17I've gone to church every single Sunday since.
06:19Not missed a session, not to show me off,
06:22but I'll tell you, like, I'm dedicated because I've tried literally everything.
06:29Everything from vices to meditation to,
06:32and mind you, when I was on that meditation growth,
06:34I was trying to grow.
06:36I was trying, you know what I mean?
06:37I was trying to become a better man and all that other stuff.
06:39But now, I'm free.
06:43Me heart is free.
06:45Jesus is the only way.
06:47Facts.
06:52And I'd like to say, it's been my journey after Christ.
06:57People get this notion that Christianity is a place of, you know,
07:00oh, you know, you can't do this, and you can't do that,
07:03and now you can't go and have sex, and you can't do this,
07:05and it's a set of rules that now you have to follow.
07:08And I'd just like to state that that is a full-on lie, 100%.
07:13Like, I was in prison when I was following the worldly things.
07:16I was in prison when I was doing so-called the things that made you free
07:20and living free with the me, me, me, the consumerism sort of transaction of life.
07:27Going, yeah, it's got to be for me, you know what I mean?
07:29Like, because it feels good, and everything feels good.
07:31So that just led down a really dark path for me.
07:34So the whole notion of giving my life to Christ is freedom.
07:39It's no longer, you know, a set of rules that have to follow.
07:43So it makes me, it's the opposite.
07:46It's mad, you wouldn't think so, but it is.
07:49And that's my journey.
07:57Come on, thank you so much, bro.
08:00We're going to do some more worship songs.
08:03So I'd love for you to stand with me.
08:05But for anybody here tonight who heard that story and heard Rhys say,
08:09you know, he literally tried everything.
08:12Everything that the world has to offer to give you freedom,
08:15he tried it and it trapped it.
08:17And then guess what?
08:18He tried spirituality.
08:19He thought, okay, I'll give this breath work a goal,
08:22I'll give yoga a goal, I'll see what that has to offer me.
08:24And it left him a shell of a human being without Jesus at the center.
08:28And so I don't know if there's anybody in this room tonight who says,
08:31hey, I've tried this, I've tried that, I've tried this, I've tried that,
08:34and all that has left me feeling is empty.
08:37But tonight, Rhys said, in one moment, not in the church,
08:43not at even one of these nights,
08:45but in his kitchen cooking steak,
08:48he put his hands out like this and he said,
08:50okay, man, if this is real, I'll give it a go, I'll submit to you, God.
08:55And so tonight, I want to challenge every single person here.
08:58Would you place your hands out like this
08:59and pray a simple prayer to yourself tonight that says,
09:02God, I submit everything to you.
09:04I submit everything to you.
09:06There's so much we try to hold on to for ourself
09:08because it's precious to us
09:10and it makes me feel good.
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