It was a simple offer of prayer, but as Barry Woodward (pictured above) went to the front of the church meeting, his life was about to be transformed.
Years of heroin addiction, drug dealing, prison and amphetamine psychosis had taken their toll, but various events seemed to be leading him there.
There had been the friendly man on the bus he’d bumped into again who’d just come from the church, then the stranger he’d asked for directions who was a member and took him there. When he arrived, even the “Hallelujah” from behind was from his new psychiatrist, who was a church elder.
At the end of the meeting, the preacher asked people to step forward if they needed prayer. Boy, did Barry need it …
“If you’d been in that church that morning, you’d have seen my state when I walked in,” said Barry.
“I’d been caught up in addiction for 15 years; I’d suffered from amphetamine psychosis for nine years; I’d been a drug dealer; I’d been in prison; I’d lived in hostels.
“However, that morning, after being prayed for, everything changed!
“That’s when I responded and gave my life to Christ. It was just so obvious that God is real and God is alive.
“Within about five weeks of becoming a Christian I was off all the methadone. And over that time I heard God speak to me in a number of ways, telling me he wanted me to be an evangelist. I didn’t even know what an evangelist was.”
Barry went to work with the Northern Evangelical Trust, telling people in schools and organised events about his faith.
He set up his own organisation, Proclaim Trust, which supports him as he preaches and teaches about the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
“Of my two closest friends as a teenager,” he says, “one died aged 24, and the other one, I heard a couple of years ago, is on a life-support machine because his internal organs can’t function independently.
“But by God’s grace, here I am. My relationship with my family is restored, and as God has delivered me, now he is going to use me to deliver many others.”
