Transcript from the podcast (so sorry for the spelling mistakes)
Wildfire podcast is an extension of Wildfire ministries, an organization that has a focus of igniting men and women of God into deeper discipleship with Christ, instilling them with a passion to radically and relentlessly pursue Christ wherever that leads, that God's truth will spread like a wildfire.
Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are folks, it is so good to be joining you again.
And we want to update you on a few things.
There's been so much happened in the past number of weeks.
We want to ultimately say at the very start, we're so thankful, so thankful to hear of folk coming to know jesus Christ.
And we've been praying for Oliver McAllister and for Trevor Boyd and the mission that they've been having.
And we're glad to hear of a gentleman getting saved there.
Ricky Bell had a wonderful meeting on Sunday night and there was folk saved there.
And we have had the privilege of leading folk to the Lord jesus Christ over the past number of days here.
So God is really at work and God is really saving and moving in these days.
So thank you for your prayers.
We want you specifically, specifically to really continue to pray for Brother Stewart Todd.
We're really concentrating on Stewart at the moment because we really are seeking God, that God will come in that situation and touch Brother Stewart and really, really, raise him up again to health and strength.
The other thing I want to say, tomorrow night was to be our first meeting, our first Let's Talk About Porn.
And we have put that off simply because we were dealing with a big situation this week, which was taking a lot of our time and was quite, quite messy to say the least.
So we wanted just to put that on hold until we worked with that little family.
So God willing, next Friday night will commence that.
We are working in groups of 10.
We have so many, we can't just facilitate and do it right in one Zoom setting.
We feel we wouldn't be giving people enough attention and just have them feeling comfortable.
So groups of 10, starting next Friday night, let's talk about porn.
And really what we want is really us all to get talking about it in our churches, in our communities, and to see people experience the freedom.
The other one thing before I introduce you to the night's really, really special guest, can't wait.
Hope House, it's really entitled hope2families Center.
We're working on it.
So many things have happened.
So many people have come forward.
I think tomorrow we've got 10 volunteers coming to help paint.
We have adjoiners.
We have had four different kitchen companies, four different kitchen companies that wanted to put in a kitchen, carpet fitters, you name it.
So we really want you to pray.
Heating is just a priority right now.
And really, we'll be making an announcement about what's going to take place there.
But God willing, it's going to be a place of restoration, a place of healing and a place of salvation.
So continue to pray for that.
So that's me done talking.
It's brilliant to have Augustus with us tonight.
I'm going to be handing over to him just in a second.
Augustus and I have got a mutual friend.
Many of you have watched her story.
Many of you have come to listen to her here in Northern Ireland, Chantelle.
And that is how this came about.
So, brother Augustus, it is great to have you.
I'm going to hand it over to you.
Share your heart, share it as God leads you, bro.
bless you.
Thank you so much.
And I just want to thank you for inviting me onto your platform through our dear, dear sister Chantelle.
She's an amazing young lady with such a...
I think her testimony is really so phenomenal, so powerful.
So we just want to honor her as well.
Before I begin to share my testimony, let's just bow our heads and pray.
Our dear Lord jesus, we just honor you today.
We lift up your name, jesus.
We thank you for who you are.
We thank you that you sent your son, jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins.
You love us more than we can ever know.
Thank you.
You love us more than we can ever imagine.
And you have placed a call upon each and every single one of our lives.
You are predestined our lives for greatness and to have encounters with you, Lord jesus, so that we can establish your kingdom and so that we can win souls for the kingdom and bring those lost souls out of darkness into light.
So Father, as I begin to share my testimony, I just pray that I will decrease right now and that you will truly increase and that you will get all the glory from out of my testimony.
Speak to somebody's heart, Father God.
Speak to somebody tonight that may need healing.
Speak to somebody tonight, Lord God, that may be struggling with drug addiction.
Speak to somebody tonight, Lord God, that may be in a psychological and emotional prison.
Father, bring deliverance, Almighty God, tonight and get all the glory in the mighty name of jesus, amen.
So, my name is Augustus.
I'm from Birmingham, England, and I'm really excited to be with you all this evening.
My testimony, I can only say that God is totally, totally awesome.
And I have no shame in sharing my testimony, because it shows the level of darkness that I was in, and just how God can deliver and save and transform anybody's life.
And I mean anybody.
I grew up in a single parent Christian home with just my mother.
And from a very early age, I knew how real God was.
I knew how real jesus was.
My mom, she's a phenomenal woman who loved jesus.
She loved to pray.
She loved to be in the Word of God.
And from a very early age, my mom would say to me, come, let's pray or let's read the Bible together.
And from a very early age, I saw how my mom does love this man called jesus.
And, but I knew there was something special about it because I recall at an early age, there was no food in the house.
And I remember my mom praying and calling on the name of jesus.
And in the Bible, it says that he will never see the righteous forsaken or his seed begging for bread.
And I remember my mom calling on the name of the Lord.
And by the time she had finished praying, there was a knock at the door.
And we both got up and when we went to the door, there was an envelope on the ground.
And when I couldn't see the envelope, when my mom opened the envelope, but I heard my mom begin to scream.
And I'm thinking, why is she screaming?
And she goes, son, son, look, God answered the prayer.
And when she opened the envelope and showed me, it was full of money.
Now, my mom opened the door and not only was there money in this envelope, there was bags of grocery outside our front door.
And I was totally astonished.
I was just like, wow, God, is that how quick you are?
Like, that was really quick.
And what was even more amazing was where we lived at the time, anyone that came in their block, they would have to go down three flights of stairs.
So we looked to see who the person was, and we saw nobody going down the stairs.
So we ran back into the living room and we looked out the window because they would have to go out the same way.
And we saw nobody leaving the building.
Somehow God had literally performed the miracle of not only just providing money, but providing groceries and answering a prayer for my mom.
And instantly, even at that very early age, I knew how real God was.
I knew how real jesus was.
And my mom, my mom would do a lot of fasting.
And when my mom would fast, she would let me do a half a day fast.
So I had these very incredible encounters from a very early age.
But because I lived in a single parent home with just my mother, I recognized my very early age that something was missing.
And there was a really, there was a really, I can only describe as an emptiness within my heart.
And that was because my father wasn't around.
I really desired to have a relationship with my dad.
But for some reason, he wasn't ever present in my life.
I recall times when my mom would take me on the street to go and find my dad, because there's places that he would hang out, but we could never ever find him.
And when he did show up to the house, there would be moments of where he would, he would abuse my mom.
And I remember one time actually jumping on his back to defend my mom because he was hitting my mom.
So that not having my father in my life, it really created an emptiness and absence within my heart.
That caused me to play up at school.
In 1994, my mom decided to move to America because she felt that we would have better opportunities.
My mom was working free jobs.
We had gone out there the year before and then we came back and she made the decision that it would possibly be better for us if we moved to America.
So in 1994, my mom says that she's gonna go ahead first and then she's gonna get somewhere to live, stay with my granddad and get things sorted out and then she would send for me.
Because of how strict my mom was as a Christian, I felt that I had some freedom.
I started to live with my grandmother and then my behavior at school, it didn't get any better.
I was missing about and not listening.
And at that time, I did actually want to become a solicitor because there wasn't many black solicitors in Birmingham.
So after kind of settling down a bit, incident occurred at school and I got expelled from school.
And that will be the catalyst for so much change and so many bad decisions that I would make in my life.
No one did it tell me when I got expelled from school that I still had the opportunity to get an education.
And no one did it tell me that even despite I got expelled from school, that I still could have the opportunity to get an education and go on to college and go on to university and still become a solicitor.
No one was there to tell me that.
And I found myself constantly on the streets.
And there was a certain area in Birmingham where I met up with a lot of youth who were a bit older than myself.
And I noticed that they had on the latest trainers, they had gold, they had lots of money, and that became very enticing to me.
And I began to wonder how, how they was getting all this and bearing in mind.
Because my mom struggled not being able to put, you know, really good things in the home and put me in the best clothes and the best trainers.
Seeing all the youth with these, it became very enticing.
And one of the guys who I met up with, he began to tell me and actually show me that he was committing crime and that's how he was getting money.
That person, he kind of became a father figure in my life.
My dad wasn't there and it was almost like he stepped into this role that my dad should have been.
When I began to grow facial hair, he was the first person that brought me a razor and began to show me how to actually shave.
And that really touched a deep place in my heart because that should have been something that my dad should have done.
That's something that everybody looks forward to.
That's something that every young man looks forward to when their dad can show them how to shave and buys them their first razor.
It's something that every young man looks forward to.
But here was this guy who wasn't my dad, had brought me a razor and began to show me.
He began to show me other things in terms of how to commit crime.
And Indian gold, Asian gold was very popular back then.
And we began to commit robberies.
And mobile phones was just becoming very popular in 93 and 94.
And I was fast making a name for myself of committing crime and earning a lot of money.
I remember that I had bought my first car, and I couldn't actually even drive at the age of 15.
I had bought a Golf GTI.
And I had my friend drive me around.
And I was making vast amount of money.
And we formed with the guy that I was in, we formed this gang.
And there was five of us, and we became very tight, very, very close.
And I'll do anything for them.
And I remember one night, we was all having a drink, and we were smoking.
I was smoking so much weed back then.
I loved weed so much.
It was crazy.
And we was on our way to go and buy some weed.
And someone tried to rob me.
And because of the kind of person that I was back then, I wasn't gonna tolerate that.
And I had a knife on me, and I confronted the guy, and he had a knife, and he goes, okay, then let's put our knives away.
We'll just have a bare knuckle fight.
And I was like, okay, I'm fine with that.
But the minute that I turned my back around to give my knife to my friend, I got stabbed in my back, and it just missed my spine.
And even at that very moment, I realized not until later that God's hand was upon my life here, and it literally spared my life because I should have been crippled.
The knife had just missed my spine, actually by millimeters.
So I'm here, still on the road, still, you know, doing a lots of things, doing lots of badness.
And there was even another time when we was with my gang.
Alice says, we used to smoke a lot of weed, and we used to drink Tenant soup a lot.
And there was one evening, I'll never forget this, brother Marc, it was so supernatural.
We was getting ready to go out and commit a robbery.
We were smoking, we was drinking.
We had hip-hop music playing.
And people have to understand, when you take drugs, you are conjuring up demons.
When you have alcohol, and you're listening to certain music, I can only kind of say it like this, it invokes a spirit that comes, and you now become a doorway for the spirit to come and inhabit you.
And so, that night, we were so geared up, and we were going to commit this robbery.
And I truly believe, only God knew that something really terrible would have happened that night because we were so hyped up, we were so under the influence of drugs.
And we was all, myself and the rest of the gang, we was all walking close to Winston Green Prison.
And not far from Winston Green Prison, there was a church there.
Now, nobody says anything to anybody.
We all looked at each other, and for some reason, we all threw away our tenant supers at exactly the same time, and we all walked into church.
It was totally crazy, it was totally out of the ordinary, because it's not something that we would have done.
We was literally on our way to go and commit a robbery.
We wasn't going to church.
So we all went into church, and they had worship going on, and we spent some time, probably a good couple of hours in there, just listening to the worship that was taking place, and we even joined in ourself.
And I began to think about the moments that I had with my mum.
I began to think about the moments when I was a bit younger, when I'd be at church myself and be worshiping God.
And I felt such a peace come over me.
And we stayed there to the end of the service.
And instead of going to commit this robbery, we all went back home.
That was, I can only say that that moment there, I believe that God had intervened that night there.
Because of the relationship that I had with my gang, I would have literally put my life or laid my life down for them.
And that actually kind of became a reality when one of the guys, one of their family members came to our house one day and told us about an incident that had occurred.
And we decided that we was going to get revenge.
We all picked up our knives, we picked up our machetes, and we was going, we went to this person's house, and we went into their home, we beat them up, we tied them up, we'd done some really kind of really horrific things to that person.
And the police came.
Now, before that happened, me and the guys, we made a pact that no matter what happens, that we will all go home that night, no one will get left behind.
So here I am in the house with my knife, the guys are in there with their knives, and we hear the door and it's the police.
So I decide to try and go and fight the police.
And I'm expecting my friends to come and join me.
And they didn't.
They all ended up running and leaving me to fight the police.
I ended up getting arrested, but not only did I get arrested, I got beat by the police for 45 minutes.
I was handcuffed and the police was just beating me.
I was taken to the hospital and the hospital looked at all the wounds that I had.
I had over 40 odd wounds that was inflicted by the police.
That the doctor says the wounds that I had, it amounted to torture.
So, they've taken me back now to the police station.
Excuse me.
They've taken me to the police station.
I've been charged with this crime and I've been taken to prison.
I've spent a year on remand and then I was sentenced in 1996.
I was sentenced to 12 years in prison at the age of 17.
I was the first person in the Midlands to get a double figure sentence.
They wasn't actually kind of giving out sentences like that back then.
They was giving out four years, six years.
I think the most for a youth was eight years.
It had been unheard of for someone, for a youth offender to get double figures unless it was a life sentence.
Back then, it was actually called Her majesty's Pleasure or HMP.
So I'm sentenced to 12 years and I felt like my whole world has been crushed.
I felt like, how did I get here?
I was raised in a good home.
My mom was a Christian.
But how did I get here to this point where I'm now sitting in prison serving a 12 year sentence at the age of 17?
And I can tell you, I felt like my life was literally over.
Guys, other guys that were in the prison, they was actually laughing at me and at the sentence because it was such a long time.
It was unheard of to get double figures.
And people were actually saying by time I come out of prison, that cars would be flying.
So that shows you how rare it was for someone to get such a long sentence as that.
So I'm in prison.
And as a young man, you begin to see what prison is really like.
The levels of racism, it was crazy.
I remember at internet where you have your breakfast, your lunch and your dinner.
And at the time, because of the wing that I was on, if you wasn't good, you would have to eat your food in your cell.
And they gave me my food and then they asked me to take my my dinner tray and put it outside.
And usually when you put it by the door, they'll just pull it out themselves.
But the officer, I don't know if he was in a bad mood or something, but he started shouting for me to take my tray out.
And I was like, well, it's by the door.
Why don't you just pull it out?
And he came charging into my cell saying, oh, you need to do this and need to do that.
Or someone's going to teach you a lesson.
And I was like, well, who's going to teach me a lesson one then?
And as soon as I says that, he grabbed my head and he smacked it against the wall.
And immediately I knew what was coming.
Anytime there's a situation that involves a prisoner and a prison officer, they press the panic button and that alerts all the prison officers to come.
So I, or probably over 15 prison officers came into my cell and I was on the floor.
And they started twisting me up.
And not only did they start twisting me up, they began to call me every racial slur that I could possibly think of under the sun.
And the aim was to literally cause me to break.
They, when they're in prison, they want to make an example that they're the ones that run the prison, not the inmates.
And they send a message by how they kind of beat you up through to other inmates.
So I was really beaten up badly by the prison officers.
And then I was taken down to the segregation unit.
When you're down in the segregation unit, you see the prison governor, and you have what's kind of called a kangaroo court, where they'll ask you, do you plead guilty or not guilty to the offense?
And the offense that I was meant to have committed was that I assaulted a prison officer.
And as God is my witness, even up to this day, I didn't lay hands on this man.
So I told the governor exactly what happened.
They didn't believe me.
And they sentenced me to 14 days solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement is a prison within a prison.
And you have no luxuries.
Your bed is taken away.
You're in a cell that is completely empty.
And they don't give you anything to read in there.
You can't even have a Bible.
They won't even give you a Bible to read.
So you're just in there 24 hours a day.
And so many times, young men have committed suicide whilst in solitary confinement.
Because it's such a hard thing to deal with when you're in solitary confinement.
Time seems to go so slow.
You're in there, in a cell, with nothing to do, nothing to occupy your time, nothing to stimulate your mind.
And I can only say, it's a method of torture.
And so many young men, they commit suicide in there, when they're inside your confinement.
They'll use their bedsheets, when they're given them back in the evening time, or when they're allowed to have the one shower that you're given whilst in.
And when they're given a razor, they'll take the razor, and they'll either cut their wrist or they'll cut their throat to aid them in committing suicide.
So there's been so many times when young men haven't been able to cope with solitary confinement and they're committed suicide.
And that was something that was a constant theme throughout my prison sentence, the level of suicide.
You know, even in scripture, it says that it's not good for man to be alone.
And I truly understand that it isn't good for man to be alone.
It's not good for a man just to be by himself constantly, and especially in an environment like that, when nothing is stimulating you, when nothing stimulate your mind.
So I was moved on from that prison after that event to another prison.
And one of the first things, when I moved to the other prison that I was greeted with was someone having hot water thrown in their face.
Now, what they do inside there is they have hot water, and they add half a pound of sugar into the hot water, and that then becomes acid.
So, me seeing someone having hot water, and bearing in mind, I'm still in the early stages of my sentence.
So, to see this is very, very shocking.
It's very, very even frightening, because I'm still a child at the end of the day.
I'm only 17.
So, to see these levels of violence taking place, it is very frightening.
To see someone's skin dripping, because they've had hot water and sugar from their face.
It's very alarming, to say the least.
I began to start training, because I didn't want to be taken advantage of while I was inside there.
So many young men are bullied.
So many men are taken advantage of.
And I'm quite a tall lad, and I didn't want to be taken advantage of.
So I started training, started going to the gym, so that I'd be a really big guy, and that I'll be able to look after myself as well.
I moved to Winston Green Prison in 1999.
And this is where things took a turn for me.
There was some crimes that I had committed that was outstanding, and the police came for me.
And they took me to a police station.
I was kind of in a relationship with someone at the time.
They was writing to me, and they was coming to see me.
So when I went to the police station, and they was able to come and see me in the police station, and the police officers actually allowed her to come into the cell and spend some time with me.
Now, I can only say that we did very minimal talking because I was going to be spending a lot of long time in prison, so there was no opportunity for me to kind of be intimate with a woman again.
So, I actually just used that time.
And, you know, that young lady, she became pregnant from that.
And I remember one Sunday when I had been taken back to the prison, I began to feel some pain in my body, and I knew something wasn't right, but at the same time, I knew that it wasn't me.
And I was saying to my cellmate, something's not right.
And he was like, oh, what's wrong with you?
And I was like, I'm in pain, but I know the pain's not me.
It's something else.
And the following day, when I phoned my partner, and she answered the phone, she was crying.
And I said to her, what's wrong?
And she was crying, and she was crying, and she was crying.
And then after she kind of stopped crying, she told me that she was pregnant, but she had had a miscarriage last night.
And it was round about the exact same time that I was experiencing this pain in my body and in my stomach.
So I had literally, I was experiencing what she was going through.
And it really, it really knocked me for six, because I felt to myself, oh, she was pregnant if she had carried to full term.
You know, it was a woman that I cared about, someone that I loved.
It would have brought our relationship a lot closer.
And I couldn't deal with the pain.
It was, it was so hard knowing that I had lost a child while I was in there.
It was so difficult and challenging.
Now drugs is so readily available inside there.
And I was able to get my hands on some heroin.
Prisons are literally flooded with drugs.
Now, the thing about it, I was totally anti-class A drugs, which heroin actually falls in the category system of.
But it was the only thing that I could get my hands on.
And I began to smoke it.
Days after, I was still broken, still upset.
And a couple of days after, someone in the prison had committed suicide on the wing that I was on.
So having to deal with all of this, it was so, so much.
It was becoming very overwhelming for me.
And I remember one night, I couldn't take any more.
And I remember something that my mom says to me as a child.
She's like, if you ever need God, just call on the name of jesus.
And that night, even though I had a Muslim cellmate, I didn't care.
I began to call on jesus' name.
And I was so loud.
I was desperate.
When I say desperate, I was desperate.
I was like, jesus, jesus, jesus.
I just kept on calling his name, jesus, jesus, jesus.
And it reminds me of the story which I absolutely love in the Bible about blind Bartimaeus.
And I really believe that my spirit man had connected with the spirit of blind Bartimaeus.
Because blind Bartimaeus, he hears that jesus is in town, and he begins to call on his name.
But everything, all the people around him, the crowd around him, they're trying to silence him.
And that's how I felt while I was in prison.
That's how I felt right there.
That me losing my child, it was trying to silence me.
The level of violence that I was seeing, it was trying to silence me.
But I began to call on jesus' name, just like blind Bartimaeus.
You see, this is something that we really have to understand.
We have to get jesus' attention.
We have to keep on calling his name until we get his attention.
sometimes we go through so many things in our life, it knocks us and we'll say a prayer.
We'll probably call God's name once or twice.
But the weight of things, they cause us to be quiet.
They cause us to lose our voice, like the crowd that was trying to keep blind Bartimaeus quiet.
But blind Bartimaeus, he was desperate.
He knew that someone was there that could transform his life.
He knew that there was someone there that had something that he needed.
And myself, I knew just like how my mom says to me, there's every time when you need God, you just need to call on his name.
And I called on the name of jesus that night in my cell.
I called on the name of jesus.
I feel the spirit of God right now so much.
I called on the name of jesus.
I called on the name of jesus.
My cellmate thought that I was going crazy, but I continued to call on jesus' name until I got God's attention.
And just as I'm speaking to you now, I heard an audible voice say, open my word.
And I had my Bible in my cell.
And when I opened the word of God, which is the Bible, it said, it turned to Jeremiah 29, verse 11, which says, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, they are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and to give you hope.
Some versions say to give you an expected end.
And this blew my mind.
When I read that, I was like, wow.
And not only that, the presence of God, it hit my cell.
I felt the peace of God.
Like, it was almost like someone had thrown the central heating on in my cell and just turned it up on full blast.
And I sat there and I was like, okay, God, you've got a future for me.
You've got a plan for my life.
You've got hope for me.
And I was like, hold on.
But this doesn't make sense.
I'm still serving a 12 year sentence.
It doesn't make sense.
But that is so good.
I began to hold on to that word.
Whilst whilst in prison, I held on to it.
And I began to spend more and more and more time reading God's word.
I began to to really spend time with the Lord in prison.
Then I was moved to H&P Parkers, which is one of the most famous and one of the most notorious prisons in the country.
And, you know, the experiences that I had with God in there, they were so phenomenal.
Every morning, the Holy Spirit would wake me up dead at six o'clock, just for me to come and spend time with the Lord.
And it would be so amazing.
The peace of God would flood my cell.
His presence would flood my cell.
And I felt like I was in love with this man called jesus.
Nothing, I felt invincible.
I felt untouchable, but I felt in love.
I felt, I felt in love.
I was in this place of darkness.
I was in this place surrounded by real gangsters, real murderers, you know, real robbers.
But it didn't matter.
The violence was still taking place.
The officers were still being horrible and being racist and everything else.
But I had jesus.
Then, something happened to me where I ended up in hospital, and I got diagnosed with a condition called myasthenia gravis, which is very identical to multiple sclerosis.
It affects every major muscle in your body.
And I spent, I think, probably close to four months in a hospital while I was in prison, and the prison officers had to stay with me.
It was costing them a lot of money to watch me, and the officers doing extra time and everything to have round-the-clock supervision while I was there.
And I had a friend who would come and see me while I was in the hospital, and she would encourage me.
She was a Christian, and we would pray together.
And when they diagnosed me with the myosteomia gravis, if I can totally be honest, I felt like my faith, and I felt like everything had just been shattered because the doctor says that I would never be the same.
I would never walk properly.
I would never be able to do things like basketball, which I love to do.
I would never be able to go to the gym and do weights and everything properly.
And when I was discharged from the hospital, they said that I would have it for life.
And I had to take 37 tablets every single day.
And that included steroids.
So when I went back to the prison, I was, you know, doing my, taking my tablets and my medication and everything.
And my faith was kind of knocked.
And I remember one day I began to read in Hebrews 11, which speaks about the great patriarchs of faith.
And it gives you this list of people who had faith.
And it even speaks about Abraham, when Abraham had such faith that God would provide a substitute when he was going to sacrifice his son.
So I don't know, something came over me and I says, God, you know what, I'm going to trust you.
And I'm going to take a step of faith here.
And I gathered all the tablets that I had and I says, God, I'm literally going to trust you that you are going to heal my body.
And the next time that I go to hospital, they will not find any signs of the myosteemia gravis in my body.
And I took all the tablets that I had, I took the steroids that I had and I threw them down the toilet and I didn't take next one again.
I went to the hospital about a month later and the doctor says, Oh, hey, Mrs.
Stewart, how are you doing?
And I was like, Oh, I'm great.
You know, I'm really doing well.
And I was like, you know, my father, my father has healed me.
And the doctor was like, Oh, great, Mrs.
Stewart.
Like, what hospital does your father work at?
And I was like, Oh, no, doctor, you don't get it.
My father, he's the greatest physician of them all.
And his name is jesus.
And the doctor looked at me like, okay, woohoo, Looney.
So I turn around and says to him, listen, I know you may think I'm mad, but please do your checks.
And once you've done your checks, you will find that there is nothing, you won't find no evidence of the myosteomia gravis is in my body whatsoever.
And he's like, okay.
So he done his checks, and while he's doing his checks, I saw he had a puzzled look on his face, and he left the room, and he came back with another doctor, and that doctor, they've done their checks.
And then both of them left the room and came back with another doctor, and all of them are consultating and doing checks and scratching their heads.
And I'm like, they can't find it, you know.
I know they can't find it, and they're doing their checks.
And then they've got the top neurologist in the whole entire of the hospital to come.
And he's done his checks, and he stands there and is like, Mr.
Stewart, I'm not quite sure what to say here.
This has never happened before, but we can't find any signs, we can't find any evidence that you even had myasthenia gravis in your body.
And I says, I told you, I told you my father was the greatest precision.
And I started to give God praise there, even with the two officers, even with the two prison officers, just there, and I had hankers to me.
I was just like, jesus, I thank you.
I bless your name, because I know that you are a healer, and you healed me, but it took a step of faith.
So I was returned back to the prison, returned back to the prison, and I was whole.
I was totally healed.
Even the doctors had to say, listen, this is absolutely a miracle.
So I went back, and I had my times still with the Lord, we had to get up at 6 o'clock.
I remember, let me tell you this, I remember one morning, I was really tired, and I felt like literally, like the Lord was telling me to get up, but I was so tired, I did not want to get up.
And then, the offices can turn on your cell light by a switch on the outside, and they have a flap where they can open to look inside your cell to make sure you're there.
Now, usually, every wing only has one officer on to each wing when it's night duty.
So my light came on, and the flap opened, and I saw a face, and it closed back, and I thought, oh, you know what?
I'm just going to get up and spend my time in prayer and spend my time with the Lord.
But that night, when the next shift changed over, I went to the officer that was on, I says to him, oh, why did you turn on my light this morning at 6 o'clock?
Like, you don't usually do that.
And he turned on and goes, what are you talking about?
I didn't come to yourself.
And I'm like, you didn't come to myself this morning.
And like, turn on my light and open the flap.
And he was like, no, I didn't come.
And I was like, who was that?
And it wasn't till after I realized that I had a visitation.
Because there's, as I says, there's only one prison officer that is situated to each prison wing, and nobody else has the keys.
So it's not like somebody else could have just came on the wing, or the inmates are locked up.
So it was a visitation.
And that morning, when I got up and spent time with the Lord, it was such a beautiful encounter.
The presence of God was just so rich in my cell.
So even just there alone, I was having just some really phenomenal encounters with jesus in prison.
And I was starting to have even Bible studies, because the other prisoners, they began to see that there was a change in me.
They began to see something.
And we began to have Bible studies in my cell.
And we would talk about the Bible.
We would talk about the Lord.
We would sing songs and just worship.
And one of the most favorite things I love, I went to a prison in leicestershire.
And the Lord has given me the gift of prophecy, where I operate in that, I operate in prophesying and word of knowledge and word of wisdom.
And I didn't know, I didn't realize at the time that that's what I was doing.
And I remember the prisoners, the prison in leicestershire, it's kind of like, it was a catseed prison.
So it's very more relaxed.
And you can walk around, you've got keys to your cell.
Well, it's not even actually a cell, but it's more of such a really relaxed prison.
And I was able to organize a gospel concert in there.
And I had invited different gospel groups to come.
And there was these three girls that came, they were a group from London.
I remember them singing.
And I didn't know that I was prophesying to them at the time, but I was like, listen, you guys are literally, you're going to become very big.
Like the country is going to know who you are.
And you're even going to win awards because of what you're doing and because of the records.
And me not knowing that I'm prophesying to these girls.
And it wasn't until years later, till I got out of prison and I actually saw them, they had become global.
You know, their record had got to number one.
They had won awards and I was like, wow, God, I didn't know that.
Well, that gospel concert, let me tell you, it was so phenomenal.
Sorry, just give me one second.
I don't want to match it to go.
Sorry about this.
No problem, Augustus, take your time.
Powerful.
It's really powerful.
I'm actually making a pot of soup for the people tomorrow in the Hope Centre, so let me just turn it down while you're doing that.
Good, powerful Augustus.
Really good folks.
I hope you're enjoying this.
Stay with till Augustus gets his battery connected.
It is powerful what God can do in a life, and were God chooses, I've just been reminded of Joseph even in the prison house, and how God was preparing him to be a ruler.
And so Augustus has been on this amazing experience where God, even through prison experiences, is using him and preparing him for greater things.
And that is absolutely wonderful.
So our whole purpose, as you watch this, is to know that no matter how far you've fallen, God wants to use you and restore you.
Go ahead, Augustus, bro.
Sorry about that, my battery was about to die.
So I'd organized this prison concert, and I had different gospel artists come in and to minister.
You had guys who were serving life sentences.
You had people who were in there for a variety of different crimes.
And I saw the spirit of God touching these people.
I saw the spirit of God touching murderers who would break down at the cry of, because he lives, I confess tomorrow, because he lives.
I saw rapists began to weep when they hear God's message and the songs that these people were ministering.
And, you know, over 50 inmates that day, when I gave an altar call, they gave their hearts to the Lord.
Over 50 prisoners, from murderers to robbers to rapists, you name it, God had touched them and they surrendered.
Over 50 guys had surrendered their hearts to God that day in prison.
And that shows me, and that should be able to show you, no matter where you are at, you are never that far gone where you cannot be saved, where the love of jesus cannot reach you.
Scripture says, if I make my bed in hell, you are there.
God's love, it penetrates the darkest of places.
So this gospel concert, it was so phenomenal.
And the level of violence, even in the prison, it had gone down because this gospel concert that was held.
The prison, it was almost like a spirit of love had just saturated the whole prison.
It was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.
But even though within that, I don't know if you can remember, when I says that I lost my child whilst in prison, it caused me to take heroin.
And when you give your life to God, when you become safe, it doesn't mean that everything just becomes honky-dory.
It doesn't mean that everything just, it becomes a bed of roses.
I truly believe that now the enemy, Satan, he has an assignment to now try and take you out.
And I left prison with an addiction to heroin.
Now, it's crazy, because in one hand, here I was, I loved God so much.
I was worshipping God.
I was praying.
But I had this addiction to heroin that I didn't come into prison with.
As I said, the drugs were so readily available in there, and especially at the prison that I had the gospel concert at.
And I came out of prison with an addiction to heroin.
And I was so broken, because in one hand, I was having these experiences with God.
I was having these encounters with the Lord.
But yet, I was still here, struggling with this addiction and this problem to heroin.
And when I came out of prison, I had to kind of...
I was struggling how to deal with it.
And I went to church, and I knew that it was a demon that I needed to get deliverance from.
I knew it was something that I needed help with.
And for many years, even after I came out of prison, I was struggling with.
And I was like, God, why can't you set me free from this thing?
Like, you know, you had given me this promise in prison that you've got plans for my life, you know, but yet here I am with this addiction and with this struggle to this demonic drug that I don't like, that I don't want.
I didn't want no part of it.
I didn't want no part of it anymore.
But here, and I was seeing myself, you know, a side of me that was kind of disappearing because I was losing my morals.
I began stealing again to feed the addiction.
And I didn't want to, I felt that I was just so trapped.
I literally felt that I was so trapped and there was no way out.
And there was this lady who's a phenomenal prophet, and she took me through deliverance.
And I was like, yes, I'm free.
I can serve the Lord.
You know, I can get my life back on order.
But then I ended up relapsing because I was going through, I was going through things that I hadn't dealt with in my past.
I was holding on to things that I hadn't dealt with from even as a child.
And I ended up having to go to counseling.
And then from the relapse, it got worse.
Now, in scripture, it says, once a demon is cast out, it goes to and fro, and it comes back with seven more spirits stronger than itself.
So now it had literally got worse.
And I'm like, oh, please God, why?
And here's me now, I'm thinking like, why is my life like this?
I just want to serve God, but here I'm struggling with heroin.
And on top of that, someone introduced me to crack.
So it got double worse.
And I felt like a hypocrite.
If I can be honest, I felt like, how am I serving God?
But yeah, I'm struggling with these two drugs.
I'm struggling with heroin.
I'm struggling with crack.
I'm stealing.
Not that I wanted to, but it wasn't to get high.
It was literally, if I didn't have the heroin, I'll be so sick.
And I can only describe, when you're withdrawing from the heroin, it's like you're being stabbed constantly.
And I know what it's like to be stabbed, because I was stabbed in my back and it just missed my spine.
So I know what that's like.
So I'm battling with this addiction to heroin.
I'm battling with this addiction to crack cocaine.
And I remember one evening, I got so tired and I got so fed up.
And I think I had a Jacob moment.
Now, scripture says that Jacob, he wrestled with God until the breaking of dawn.
And I remember coming home and I was like, God, I am not moving until you break this thing, you break the chains of this addiction over my life.
And I sat in my house, I sat in my house and I just began to call on jesus' name.
And I had this time of worship, I was calling on his name all night, just calling on his name and worshiping.
And I literally heard the chains break.
I heard them tangibly break.
And I heard God say, you are free.
Oh, bless your name, jesus.
I just want to encourage somebody right now that may be struggling with addiction.
You may be struggling with addiction to cannabis.
You may be struggling with addiction to heroin.
You may be struggling with addiction to crack cocaine like I was.
I want you to know that you can be free.
You can have freedom.
Scripture says that Jacob wrestled with God.
And it's funny because when you look at that scripture, it says that you wrestled with God and he prevailed.
It doesn't make sense because how can a human prevail when he's wrestling with God?
But Jacob wrestled.
And if you can just get to a place within your mind and say, God, you know what?
I'm tired.
I've had enough.
And just call him his name.
And even just even if you can have someone like brother Marc, who I know would support you and pray with you, the chains of addiction can be broken off your life.
Matter of fact, even right now, jesus, I just pray that anybody that is listening under the sound of my voice, father, whether they're struggling with heroin, whether they're struggling with crack, whether they're struggling with, with, with cannabis, father, God, no matter what the addiction is, Lord God, I just come into agreement with them right now.
Father God, we just break that spirit of addiction over their life.
Father, let there be a supernatural deliverance that would take place as somebody listens to this right now that may be struggling with addiction.
We break the back of addiction right now.
We take the sword of your word, Lord God, and we break the chains.
We break the fetters right now.
And we declare freedom to them right now, Lord, in the name of jesus.
We declare freedom to their mind.
We declare freedom to their soul.
We declare freedom to their spirit, man.
And we call them forth, just as you called forth Lazarus.
We call them forth into their newness of life.
Your word declares, old things have passed away.
Behold, all things have become new.
We declare today is a day of newness for them, without addiction, in jesus' name.
God can break the spirit of addiction over your life.
And I had wrestled with God.
And he broke the spirit of addiction over my life.
And when he done that, I felt such a freedom.
I felt such a wholeness in my life.
You know, I didn't have to worry or think about prison again.
There was nothing else holding me.
I was totally a new creation.
I was totally a new person.
And God had literally transformed my life.
I couldn't believe that this person who had been in a gang, who had been stabbed, even when I was in prison, an attempt was made on my life.
And this person who had been struggling with addiction for so long to heroine and to crack, that God had completely just transformed my whole life.
And I think I said at the beginning that I wanted to be a solicitor.
I really believe that God has a sense of humour because I got married and my wife is a solicitor.
Would you believe that?
So, you know, God is so unreal.
And what I do now, I have a love for the streets.
I have a love for people who are homeless.
I have a love for those who are struggling with addiction.
I have a love for those who are caught up in the lifestyle that I was once in.
And God actually allowed me to write a book, which is called Incarceration, Addiction and the Cross, which actually speaks about my journey from a young man and getting involved in a gang and going through the prison system, but also how God has transformed my life.
And now it's funny because God took me back to the very prison that I was in.
I've been there a good number of times to share the Gospel with the inmates in there.
And each time I go in there, there's so many inmates that can relate to my story, that can identify with my story, and they won't change themself.
That when I give the call for salvation, that the hands go straight up, straight away, and so many young men have given their hearts to the Lord jesus Christ.
It's phenomenal.
And even the prison officer, the one who had beat me up that time, he became a governor and he was standing there, listening to me, sharing one day when I was in the prison, speaking about how God has transformed my life, and how God has turned my life around, and how God can do it for them.
He came up to me at the end of the service, and he shook my hand and he goes, I'm lost for words, and I'm really proud of who you have become.
And that shows you the grace and the awesomeness of God's power.
It shows you the love of how God can transform someone's life.
So even as you've been listening to my testimony, even as you've been listening here, I really just want to encourage somebody today.
You are not that far gone where jesus cannot reach you.
God has been able to do it for me.
I'm no one special.
I'm just a young man who got involved in a gang at an early age because his dad wasn't there, who was kind of groomed in some ways, ended up in prison and encountered jesus in prison.
And not only just encountering jesus in prison, coming out with an addiction, because it's almost like the enemy knew that I would be a threat to the kingdom of darkness.
So the enemy wants to try and take me out of here.
But like Job, when Satan was going to and fro, God says to Satan, you can do anything you like to him, but you cannot take his life.
So yes, we go through some testing times.
yes, we go through some really horrific or really difficult trials, but it is always for God to step in and show you how awesome he is, just so that he can get the glory.
I really hope that you've been blessed by my testimony.
I really hope that you've been able to get something from my testimony this evening.
And I just pray that, you know, just like blind Bartimaeus, if you feel that you're in a place that is really difficult, that's really challenging, can I just make a suggestion?
Just call on the name of jesus.
Don't stop until you have his attention.
And I promise you, your life will never be the same again.
God bless you.
Amen.
Augustus, absolutely a blessing, brother.
And I mean that.
Incredible.
So Augustus, listen, I just want you to close in prayer just after I say good night to the folk.
I would like you to pray again with them.
The plan is, as I've told you, Augustus, God willing, we are gonna get you to this lovely green part of Northern Ireland.
Oh, bless you, man.
We will try to arrange a couple of specific events, just like when we brought Chantel over.
And we'll be getting on to that, and of course, confirming some dates with you on the phone.
So Augustus, can you just pray with the folk?