absolutely electrifying but also terrifying and extremely difficult and of course we've got lots of

criticism from people saying you can't be god because you haven't got the resources i remember so many

people telling me that not having what you think you need is not a sign that jesus is not with you

well welcome everybody this was inspired and this week we've got John Kirkby with us. Welcome, John.

Yeah, good afternoon. So it's great to have you. John is the founder of Cap Christian Against Poverty. He was awarded a CB in 2018 in recognition of the incredible impact that Cap has had.

A number of you would have heard of it. Some of you might not, but it's had an impact in tens of thousands of people's lives and I'm really excited to to hear from you John we've we've never actually met but we've we've spoken at a number of conferences at the same time and uh I know at your conferences they always give away your book nevertheless and I read that and it blew my socks off I loved all those stories of God's Transformation People's Lives. So I'm looking

forward to hearing it. So let's just kick off. Let's get in there. So tell us a bit of your backstory.

Yeah, so I was born into a really loving family. We weren't the poorest people in the

neighborhood, but certainly not the richest. And I had an idyllic childhood until the age of

about nine. Around about nine my father became ill. We didn't really know what it was

and over the next yeah sort of yeah eventually turned out to be nine years just my father's

illness got more and more serious and then as I hit the teenage years yeah no, no real explanation, but I really, yeah, lost the plot.

I suffered from mild dyslexia.

I'd been deemed to have sort of special needs educationally, although my dad was certain that I was a bright lad.

But I was introduced to alcohol and other things too early and yeah much to my shame really

I was yeah became quite an angry quite a violent young man left school at 16 with very few

qualifications and yeah there wasn't there wasn't much good in my life and at 18 my father died

and within a year my mother

blesser was um yeah section so taken away by authorities and placed in an institution really

and i was just left on my own aged 18 single child yeah i mean i had too much older sisters than me

but to be honest i was probably unreachable because I was still really, really not very well and still mixed up.

Of course, now I had to with the trauma of losing a dab and my mother being so ill.

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