There's this lovely lady called Rosemary who started to read my tarot cards and she turns to the last car and she says to me, do you know what this means?

And I was like, no. She says, well, it means you're a child of the light.

Hmm. You're destined to be with Jesus. You'll become a Christian.

Wow. And I said, you know, mark my words, I'll never become a Christian. I think this woman is an undercover evangelist using tarot cards as a kind of ploy.

All the way through my story, God had chosen me.

You can resist for a while, but eventually he'll win.

You know, and he always wins.

Welcome, everybody.

This is Simon Gilbeau with Inspired. It's great to be back for another

fantastic week of hearing, stirring testimony. I think we've all had enough of the relentless bombardment

of the 24-7 media. It makes us more depressed and anxious and cynical and negative and pessimistic.

And what we need is to hear good news, to hear just great stories. And this week,

I've got no doubt you're going to be inspired because we got with us the wonderful David Bennett.

How are you doing, David? I'm good time and thank you for having me. It's awesome to be on.

It's so good to have you. So David and I, well, his book, A War of Loves, came out, I think about

eight years ago. Then I contacted him during lockdown, had a writing project to potentially get involved in. We were actually chewing the cut a few months ago at the Windsor Gathering, and I've been trying to pin him down for a podcast for ages. You've just vaguely recently got your doctorate at Oxford. You're an academic. You've got loads of book projects on the go. I would encourage everyone to read A War of Loves because it's a superb introduction to you and what you're about.

Anyway, David, that's enough in terms of introduction. Let's go way back to your childhood.

I know you raised in a nice, happy family, weren't you? Go for it.

Yeah, so I was raised in agnostic atheist home. My parents, you know, would often talk about various members in our family

who had Christian faith that was palpable as kind of strangely brainwashed and mistaken,

but we love them. You know, that kind of, that's their truth, that's nice for them, but not for us.

We don't believe in a big man in the sky. We're fine. So it was very much that kind of tinge. But at the same time, there was also spiritual hunger that I had as a child. I remember actually a very deep experience of being at my grandmother's grave and saying to my mom, do you think

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