Today I met him again, but he's a completely different bloke to the person I met all those months back. This sounds weird, but this same guy was actually a totally different person to the one I had previously met in the Prince of Wales pub. The reason being - he gave his life to Jesus Christ this morning at church.
This might sound strange to you. Firstly, how can someone 'give their life' to a dead carpenter guy!? And secondly, why would that make him a different person?
Well, unbeknown to him, as he accepted the invitation from his church-going friend, and as he decided to give up an hour and a half of his Sunday to see what all the fuss was about, he was actually leaving his old life behind in the process. Surrendering the control of his life over to the God who's been delicately and gradually working him towards the moment when he would encounter the truth of His love properly for the first time. Encountering the fact that the dead carpenter was in fact a fully active, totally loving Saviour - contrary to what the world might have been telling him for the last 22 years.
You see, he didn't exactly know what to expect when he walked through those doors for the first time. But I suspect he wasn't anticipating that his life would be turned upside down, forgiven and re-defined all in one fell-swoop on the morning of June 24th 2012.
It started as any other day.
And then Jesus breathed that re-shaping truth. The truth that the guy's sins could be forgiven; that his life could be filled with a new purpose and that he could be swept up in an adventure with a very powerful and incredibly loving God.
The guy had never been to church before. He seemed lost for words when I spoke to him afterwards. His only way of describing it was that he felt an uncontrolable emotion inside his heart when the worship leader began singing. Kinda strange to consider a grown bloke welling up at a song; either he's gone crazy too or something is genuinely happening.
I bet he's glad that his friend loved him enough and cared about his eternal future enough to introduce him to Jesus.
