EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published on October 24, 2016. It has been republished to mark the International Day of Peace.
YEARS AGO, John Durant lost his grandmother Lillian Griffith to cancer, and there and then he vowed never to smoke.
However, that proved to be a short-lived pledge.
Durant was raised in the church from a babe. All through his primary school life he enjoyed reading The Bible and going to church, but when he reached secondary school, that all changed when he began to interact with other children who did not go to church.
“So when I was in class and hearing fellows talk about having girlfriends and what they will do with these girls, I felt jealous and I wanted to be able to be a part of that. So when I hit 18, I took a safety pin and pierced my ears and I said this church thing is not for me,” he recounted.
He thought “the world” was where the action was and he desired to live it up, do whatever he wanted and basically enjoy the path he was travelling.
The taste for this type of life became more appetising. Nevertheless, deep within his conscience, Durant knew this wasn’t what God had envisioned for his life.
“I knew this [behaviour] wasn’t good for my life,” he said.
But did Durant yield to his conscience? No. He maintained that same trajectory.
“I grew up in the Bayland so I started to lime on one of the blocks . . . and while there, I said I would not smoke because my grandmother died from cancer, [but] hanging out with the fellows I started to smoke as well. And then I got into smoking marijuana and just like how God does work, the devil does work.
John Durant was a man who spent a lot of time in “the world”, but today spends a lot of his time in “the Word”.
“God does bring good people in your life to lift you up and Satan does bring bad people in your life to lead you down. While there on the block, my so-called friends introduced me to guns. It got so bad that unknown to my mum and dad, I would sleep with a gun under my bed in the house.”
There is an adage which states that everything that glitters is not gold, and slowly Durant began to realise this.
Although he was leading this ungodly life, his parents never stopped praying for him to change and somehow, unconsciously, the block life started to lose it appeal.
Becoming an alcoholic
“I used to go on the block and I found myself going to the shop and buying beers and just drinking them by myself. I was becoming an alcoholic. I was going down lower and lower to the point where I was becoming an alcoholic and just sitting and liming by myself and buying beers and drinking.
“When you see people on the block, sometimes it may look like everything is okay, but internally you don’t know they are battling with things . . . .
“I remember that in 1994, I got a young lady pregnant. When she told me, I say, ‘Nah boy, that can’t be mine’, but I knew it was. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself,” he recalled.
Then one day, in solitary reflection, Durant asked himself a simple question: Is this all to life? Drinking, smoking, going out with different women?
“My mum gave me some tracts that were about the end of the world and what would happen when Christ came back and the tribulation period. On the 28th of April, 1994, around 11 p.m., I was sitting down around my table reading these tracts and I was thinking [that] I would like my son to serve the Lord. A voice came to me distinctly and asked: ‘How you could want your son to serve the Lord and you ain’t serving me?’ And the voice [added]: ‘This is the last time I am talking to you.’
“I remember at that point having gone to Sunday school and hearing that if I asked God for forgiveness and if I ask Jesus Christ to change my life, He would change my life. And that night, there at the table, I asked God to forgive me for my sins.”
Durant recounted how he broke down crying when he felt that the Lord had forgiven him.
“The water broke in my eyes and I felt water just start to pour out and I couldn’t stop crying. I called my mum and told her what had happened and she was happy to hear that. That brought joy to her heart. That night I got up and pressed my party clothes and Sunday I was in church,” he said.
Shares testimony
Presently, Durant shares his testimony as encouragement to parents whose sons or daughters are not walking with the Lord, and for sons and daughters who are struggling with the decision to give their lives over to God.
“When you see fellows that lime on the block, don’t be deceived. A lot of them are actually struggling and because Barbadian society is one where they feel you are not supposed to show weakness, they keep things inside. When do we show it? When we kill one another.
“You don’t know what God is doing to change their heart. It may look as if they are enjoying life, but inside God may be doing something; eventually God is able to make the change.
“I want to encourage the church to keep praying for the young men on the blocks because God is able – He changed me. I am married and have a wonderful wife, who is a prayer warrior, and a son.” (SDB Media)
