Dan McDougall- Hero Story

Dan is an ex-drug dealer who now follows Jesus and is passionate about talking to his friends about his faith. He shares a story about when a friend from his ‘old life’ came to live with him after becoming curious about his changed life.

Dan:

It's really easy to talk about loving someone, but it's a much harder thing to actually just do it. Love is a verb.

I moved up here to the Sunshine Coast (Australia) from Canberra. My life had been drastically changed by Jesus and my friend, who wasn't a Christian, was curious about that change and he moved up here as well. My wife and I said, “you can come stay with us for a month to get on your feet”. That month turned into six pretty quick and tensions rose. There were a whole bunch of different things that caused tension - one of those being our different beliefs - and those discussions got quite heated sometimes.

Tensions also increased when his dog got my dog pregnant - that always adds a bit of ‘fun’ in a household. Then the addition of puppies 9 weeks later definitely added a bit more tension to that.

I didn't find the push back (to my faith) too hard. It was kind of expected. It's something that I would have done when I was an atheist. I would have definitely pushed back on someone saying that they had their life changed by Jesus.

One thing about the process however, is that it wasn't clean cut. It was a messy process at times and so in that situation it took a lot of love, patience, kindness and empathy.

A big thing as well is that I really encouraged him to pray. I said, ‘seek and you'll find, knock and the door will be open to you’, (Matthew 7:7). That God is there waiting and you just have to seek Him.

We host a worship night every Tuesday night. During one of those nights, he got to experience a side of Christianity that he'd never experienced before. He said that he had an experience of ‘definitely feeling God’ and feeling His presence. From that point on he started praying a lot more and we started going over the Bible a lot more, and there were tangible personality differences. It got to a point where he was ready and he said he wanted to commit his life to Jesus and I ended up baptizing him in the ocean just out front of our house.

When he (eventually) finished living with us he actually moved cities and he lives somewhere else now. But we did get an extra cute dog out of the whole situation - and heaven got another saint, so that's awesome.

The main encouragement that I would give people who want to share their faith more is just to do it, but do it with the people around you. Do it with the people you know and spark up conversations about what you believe. Find out why you believe it and share it with the people around you. This is going to be messy at times. It's not always going to go according to plan. There's going to be situations that are uncomfortable, but it's pretty clear in the Bible that it didn't always go to plan for the apostles and people in the early church either, and that shouldn't discourage us from sharing the gospel.

We should definitely persevere and endure, and we have to trust in God and the Holy Spirit, 'cause He's the one that changes hearts and He's the one that changes lives. We're just the ones sharing the message.