January 2026
From Brokenness To Breakthrough
How Jesus Took Me from Pain to Purpose
Hi my name is Ian from The Gate Tilehurst, I grew up in the 1980s in a home marked by pain. My father was physically abusive, and my mother struggled to show affection. From a young age I carried wounds that went so deep I didn’t even have language for them — anger, confusion, rejection, and a heaviness that never lifted.
As I grew older, I tried to numb the pain any way I could — drinking, cannabis, searching for peace in all the wrong places I even searched for God but was met with only religion. I wanted answers, but everything I reached for just left me emptier.
Then I met Tamara.
Only three months into our relationship she became pregnant. Soon after, we had two more children, all before we were married. I loved my family, but I had no idea how to be a father or a partner. I was trying to build a life with broken tools.
For a whole year, Tamara invited me to church, week after week. And every time, I said no. But in 2006, I reluctantly agreed to come along though I was sceptical.
During the service I can remember Ruth one of the worship team was singing and then the unthinkable happened I had an encounter with the living God, tears started to stream down my face I was surrounded by a love that went beyond anything I could explain or understand. It was there I realised:
God saw me. God loved me. And God wanted to heal the parts of me I thought would always be broken.
That day, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.
And when I did, the chains I had carried for years started breaking — fear, shame, anger, generational pain, all of it began to fall off my life.
Within a year of being saved, Tamara and I were married, and we were baptised together.
God didn’t just restore my life. He rebuilt it from the ground up.
Today, I walk in a new identity, a new purpose, and a new destiny.
I’m no longer the product of my past,
I’m a testimony of God’s redeeming power.
And I want you to know:
If God can heal me, He can heal you.
If God can restore my family, He can restore yours.
If God can pull me out of darkness, He can pull you out too.
He is the God who mends the broken, who adopts the rejected and gives hope to the hopeless.
Jesus is still saving, still healing, still breaking chains, and still rewriting stories. Your breakthrough can start today — just say YES like I did.
19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and having a High Priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:19-22 NKJV