This is what I thought my life at university was going to be like: go to lecture. Go home. Go to lecture. Go home. Go to lecture. Go home. But someone had other plans for me.

Up to a couple of weeks before going to university, I thought I was a Christian. After all, I had gone to Church when I was younger and had started going again at the start of 2000 after a break of a few years. I had been going to the yearly Christian celebration at Butlins, called Spring Harvest, and I was going to a Bible study group.

But that didn't make me a Christian any more than being a plane spotter makes someone a pilot.

Despite a veneer of being a "nice boy" there were things about me that I am now ashamed of. It was as if I had been caught in a hole that I didn't know how to get out of. Only satan and British Telecom would be pleased with what I was doing at that time. I was a prisoner to an addiction and had no time off for good behaviour. I now thank God for his successful jailbreak.

A few weeks before coming to university one of the friends at the Bible study group I was going to lent me a book called "Left Behind", which is the author's interpretation of the events written about in the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

In "Left Behind", there were people who thought they were Christians, but were "left behind", when Jesus returns for his people at the end of the current part of history. They weren't actually Christians, but just playing at it.

I was just playing at being a Christian, I had no real contact with God. There was something more to Christianity than just going to Church.

About this time I had to come to Portsmouth to find a place to live at university, as my application for a room in halls had been rejected. For the journey, Left Behind wasn't, and I was hooked reading it all the way down (apart from a brief stop in Arundel for some ice cream).

I think I felt the message like this: "If you carry on like you have been, you will be left behind too". I knew I had to stop what I was doing and so I asked God to help me. I admitted to Him how weak I was and how I needed his help every day.

I now see that it was a good thing that my application for Rees hall had been rejected, as the house I finally found had Christians in it who were able to help me grow in my new found faith and show me more about it.

God had called me into a relationship with him. He promises freedom through faith in Jesus who gave his life so that we may be forgiven for our rejection of him.

Now my university life is nothing like how I thought it was going to be. At freshers' fair I joined the Christian Union, and now I'm on the committee for planning the mission in March and run their web site and. I have a great group of friends and I know that God has forgiven me for my past mistakes, and as I go forward with Him, He will continue to do so.

By Ed Ross