[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, I grew up in the most Irish place on planet Earth
and it's a little place called Loughries.
My mom worked for an animal shelter
and my dad was a guitar teacher.
So you could hardly move in my house between the animals
and the guitars.
As a child, I was a real sensitive bookie kind of kid.
I was on my own a lot.
You call that an introvert now, but you just
call that a weirdo whenever you're in B3.
As a big fella as I am now, I'm big in a better way
and the rugby coach at my school found me and forced me
under rugby.
I had barely heard of the sport before.
It's this bizarre area, which is really just crashing
into things, whereas the rest of sports
is trying to dodge around them.
And I was never any good at that.
So I always thought I was awful at sport.
But I found myself on the rugby pitch,
I was like a duck in water.
It was really the first thing that I was ever
any good at right from day one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And so, you start to get really obsessed with diet and training
and everything like that.
So almost everything else in my life started to fall away.
Even thoughts about faith and thoughts about God
and thoughts about school work and everything kind of just
got tossed to the side.
I really took it on as this is what
I'm going to do for a living.
I knew that the kids in school knew what
it was like on the rugby pitch.
I just loved that opinion that people held of me.
And that was really addictive to me.
I took a lot of stock in being intimidating.
I made sure that the legend kept going whenever
I was outside of school too.
It helped to really cement this identity
as Chris is a rugby player, he's a tough guy,
he's a little bit dangerous.
[MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Have you ever
seen the top of the world?
Rugby, for me, helped me to find an identity
that I wanted, not the one that I'd had before.
There's no middle ground.
There's only all out passion, or else there's
somebody who's about to get cut from the team.
Don't let them walk away or I will give you a first half.
Now at this point I'd actually been
selected for Ulster schools, which is a big deal.
It seemed like the first real step towards you're
good enough to do this.
[MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Look at me, I'm on top of the world.
And it was only a few weeks after that I got injured.
[YELLING]
I was playing this practice match
and I just fell wrong in a tackle.
And I broke my collarbone and dislocated my shoulder.
There was no need for me to go to training,
there was no need for me to try and throw a ball around
because it was impossible.
So I was going to be laid off from rugby,
which was very frustrating.
I was really lost.
During this time off where I was kind of nursing my injury,
I guess I started to re-evaluate the whole of life,
but particularly faith.
I wanted to discover faith for myself.
I wanted to discover the real Jesus, not
churchy Jesus, or religious faith,
but just what's Jesus saying.
So I started reading the Bible.
And I was reading that that I realized
these aren't the words of timid or weak God,
but these are fighting words.
I had been looking at it like it was academic
instead of looking at it like it was the life changing
word of God, and that I needed to respond.
It's either everything or it's nothing.
Nobody ever showed me the Jesus who
was a revolutionary standing in the public square telling
the authorities and telling the whole of society
that they needed to turn their lives around.
It totally overturned my whole identity.
It just struck a chord with me.
I felt this amazing presence of the Holy Spirit.
I gave my life to God right there as much
as I knew how to do it.
I gave up rugby in the end.
I never went back to it.
And I think people maybe would have thought
that I had lost a lot, but the truth
was not the rugby itself, which is a good thing.
Sports is a good thing.
But the obsession was so wrong, it was so badly placed.
It was eating away at my soul in many ways.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
What we're all looking for out of life
is an adventure to lose our lives in,
something to fight for, something to wrestle for,
something that's worth dying for.
This adventure that Jesus has given me, it's the real thing.
It's not a game.
It's something that's worthwhile.
And that's what God offers through his son.
That's the story of the cross.
It's that Jesus has paid the price for our mistakes.
[MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Oh, Your cross,
it changes everything.
There my world begins again with you.
We can have this amazing second chance
at a relationship with him.
[MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) A second chance
is Heaven's heart.
Living to bring glory to God is what it's all about.
I can never have planned it myself,
playing music, which is a million miles
from this original dream that I have had for my life.
It's an amazing journey.
[MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Countless second chances
we've been given at the cross.
Countless second chances we've been given at the cross.
[CHEERING]