"Jesus was a hard man. But a good man."
Interview with Arthur White

You've been in powerlifting for years – what does it mean to you?

There was a time when everything took second place to powerlifting – my marriage, children, holidays, home, business – everything. I've won six British titles, four European titles, and two world titles. I'm currently the British champion and rank third in the world and I got a gold medal for dead-lifting at last year's world championships.

What do you eat? How do you build muscle?

As I've got older, I don't eat so much. But I eat a lot of chicken, tuna, pasta, rice – I'll eat bananas throughout the day, especially the days when I'm training. In the past, I've eaten excessive amounts of food. A whole chicken would be nothing to me. Six tins of tuna a day. Five or six jacket potatoes.

You were once involved in violence and crime – but now you're visiting prisons and schools to talk about your Christian faith. What's the story behind that?

When I was younger, I had a good life. I had a successful business, a big home, a villa in Spain, cars, money – everything materialistically you'd want. And with the powerlifting, I was travelling the world, so I had a successful sporting career as well. But I got involved in taking drugs and the drugs ended up taking over my life. And it all fell apart.

How did it fall apart?

I had an adulterous affair, left my wife and deserted my children. My drug addiction led to me losing my business, cars, home, money. Everything I'd ever worked for, everything I'd ever loved, I lost. I was running an illegal debt-collecting business in the East End of London. I was involved in fights – I've got scars on my face, chest, arms and legs from them. It was a crazy lifestyle, fuelled by drugs.

But I wanted to get off the drugs and back with my wife. She pointed me in the direction of a counsellor, who happened to be a Christian. I really didn't think too much about God then. I was a world champion powerlifter – I didn't need God! I thought anyone who went to church was weak. But this counsellor told me I had to go away and choose. And I did. I chose ten years ago to ask God to come into my life. But it wasn't enough to do that, I also had to change my ways.

What changed your mind about God?

Well initially, I thought I could probably use God. There was always an angle to what I did. So I challenged God. I said, if you're that good, if you're there, you come and sort me out! And although there was no opening of the heavens, or booming voices, or choirs of angels, something happened inside me that I can't truly explain. The paranoia and fear went from my life. My drug addiction stopped immediately. I couldn't deny that Jesus Christ was alive because he changed my life around.

Surely getting rid of the drug problem and all your other problems wasn't that easy?

Yes, I've made it sound like it was easy. Although I stopped taking drugs immediately, there were nights when I woke up craving. And although I told my wife I'd become a Christian, we never got back together for a long time. I'd hurt my wife – not physically, but emotionally – and she was still sceptical and frightened. And so that took a lot to get back. It's not easy being a Christian. But it's a better life than I had.

What's been the toughest thing about being a Christian?

One of the hardest things for me was God showing me what I was really like. It's really hard when you look inside yourself and say, perhaps I'm not as good as I think I am. And then admitting your faults and trying to put it right. God's shown me all that I've been in the past. But what he has said is that all that I've been he is now going to use for good. With my lifting and competing, I now try to do it for God's glory and not just for mine.

You set up Tough Talk and work for it full-time. What's it about?

Tough Talk is a group of guys from the east end of London. We've come from similar backgrounds, where our lives were perhaps not so good. Unsavoury characters, as many would call us. But all of us have had a tremendous Damascus Road experience. One of the guys was an alcoholic, one of them was involved in a lot of violence – all sorts of backgrounds, but we've had a change of life.

And what do you do?

Powerlifting has been a big part of my life. And most of the other guys have been weightlifters or bodybuilders for years. We take the weights round with us, we lift the weights, we sometimes have a competition and get people from the audience to come and join us, and we tell how our lives were changed by the power of Jesus Christ. We've been on the streets, in churches and cathedrals, in prisons and schools. We travel in Britain, but we've also recently been to the Bronx in New York and to Slovakia.

We're not singers or dancers, so we do what we're good at, which is working with the weights. And it's like a magnet. We'll set up on the street, we'll get the benches and the stands out, and before we've even started, we've got a crowd.

How do you relate to Jesus? After all, if he was meek and mild, as the hymns say, then he couldn't have been a very tough guy.

I think he was. I'm a carpenter by trade. Fortunately, I grew up at a time when there were power tools and when carpentry had become reasonably easy. But I can remember lifting big timbers, sawing planks of wood in half, humping sheets of ply and carrying timbers up ladders – it was hard work!

Well if you go back 2,000 years, when a carpenter had no power tools and everything he did was by hand – well, here's a young man that worked as a carpenter up to the age of his early 30s – he must have been a tough man, in my opinion. I believe in his love and his compassion and forgiveness, but some of the things he said and did were pretty tough. I don't believe he was a meek and mild man. I think he was a man of strength – strength physically, strength in character – and obviously a man blessed and gifted by God. I think he was a hard man. But a good man.

What would you like to be written on your grave? How would you like to be remembered?

I would love for people to think of me truly as a man of God. If anybody can see anything of God or Jesus in me, that would be tremendous. If someone said, there was a change in that man, for the better, and I can see God at work in him, that would be great. I truly believe in eternal life. I believe there's more for me than here. All I'm hoping is that there's not a gymnasium up in heaven, so I don't have to do any more weightlifting.