I hated people, all my life.

And if I couldn't use you, you meant nothing to me at all.

NARRATOR: Being a short kid with buck teeth,

Brian Cole was the perfect target for bullies.

But none of his classmates teasing

compared to the physical and emotional abuse he

received from his own father.

I had this idea all through life

that until I got to the age where I could take my dad on,

fisticuffs, that I would never be right with him.

I hated him.

I hated him.

NARRATOR: As Brian grew, so did his hatred, and by fifth grade,

he began stealing and picking fights in school and church.

I was getting the finger pointing

and you're a troublemaker and you're a nobody or a nothing.

You're never going to amount to anything.

You're a sinner, you're going to hell.

Here I was, nine years old.

And I didn't want to be at home, and I

don't want to be at school.

I don't want to be at church.

NARRATOR: But one person was different than the rest,

his mother, Dorothy.

I always told him I loved him.

And I'd say, no matter what you do,

you're not going to turn my love away.

NARRATOR: Then, Brian met some older kids from the neighboring

high school.

They offered him a cigarette and friendship.

He accepted both, gladly.

They stuck up for me.

So now the tables got turned.

And I remember realizing that and saying to myself,

now it's my turn.

NARRATOR: Emboldened by his new friends,

Brian became what he hated most.

And pretty soon, everybody knew his name.

I was a big time drug addict and selling marijuana,

I was selling pornography at school.

Breaking into churches and stealing their sound equipment

and trashing the place.

I loved it.

I love that people looked up to me,

I loved that people were scared of me and I was the man.

NARRATOR: When Brian was 14, his father

turned him in for dealing pot.

For the next four years, he was shuffled

around group homes, treatment centers, and psych wards,

while continuing to sell drugs and steal.

Still, his mother refused to give up on him.

I tried my best.

It was just one thing after another.

It was hard.

I was happy where I was at and you couldn't change me.

The drugs were my life.

NARRATOR: At 18, Brian aged out of the system and his parents

divorced.

Shortly after, a sting operation landed him in jail.

He was charged with burglarizing 250 homes,

and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

While in maximum security, Brian took up a new hobby he believed

would further his reputation, Satanism.

By then, I was already heavy into the speeders,

heavy into LSD.

Seeing the fear in people's eyes,

knowing what I was involved with,

even the guards, boy, that that really fed that ego.

NARRATOR: Then shortly after his release in 1994,

Brian's new girlfriend cheated on him

with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

Brian, in turn, broke into the man's home

and shot him point blank.

The man survived, and a tip led to Brian's arrest.

That tip came from his mother.

Of course I blamed my mom.

You're going to do me like that?

At that point, I decided there's

nothing more I could do for him.

I had to pray for him.

That's the only thing that would bring me throught it.

NARRATOR: After serving 12 years, Brian was a free man.

He reconnected with an old friend and customer,

who turned him on to a new addiction, meth.

One night, after going on a six-day binge,

his friend passed out on a mattress

next to a heat register.

It caught fire and he burned to death.

A year later, Brian was once again behind bars.

I was in my 40s and I just didn't want to live anymore.

I knew I was responsible.

NARRATOR: Desperate to get clean,

Brian joined what turned out to be a faith-based drug

and alcohol program.

I found out you had to have a Bible in order

to do the homework.

And I'm like, aw man.

It was all fill-in-the-blanks from Scripture.

So as I'm filling in the blanks, I saw this verse, Psalm 51:7,

and it says, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

And it blew me away, because it was, word for word,

part of the cleansing rituals in the occult. I'm like,

what is this doing here?

And that's when it went from just filling in the blanks

to now I'm reading some stuff.

The Lord said, you shall know the truth

and the truth shall set you free.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and life.

And because I was reading truth, he

was already starting to change me.

Instead of me filling in the blanks now,

the Gospel was filling in mine.

NARRATOR: A few weeks later, he was given a new assignment,

write to someone who had been hurt by his addictions.

Brian wrote his mother, and she responded

with a 13-page letter.

I didn't even get past a page and a half, and I wept.

I realized that all my life, I had hurt my mom,

up to the point where she wanted to just die.

NARRATOR: But it was at that moment Brian realized

he had never been unloved.

She told me that she had been praying

for me ever since I got lost.

It blew me away.

It blew me away that for 33 years,

my mom never gave up on me.

That's real love.

That's the love of Christ.

NARRATOR: As much as Brian wanted God's love,

one thing kept holding him back.

How can God forgive me for the things I said

and did against him personally?

The old chaplain at the jail, I told him about that

and he said, you been reading your Bible?

I said, yes sir.

He said.

You read that part about as far as the East is from the West?

And I said, yeah.

And he goes, do you think God can forgive or forget?

And I said, no sir.

And he goes, if he chooses to.

And that's what it took.

And January 22nd, 2009, I got on my knees and I said,

I'm all in.

You're Lord, use me.

Well I never, in the world, thought

I'd see this miracle in my life.

So there is a Lord.

NARRATOR: Brian renounced Satanism, and over

the next 18 months, learned to forgive and be forgiven.

And by his release in 2010, there was only one person

left he needed to make peace with.

I went to my dad shortly after I was released

and I said, I hope you can forgive me.

Shortly after that, I was over at his place one day

and he said, you know what Brian?

I love you and I'm proud of you.

And I had not heard those two words all my life.

NARRATOR: Brian, who's now a husband, father, and pastor,

has a new purpose, to share God's love and forgiveness

with others.

I want to be a picture of hope for anybody,

especially those involved in crimes and ex-convicts

and the hurting, the manipulated,

those coming out of drugs, because I want them to have

the same thing I've got.

I want to show them Jesus.