WHITNEY HOUSTON has credited her religious beliefs with helping pull her through a difficult few years – insisting she has finally moved on from her troubled past.

The R&B diva struggled for years with an addiction to crack cocaine and a turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown, but she kicked her drug habit and divorced her husband in 2007.

She has now launched her comeback with her first new album in seven years and admits her Christian beliefs helped give her the strength to get her life back on track.

She tells Ebony magazine, “I thank God that people love me. But I (really) thank God that God loves me. I thank Him for chastening my heart, for never letting go. What I did sometime… I went off and did my thing, but He never let me go.

“I shed a lot of stuff, a lot of unnecessary weight in the last three or four years. I left a lot of old luggage behind, and when I did, the blessings just started pouring on me, and the light in my spirit started to lift again.”