How we became Christians

I loved primary school where one of my teachers encouraged me to learn more about Jesus, and to read the Bible. At secondary school a friend gave me some books by Richard Wurmbrand to read – “In God’s Underground”, and “Tortured for Christ”. These books were about people who were persecuted for being Christians. I couldn’t believe how anyone could suffer so much for loving Christ. But I was also impressed by how faithful God was to them. Reading these books had a powerful effect on me. I began to realise that I knew about God, but didn’t know Him personally. I had lots of Christian friends and they encouraged me to find out more about Jesus. I read more and more of the Bible and prayed that God would speak to me, forgive me, and save me. Then reading the Bible one evening the Lord spoke to me: the words I was reading seemed to jump out of the page. They were-

Matthew 11 v 28

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

I took this as my personal invitation to come to Jesus and trust Him. I prayed that He would forgive my sins and that He would be my saviour. I knew that He heard my prayer. My Christian friends helped and encouraged me as a new Christian.

University was a difficult time initially for me as I was very homesick and missed my Christian friends. God was very gracious to me and again provided some precious new Christian friends and very powerful Bible teaching from a local Minister. After Uni I did a PGCE course in Cardiff. During this time we had links with an organisation called “Open Doors”, which cares for persecuted Christians around the world. As a group we prayed for those persecuted Christians. Someone said to us that we should be careful what we prayed for as God might choose to use us to answer our prayers. God did. We believed that He was calling us to help persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe. We made a number of trips there, providing Bibles and supporting persecuted Christians in other ways too. Things did not always turn out as we expected but, in every situation, we knew that God was in control. Sometimes we were very frightened- at border crossings, or in church services when the church was suddenly surrounded by KGB on walkie-talkies! But it was such a privilege to spend some time with our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters. During this time God encouraged me from the Bible again,

Joshua 1 v 6

Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous, do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.     

This verse has been very special to me over the years; God has been faithful through the ups and downs of my life. There have been very difficult times as well as blessed times.  Through it all He has shown me how much He loves me, and that He is the one who keeps me. I can’t live the Christian life in my own strength, I must rely on Him.

This well-known hymn sums it up,

When I fear my faith will fail
Christ will hold me fast
When the tempter would prevail
HE will hold me fast
I could never keep my hold
Through life’s fearful path
For my love is often cold
He must hold me fast.

Another Bible verse that encourages me is-

Philippians 1 v 6
And I am sure of this that He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

In early high school I discovered cigarettes and alcohol. I progressed to cannabis, LSD and amphetamines in my teens, and eventually to heroin. With each new drug I thought I’d found the answer to my emptiness. But the reality was that I could never fill that “hole”. And when the initial excitement of each new drug wore off, they left me feeling even emptier than before.

Throughout this time, I had no goals or ambitions other than to get the next fix. I stole from and used anyone I encountered.  A life filled with court appointments, police stations, prison, a psychiatric unit and eventually rehabilitation centres. Always feeling lost and alone. At one point I managed nearly a decade free from drugs and alcohol, but even then felt that same old emptiness. I tried exchanging substances for cheap thrills- womanising and living dishonestly. But that didn’t work either. Eventually the pain of it all led me back to looking for a way to make myself feel better, and I inevitably turned to the drugs again. I believe that God had His hand on me throughout that time, even though I didn’t know Him; so by His grace I didn’t pick up heroin (by far the worst of all those drugs) again. But for 9 years I smoked cannabis daily, abused prescription medication, drank alcohol, took cocaine, and was heavily medicated by the doctor. Anxiety medication and anti-depressants were my crutch. During that time I fathered two children. I provided for them but was only really available in body. My spirit was dead.

On the 29th of March 2021 I had completely come to the end of myself. I remember sitting in my garden shed in a state of limbo. Emptier than ever. Not wanting to die but at the same time not wanting to go on with life feeling the way I was, I was wracked with guilt for neglecting my family in favour of drugs. I cried out to God to help me. I had heard of the concept of God during my rehabilitation years. But I never understood it or sought after a life with Him. That day I had a God-given moment of clarity. I called a friend in England who I knew was “clean”. Maybe he could help me? I haven’t taken a drug since that day. Something outside me- God- strengthened me and gave me the power to stop using drugs.  Unbeknown to me, the friend I called had given His life to God and had started a charity called “believers in recovery”. The aim was to help people seeking God and wanting to get free of addiction. I thought these people were weird, and absolutely crazy, smiling and talking about the Bible. But at the same time I felt drawn to it all: the hope, the joy and the peace these people were experiencing; I bought a Bible and started to read it.

Then, one day a couple of weeks later, whilst reading the book of Romans in the Bible, I came across these verses,

“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (The Bible, Romans 1:28-32)

They hit me for six. I saw my sin for what it was; this was the person I had become and had been for most of my life. I had sinned against the Holy God. I knew right from wrong but had rebelled against God and I needed to get right with my maker. I was changed in a moment, I was saved.

On the advice of my friend in England, I decided to find a church in Merthyr. I “googled” churches in Merthyr. Out of a long list of choices I decided to go to Park Baptist Church. At the end of the service a grey-haired man wearing a Covid mask came up to me as I sat alone. “Jon”, he said, “I never thought I’d see you here”.  Bemused, I asked who he was? Off came the mask and he said, “it’s me, Stoney”. I was blown away. This was one of my closest friends from school whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years. The first person I’d ever been in trouble with the police with! Not only was he there, but it turns out he was now the Pastor of Park Baptist church! There are no coincidences; God had guided my steps all along.

All the trouble, the pain, the damage I’d caused, and the damage done to me; God used it all to call me home to Him. By God’s grace I am four years free of drugs and alcohol. I’m free from anti-depressants and anxiety medication. I’m present in my children’s lives, and I’ve become an honest member of society. All thanks to the power of God and the supernatural healing of His Word. I’m by no means perfect. I still have up and downs. I still fall short in the eyes of God and will always be an imperfect human being until I get to heaven. However, after feeling empty and lonely, without hope or a future for 40 years, God filled me in a moment. I came to realise that the “hole” inside, which we all feel, is one that could be filled with nothing other than God. No amount of drugs, women, clothes, holidays, trainers, alcohol or wealth can ever fill that void; only the One who made us and designed us to be in a relationship with Him can fill it.  I’m not proud of the person I was or the things I have done in my life, but I no longer feel the guilt and shame that weighed me down for so long. I have felt the power of God’s forgiveness. To belong to Christ is everything to me. In belonging to Him I truly experience a life free from the burdens of sin, crime, drugs and the darkness of feeling empty.  I’m nowhere near being the person I want to be, but- praise God- I am not the man I used to be.

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (The Bible, Deuteronomy 30:19)

The Lord Jesus was spoken about every day at home, I couldn’t even escape it at school (which I am grateful for now) as I went to a Christian school. Looking back, I went along with Christian teachings because I just wanted to please my parents as I loved them.

When I was around ten years old my understanding of Jesus dying on the cross deepened. Between the ages of ten and twelve I would often think about whether I was a Christian. I just wasn’t sure, and it would make my stomach hurt to think about it. At school I was linked up with a child from America as a pen pal, and she was a Christian. We wrote letters to each other every month. She often asked me lots of questions but one month she asked me, “Are you a Christian Jenni?” I took the letter home and began to write my reply to her. I remember asking my sister (she’d recently become a Christian) as she sat beside me, “Kate, am I a Christian?” She replied, “Jen I don’t know, that’s for you to decide.” I was so unsure that I just wrote, “I don’t know, but I want to be”. I couldn’t sleep all night. Looking back, I now know the Lord was calling me to Himself. I went to school and my teacher proofread my letter. She called me to her desk and said, “Jen, why don’t you know?” I replied, “I can’t believe he would die for ME.” I burst into tears and took myself to a quiet area in the room. There I prayed that Jesus would forgive me for all the wrong I had done. I asked Jesus to be my Saviour and to never leave my side.

Since I was twelve, I’ve done a lot of growing up. In a sense, being a Christian has been more challenging because I recognise my sin and grieve over it. I am so thankful that when I confess my sin, the Lord is faithful to forgive my sins (The Bible, 1 John Chapter 1 verse 9). I feel safe and free. I know who holds my future and I know the one who holds it wants nothing but the best for me. Through life’s struggles (which I still have and always will) this has always helped me sleep at night. Nothing this world has to offer will comfort me more than this.

After speaking about these things, he’d always ask people to put their hand in the air if they wanted to be a Christian, and every week I’d stretch mine up in the air as far as I could get it. I thought that made me a Christian, and I also sensed that God wanted me to become a Pastor or preacher one day. That desire never left me.

When I hit my teenage years, my life wasn’t really any different from that of my mates. Like them, I went out drinking, swore a lot, blasphemed a lot, and did other things I knew were wrong in God’s eyes. I still went to church and still thought of myself as a Christian, but I knew that something wasn’t quite right. Apart from anything else, I knew I couldn’t really be a Pastor or preacher if I went on like this. Every now and again I’d make an effort to “improve”, but it never lasted longer than a week or so before I would just give up.

When I went to university, I believe that God began to work in my heart. I’d stopped going to church regularly by now, but I did spend a lot of time with my Christian uncle who I was very close to at the time. I think he could see that the life I was living wasn’t very “Christian”. He challenged me by saying that I shouldn’t live with “one foot in the Church and one in the world”. It was only a one-off, but it really annoyed me. Probably because it was true. But it was enough to spark something. I bought a bible and began to read it. I also began to pray. I also began to question what on earth I was doing in university, studying anthropology and sociology for no particular reason when the real thing I felt “called” to was some kind of Christian ministry- but I was still in no fit state for that. Head in a mess I called my uncle and poured out my troubles. He gave me some Bible verses to read, “go away and read Proverbs 3 verses 5 to 6”. Off I went and, still full of emotional confusion, looked up the “wrong” passage in my Bible (Proverbs 5 verses 3 to 6). Here’s what I read:

For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to hell; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

Reading these verses deeply disturbed me. I knew that God was telling me that I was going to hell because of the life I was living. I was deeply confused because I thought I was already a Christian, and Christians don’t go to hell. On my knees, tears streaming down my face, I cried out to God to “help me”. Immediately, the thought came to me, “hold on; wasn’t it Proverbs 3 verses 5 to 6?” I turned two pages back in my bible and read this,
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

As I read these verses, great peace came over me. From that day I stopped struggling with simple things like drinking, telling bare faced lies and swearing. I had a new desire and a new power to please God, to stop doing things that He hates. Looking back, I don’t think that I really did read the “wrong” Bible verses after all. I think God meant me to read exactly those words so that I would cry out to Him for His help. As soon as I did that, He gave me the answer, to trust in Him with all my heart. And I did. I already knew that Jesus had died for “sinners” like me, but now I knew the power of that in my own life. Looking back, I’m convinced that that’s the day I really did become a Christian.

I left university and threw myself into the work of a church near to my home. I soon discovered that there’s a bit more to living for God than simply not lying, swearing, and drinking. I’m still a sinner- but forgiven because of what Jesus did by dying on the cross. God has helped me learn some very uncomfortable things about myself. But He always forgives me. He’s also given me a family; a beautiful Christian wife and three lovely daughters. He’s even made me a preacher and a leader in my local Church, where I’m privileged to serve Him. These things don’t make me a Christian though. What makes me a Christian is the fact that God loved me before I loved Him- and sent His Son to die for me; taking the punishment that should have been mine. God offers you that exact same forgiveness and love, through His Son Jesus Christ.