My TestimonyIf you've been reading Bible Shorts, then you may rightfully want to know about the person behind them, who he is and whether or not he is even a Christian. Since it's scriptural to give an account of yourself when preaching what you claim is the Gospel, here is my tetsimony. It's not a story of how good and wonderful I am, if anything, it will show quite the opposite. It is an account of how I have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.I was born on March 4th, 1974 in a Yorkshire town called Castleford. When I was 2 years old, my parents moved to my mother's home village in South Wales called Cwmtwrch (or Lower Cwmtwrch if you want to be pedantic ;-) Being not very good at mixing and making friends, I would just do my own thing, except for Sundays when I had to go to church at the expense of watching Batman. I was not happy with this at all. When I reached the age of 11, I was allowed to go to the YPF (Young People's Fellowship) which was held in the Cwmtwrch Mission Hall. Here, I realised that being dragged to church every Sunday didn't necessarily mean that I was a Christian (in fact, it doesn't mean it at all) and that I had to make the conscious decision to give my life to Jesus. So, one night in a small community hut in a place called BP Llandarcy, a gospel singer (called Wayne Carpenter) asked if anybody wanted to become a Christian and I put my hand up and went forward. I'd like to say that from then on, I never looked back and was a wonderfully holy chap who transformed everywhere I went for the better. Unfortunately, that's not the case and I became a worse person than I ever was. If I wasn't larking about in school with the kinds of things which even now make me shudder, I was introspective to the point of completely losing sight of the fact that there was a world in which to live and a God who made it. I 'said' that I was a Christian, but I certainly didn't live like I was. But during this time, God never once abandoned me and His hand has guided me despite all my stubborn rebellion. I left school to go to college and my eyes began to be opened to the deeper truths of his word, but doors were also opened for me in other areas (not by God) and I got into relationships which were not wise and my selfish self-sorrowful disposition made sure that I took the most unsuitable emotional paths available and I just became worse. The Lord, by His grace got me through college and into university where I got a degree in Computing. Looking back, I can see how His grace has helped me through some of the toughest challenges I've ever faced. He has also enabled me to do what everybody has considered impossible for me. Because of Him, I passed exams which everybody expected me to fail. He enabled me to pass my driving test (which has since proved essential) which everybody expected me to fail. These, and other thigs, are all by His grace because I know that without Him, I would have met the expectations of those around me and failed everything. A number of times, the Lord has directly intervened where I was close to making bad decisions. One example is while in university, the Lord rescued me from a point where I was ready to 'pack in this whole church thing'. I was ready to tell my pastor where he could stick his church and I was just going to go and do my own thing. But a couple who go to a church in Swansea, with who's son I was friends, paid for me to go to Spring Harvest, a conference for people of different church backgrounds to gather together and learn about Jesus. I didn't want to go but they (Paul and Carol Trezise) pushed and I went. That was a key turning point in my life and I am forever grateful to the Lord for sending them to direct me and to them also for the gift they gave me. From that conference, things started to change because the Lord weas finally beginning to get through with the truth that I needed Him in every area of my life, that I needed to let Him rule in my life, that only in Him would I find purpose and only in His Word would I know it. Another situation took place some time before this conference when I wanted to leave my church because I was bored with an assembly that then only had an organ. Down the road was a church with loud music; drums, trumpets, pianos and other cool stuff! I told my dad that I wanted to go there because I couldn't find God in my own church. My dad asked me a simple question; Have you looked for God in Saron (my own church)? When I figured that I should at least search for Him there, I found Him and never left. In that simple situation, I learned that to look for God in loud worship and clapping and jumping up and down is shallow and will profit nothing. That's not to say that He isn't in these things, but if those are the things that I am seeking and not Him, then I will fail. So, I finished university with a 2nd Class Honours Degree and went straight into a job with a for a reputable airline, in one of the best aircraft maintenance facility in the world, working on their IT systems - a job I still have and still enjoy. Again, nobody expected that I could work for such a company, but God often has plans that don't involve the expectations of people. Again, here, I made plenty of mistakes, but the Lord dropped a cog in my spiritual awakening and started to ignite in me a desire for His Word (the Bible). For so long, I had watched and heard shallow sermons that were loosely based on the Bible and kind of paid homage to it without actually engaging it and so I started to search it myself and ask the Lord what He is actually trying to say and how it is that the whole Bible, freom Genesis to Revelation does point to Jesus Christ. And this is where I now find myself. I'm no theologian or Biblical scholar, but I do know that the Word of God is to be taken as such, as the Word of God, and now I want to teach and encourage the saints of God to understand the whole big picture as we all travel along the road of discovery. The Lord has given me opportunity to do this. For some time I have been a regular speaker at my own church and other churches in the area and recently the Lord has called me to be an elder in my own church where I hope to serve Him and the congregation faithfully. Again, he is doing the impossible, against what people think or expect. I believe that the apathy and the shallow wimpish nature of Christians today (despite all the loud shouting and the empty shouting that we hear from churches - it's still wimpish) is because God's people don't know His word, and that many who do simply don't believe it or don't understand its significance and therefore don't teach it, don't preach it and don't practice it. But it is this very word which reveals to us the truth of who God is, the Sacrifice that was made for us at Calvary and who it is that dwells with and in us now (the Holy Spirit). I firmly believe that the two testaments in the Bible go hand in hand, complimenting each other, explaining each other, revealing the promises of God and showing us the Son who died for us. I believe that the mighty, awesome, terrifying Jehovah who shook Mount Sinai, who opened up the earth in judgement of sin, who overwhelmed Pharoah and brought the children of Israel out of captivity was manifest in a Man who walked the earth, got dust on his feet and knew all about what it is to be human, Jesus Christ (the song says "What if God was one of us", I say "He is!"). I believe that knowing the Word of God is the only way to build up faith for the Bible says that we walk by faith, not by what we have seen, heard, experienced or felt and that faith comes through hearing the voice of God and that is through reading the word of God. So this is who I am and where I'm from. Not a wonderful saint by any stretch of the imagination, but a subject of the grace of God, kept by Him having received blessings that I don't deserve and not received the terror of the punishment that I do. I believe that Jesus Christ is the very essence of God, equal with God and God's agent for creation - that He is God. I believe that Jesus died and rose again from the dead having satisfied the requirement for blood that hung over my head and I am now (because of the work of Jesus and not because of my own work) righteous before God, innocent and not-guilty. I believe that Jesus is at the right hand of God and that He has sent His Holy Spirit to us and that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and reveals truth, and baptises and that He does so much more beside. I also believe that Jesus is coming back to take those who believe in Him. I thank God for His unchanging word, His unchanging truth, His unchanging mercy, grace and love toward me. Amen |