PB

Testimony

I became a Christian in 1974, having been to church to see my brother-in-law baptised, I started going to services and then made a commitment to the Lord.  I feel looking back that God had been speaking to me a lot of times throughout my life.

When I was about 13 I went with a group of school friends to a Crusader holiday and felt that God spoke to me even then.  The trouble was that once I was back in my family who weren’t Christian I did not continue to grow in my faith and other things came into my life.  God was always important to me even when I was not a Christian although I didn’t really know why and didn’t have a relationship with Him.

How has God helped in my life?

God has helped a lot in my life from the every day things to the bigger things that life has to offer us.

One of those things happened in 1982.  My husband was a police officer and had been working all day, when he came home and asked me where my brother worked, as he (my husband) had been working all day on a murder case and one of the men arrested had the same name as my brother.  I said it must be an error, as your own family don’t do that kind of thing, that only happens to other families. I rang my sister who told me that our brother worked with a man whose children and wife had just died in a fire and I had to tell her that our brother had just been arrested for that fire and consequently the murder of three children and their mother. This was such a terrible shock as you must imagine and for several years I was not able to talk about my brother, let alone visit him or contact him. A friend pointed out that although my brother had hurt my feelings his sin was not toward me but to God, who would deal with him his own way.  I prayed to God that he would soften my heart and dissolve the bitterness I had been feeling and a while later I felt led to send a Christmas card to him.  My father died a short time later and I have always been so glad that amends had been made before he died so that he was at peace with our relationship, as my bitterness had really upset my parents.

Another time that God was so apparent in my life was when my husband lost his business after a partner made it impossible for him to carry on.  We had recently moved to a larger house and taken on a large mortgage based on our income.  Initially my husband was out of work.  We used up all our savings just living and had a lot of debts that we couldn’t pay.  We tried to put our house on the market but it wouldn’t sell.  We couldn’t quite understand why God was testing us in this way because we had always felt convinced that we were living where God had intended us to be.  We ended up in court with a CCJ and our phone never stopped ringing with debtors trying to get their money. I felt very miserable and could not work out where the money was going to come from to sort things out. Eventually my husband got a new job but the income from this was about 1/3^rd what he used to earn.  One day the washing machine broke down and while we were looking at it the phone rang (we didn’t hear it) and it was someone my husband had worked for ringing to offer him two days work, the money this paid was exactly the amount we needed to get a new washing machine.  We were nearing Christmas and worried about how we would pay for the things we needed.  Every time we needed money for something the amount turned up either by a friend helping us or by an anonymous envelope arriving through the letterbox with some money in, just enough to pay for what we needed.  We both feel very blessed to know that God is in everything in our lives and nothing is too trivial for Him to be concerned about.  We still do not have spare money but always have enough for what we need.  As Christians we are not saved from having to deal with the ordinary ups and downs of daily life but we do not have to deal with these things on our own, and can always take them to God in prayer.  I am convinced that God is there for me, I am able to talk to Him at any time and feel that He answers me in a variety of different ways either through practical assistance or by His presence. I don’t know how people are able to deal with this life without God there to guide them and care for them.