by Mary | Jul 8, 2025 | Testimonies
I was privileged to have been brought up in a Christian home. However, it wasn’t until I was about 15 that I began to believe that everything I had heard was true. It was a gradual realisation, a work of the Holy Spirit, that God was telling me I needed to be living for and loving Him. I became aware of my failings and faults and realised that only Jesus’ sacrifice could put things right between God and me. It was at this time I was baptised. I would love to say that I continued growing in faith from then on, but the truth is very different. When I was about 20 years old, I decided that maybe I should live my life my own way, not the way that God wanted. I fooled myself into thinking that, although I still believed in God, I didn’t need to go to church or to follow Him anymore. God wouldn’t miss me, I thought, and I didn’t need Him. How foolish I was. One night when I was about 22, whilst I was working in a Building Society in South London, I had a nightmare about being in an armed raid. Which was not unsurprising. However, the following morning I went to work as usual and at about 2 o’clock that afternoon
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by Mary | Jul 7, 2025 | Testimonies
From my earliest days I remember hearing God’s word preached faithfully & was taught to memorise scripture & particularly loved singing hymns. There was no question in my mind that God was great and powerful, but I didn’t know Him to be ‘my’ God until many years (& many terrible choices) later! When I hit my mid teens, I no longer had a network of church friends, as my dad had taken up a pastorate on the outskirts of Cardiff, and the great love of my heart became very obvious: myself. After many attempts at a ‘conversion experience’ I decided Christianity was devoid of real power & went off in search of real pleasures! Like the prodigal, I went to the far off land & squandered my Father’s many blessings. I walked away; He remained unmoved, steadfast & determined that His word would not return to Him void. I have no doubt that the prayers of my parents followed me into the many dark places and seasons I walked during that decade. There were moments of very real spiritual awareness, and times where specific verses and hymns would come to my mind, out of the blue! At 25, I had already begun the long journey back from that ‘far off land’ but on the 10th October 2009, my Father ran
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by Mary | Jul 5, 2025 | Testimonies
I began coming to a saving knowledge of Christ during my first year of University. Reading Psalm 22, the words started to carry weight, which I had never experienced from the Bible before. Of course, I did not understand the words much at first, but I continued to be drawn to them like a magnet and began studying them to discover their meaning. Martin Luther once described his experience of understanding the letter of Romans like savagely beating on its doors until it opened up its meaning. Similarly, I applied myself to Psalm 22, and it was during this time God began drawing me to Himself. However, I continued to live for myself, but my religious facade had begun to show its cracks. A series of seemingly insignificant circumstances of rejection proved to be like a hammer to my pride. God was making me sensible of my sinful nature. This gracious wounding of my pride made me miserable as I continued to cling to my self-righteous life. God kept exposing my arrogance, and I kept quickly trying to cover it up. I would go to bed bothered why such thoughts had entered my mind and where they came from, yet I couldn’t deny their truthfulness. Other times, I would go to bed exhausted of my spiritual restlessness. I was tired of
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by Mary | Jul 4, 2025 | Testimonies
I was born in Southampton and my family and I moved to Cheshire when I was 7 years old as my Dad took a new job at the Christie Cancer Hospital. I am the youngest of 3 children and we were very fortunate to grow up with not only loving Christian parents but all 4 grandparents’ firm believers also. Growing up we went to church as a family and I remember also praying and reading the bible and Christian books often with my parents. Despite this, my siblings and I often spent Sunday lunches in particular bickering and trying to disprove God’s existence. This was understandably the cause of great difficulty and sadness for my mum and dad who had been so consistently loving and had tried so hard to help us understand. Eventually my older brother and sister stopped coming to church with us but Mum and Dad encouraged me to still come and perhaps knew deep down that I desperately wanted a real relationship with God. I attended many youth weekends away with the church and always felt encouraged and motivated to read my bible more and understand God. As many new Christians do, I started by reading Genesis but a few chapters in I felt entirely puzzled and confused. I constantly had doubts about whether God was
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by Mary | Jul 3, 2025 | Testimonies
In my early teenage years, I started to ponder on many difficult questions about the world and our existence and if there is any God out there who created us. At the time I had never heard the true gospel. I have a Catholic family background and I attended a majority Muslim school and so that influenced me to believe that God is someone we are supposed to win over through our works. I knew nothing of salvation through faith alone. I would have probably described myself as agnostic although I certainly lived my life as if there is no God. I lived solely for my own pleasures and with little regard for others because my heart was not right with God. With time I started to see a lot more evil around me. It became apparent that the world was filled with hate, selfishness, and sexual immorality. Although I didn’t believe in God at that time, I knew that this wasn’t what I wanted the world to be like and so I began to search for answers. At first, I believed we could create a better world through our own efforts, as I didn’t see that sin is inherent to our nature and I always blamed others for everything that’s wrong in the world because I didn’t know of
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