Member's Stories
Here's how some of our members found that Jesus is real:
Debbie
My family were not church goers although I attended Sunday School. I often thought there was more to life and asked questions at school and college. Eventually, whilst working as a teacher, I was invited by a colleague to a ‘Harvest Supper’ at her church. The speaker said something that made me realise I had been ‘sitting on the fence’ for several years and it was time to make a decision.
I plucked up courage to go into the local evangelical church where, as well as being welcomed, I was surprised to find the version of the Bible easy to read. I listened to sermons and read the Bible for 3 months before realising I believed what was being said. I then made the decision to accept Jesus into my life.
After 25 years, I am still learning more about God but I know I have His guidance in all aspects of my life and the sure hope of a future with Him.
Eileen
My testimony is one of God bringing himself to me gradually in his loving caring way.
I was at a point of my life when things had evened out and I had more time on my hands. My husband, Roger, and I had accepted that we were never going to be able to have children and had moved to a new house in West Byfleet and I had left work. I wasn’t looking for God or anything, just going to start a new phase of my life, but looking back I can see that God had just cleared the path for me.
My next door neighbour invited me to a coffee morning which was run by a member of Send Evangelical Church and it was at one of these meetings that for the first time in my life I heard someone sharing his faith, which was obviously real and alive for him.
I was invited to join a Bible study group and God started to work. Things made sense and became real to me and I knew that I wanted to be a Christian. But there was a part of me that was still sceptical and I couldn’t stop thinking that I was just conning myself that I believed. I had already prayed and asked God for forgiveness and acceptance through Christ, but I went again in prayer and asked God to let me feel his presence and he graciously did. I was stopped in prayer by this feeling of power, and then it was gone.
I knew from then on that God was God and he had given me the faith to believe in him. My life seemed to have meaning for the first time and I had this truly amazing relationship with God! My Christian life has been up and down, but his love has always been there; he has walked with me or carried me. He is my loving heavenly father and saviour that I don’t deserve but that I know that one day I will be with forever.
Anne
Family tragedy led to questions: Was there a God? Was there a heaven? Had they gone there? Would I? I cried through tears for 6 months.
A friend; a testimony; a leaflet started the tears flowing again. The cause? – re-reading the last words “he died for YOU, because He loved YOU, to save YOU to teach YOU.” These words gave the personal implications to all I knew about Jesus, but I had no assurance of his existence. Crying out “If you are there, show me!” There came the overwhelming sense of responsibility to meet God halfway.
What to do? I saw that Christians read the Bible & pray. Through this He personally revealed himself, bringing assurance, hope, purpose & eternal life. Read the Bible and pray to God: he will show himself to you if you earnestly seek him.
Robert
I was brought up to go to church and Sunday school, my parents being quite involved in the church. In my teen years, I began to fashion my own ideas on how the world should be run, being attracted by various “isms.” When I went to uni, I met a group of Christians who befriended me and I soon started to attend an evangelical church. For some time, though, some intuition told me that all was not right between me and God. Things culminated in a night out with the girls in my digs and a “one night stand”. At first I thought of it as a rite of passage but the truth dawned when my mates found out and chided me for my hypocrisy.
I then felt deeply ashamed and also afraid that God would have nothing to do with me now. Desperate for reassurance, I thumbed through my Bible one night and came to Isaiah:
“Come now, let us reason together”, says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
In my mind’s eye I saw Jesus sitting at the foot of the bed reasoning with me and a sense of peace came over me. Back at home that Easter, with the help of a booklet I had been given on how to become a Christian, I knelt by the bed and asked Christ into my life.
There have been times when I have messed up badly, even as a Christian, and “leaked” the gospel. However, in the words of Paul the apostle:
“Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:14)