Not given God a second thought?

Heidi Steel shares how the Lord changed her life -

As a child I had been taken to church once a week by my mum but at that time no-one in my family was saved and so church was just a Sunday venture. The reality was that since my teenage years I had not given God a second thought. During my early teens I attended the church youth group once a week but as I made more and more friends outside of church, I spent less time with my church friends and more time in the pursuit of other things. By the time I went to University I had no interest in continuing any sort of church going habits.

In 1997 I moved out of my family home and began my teacher training at Roehampton University. I was a hardworking student and loved the studies and enjoyed the work which I was doing. I loved being away from home so much that within the first few weeks I knew that I didn’t want to go back, especially for extended periods of time, including the following summer holiday and so I started looking into other options. I applied and was accepted onto an American Summer camp programme where I would work on an allocated camp for the duration of the summer. As part of the application process I had stated that I was a Christian.
God had His hand on my life and I was allocated to a Christian Summer Camp. Camp Joy was a ministry, preaching the gospel to children from New York City, namely Harlem and The Bronx. I heard the gospel told day in and day out and watched the rest of the staff live out Christain lives daily for almost three months. Somehow it went unnoticed that I was not committed to God in the same way.

After spending three months working on this Summer camp and hearing how much God loved me and how Jesus had paid the debt of sin that I owed and watching staff work out God’s principles in their lives, I couldn’t turn away from God anymore. I sat in the camp chapel one evening with a group of children who had chosen to stay and a handful of staff. The children were asked if they would sign two huge rocks as a sign of their commitment to God. On one rock was written,

‘I will love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my mind,’
and on the second it said,
‘I will love my neighbour as myself.’

That evening I signed my name on the rocks as a sign of my commitment to God. I made my decision to turn away from a life of sin and follow God and His ways, trusting that He knew best. That was almost twenty years ago, God has had His hand over my life ever since and I continue to be blessed by the love and support and witness of those around me and the grace and mercy of our Lord and Saviour.

Heidi