To start with, as many of you will know, I had the privilege and blessing of being brought up in a Christian household. As a young boy I attended Rehoboth and was baptised here over 10 years ago.
A few years after my baptism I sadly fell away from the Lord and got caught up in drinking and all the trappings that go along with the drinking scene—I will not go into the specifics, but the immorality of everything that was involved, was at the time, what I was chasing. I can only say that it was by the grace of God that I was never severely damaged on any of the nights that I was out, and that I also was kept from the darker aspects like drugs and sexual immorality.
When I was almost 19 I met Alison who was not a Christian at the time that we met, which in my heart of hearts I knew was wrong but, as you will gather now, I was not living a Christian life and so I ploughed on ahead regardless.
The crunch point for me was when we were on holiday in Switzerland with a company called ‘Oak Hall’ who specialise in Christian trips, each night they run a church style service. I clearly remember standing outside of the hall on the last evening and hearing and seeing all the people inside, and knowing that I should have been in there participating. After this Alison and I broke up at the end of the holiday after I put a lot of prayer and mental wrestling into where my life was going.
Obviously, Alison and I got back together and attended churches in the form of Holbrook and Three Bridges Free Church. After attending these for a while we were married and then started going back-eards again, accompanied by the excuse of being too tired and having too many things to do. These were nothing more than excuses and this time it was Alison who brought us back.
We were recommended by my grandparents that Rehoboth had a new pastor who was lively and may have a different style that would be helpful to us and. Boy, were they right! As soon as we came along we felt that we were welcomed.
Again we stopped coming with the old excuses of being too tired. In my mind, now it seems like the book of Judges where God’s people keep drifting away and then coming back, and I can only appreciate the grace that God has shown me and that he has never let me down, and the fact that he will not let me go is really the encouragement that I will tell to anyone.
I will struggle with being a Christian on a day to day basis, but knowing that I have the support of this church and my wife and the rest of my family, and most of all God keeps my head up and helps me to keep going forward.
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