When I was a child I went to Sunday school, where I first heard stories from the Bible. As a teenager I attended church. As a mother with three young children who were going to Sunday school and were part of the choir, I also went along to church. But at no time did I understand the true meaning of Jesus and the cross or have a living relationship with God. In fact I had always felt very lonely with a sense of emptiness and guilt deep inside.
My journey begins
A few years ago my granddaughter asked if I believed God had made us. My honest answer at that time was, ‘I don’t know but I wish I could say it was down to God’. We discussed how amazingly we have been made and wondered what the purpose of life is.
In September 2013, I took my grandson to ‘Busy Bees’ at Mount Elim Church in Pontardawe. The pastor’s wife invited the mums and grans to a ladies’ meal, held at Manor Park in Clydach.[1] A couple of friends and I accepted the invitation and that evening we heard a lady share her testimony of God’s protection and strength through difficult times. On the way out, I picked up a leaflet showing dates and places where evangelists would be speaking. Along with my friend of almost 50 years, we went to listen to the evangelist John Blanchard speaking in the Arts’ Centre in Pontardawe. A gentleman from Mount Elim came and sat next to us. During the interval we spoke to him and I asked him when he became a Christian. He invited my friend and I to go to a talk by Andy Christofides on the Sunday at Mount Elim. He mentioned there would be a lunch provided and it was free! Well you couldn’t refuse!
Hungry for more
Both my friend and I then found ourselves needing to know and understand more about the gospel and Jesus. We were soon offered to do the Christianity Explored course with our pastor. Our thirst for the gospel and need for Jesus brought us to church every week and some lovely people in the church took us under their wings.
I came to realise that the emptiness and guilt I had deep inside was no longer there – it had been replaced by love from Jesus. I got to know Jesus and understood that he died for me – that Jesus, the Son of God, loved me and gave his life for me, paying the penalty for all the things I had done wrong. I was forgiven. I found this truth amazing! What a wonderful God.
God is so faithful, so loving and so amazing! I heard about and began to understand the resurrection and eternal life. I came to believe that all the words in the Bible are God’s words; that the words of Scripture are more than simply true, they are truth itself!
In answer to my granddaughter’s question – ‘Did God make us?’ – the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:27: ‘God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’
Loving God and having a relationship with him makes me want to keep his commandments, worship him and to try to show the fruit of the spirit in my daily life – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control.
[1]The meetings mentioned here were a part of the ‘Real Lives’ mission organised by 11 churches in the Swansea/Llanelli area in October 2013.