My Testimony

I didn't believe in God or anything until I was 15/16. I had to do an oral report on something, and I chose the title 'What beliefs in God are there?'. I looked through the basic beliefs and decided that there must be *something*, and that I was an 'agnostic' (someone who doesn't think there is enough evidence to support/deny God's existence)

Then a couple of years later I met this girl who was a Christian. She had just broken up with her b/f of 3 years and was pretty unhappy. I became really good friends with her and had the biggest crush on her. She was always talking about church, and how her and her friends at church did loads of fun/mad stuff.

One day I was chatting on the phone to her and asking what she was doing over the weekend. She said that there was an easter celebration going on at her church. When I asked what happened there, she said that there was music, dancing, singing, drama, and at the end there was free food. I said "Free food!? Can I come?!?" as a joke. She said "yeah, sure!".

I was only kidding about going along, but I decided to brave it and go along anyways. I really wanted to meet these friends of hers that she spent so much time with. So I went along to the easter celebration and was totally shocked. My previous experience of church was to sit at the back, singing old boring songs and listen to some guy at the front blather on about things that simply weren't relevant to me..I always used to wonder why God couldn't be relevant if was all powerful. But this church was different. They sang songs that sounded a bit more lively and modern, and the guy talking at the front actually made sense! He was talking about things which were relevant to my life and how to live it...and more amazingly these things were from that dusty old book - The Bible! This just got me thinking an awful lot. Ironically, when it came to the time for free food at the end, my stomach was so much in knots that I could hardly eat anything!

I started talking to one of the guys there that was around my age, and he invited me to a 'grill-the-preacher' evening for the youth on wednesday night, where they would write down questions, stick them in a box, and the pastor would pick them out and answer them. I went along with this as I was curious to find out more.

I continued attending the church for a couple more weeks and saw people experiencing the Holy Spirit - which was v.weird at first, but as I came to understand it more, the more it made sense. One Sunday during the worship I was standing up and thought I'd give it a go. I said within myself "Ok Jesus, if you're there.. let me feel you...come and have a go!".

At that moment I had a feeling I'd never had before - it was like pins-and-needles all up and down my arms and legs. It lasted some time, and I just couldn't understand it...I tried standing in different positions, but came to the conlusion that this must be God.

My friend must have been watching me during the worship because she came up to me afterwards and said "Do you want to give your heart to God?". I didn't have a clue what that meant, so asked what she was going on about. She explained to me that it meant giving my life to Christ and recieving His salvation. I thought to myself "okay I'll give this a go. I'll stick with it serisously and see how it goes".

That was 1998, and I've never looked back since! I never ended up with the girl, but I ended up with something so much better! God has been so good in my life; He's taught me so much, He's changed me, given me confidence in myself, and also surrounded me with more excellent people than I ever could have imagined!!