Personal Stories

Gill

I have lived in the great city of Hull all my life. As a child I went to Sunday school. I used to enjoy going but as I got older I stopped attending because we moved address.

I did believe in God but my life went from bad to worse. I felt that God had deserted and betrayed me because of a very bad abusive marriage. I did not want to know about God and felt very let down.
Life continued to go downhill and I felt very deserted.
I had a friend who wanted me to help him collect names of people who died in all wars. I was going from church to church, graveyard to graveyard collecting names.
I decided to visit the Jubilee to find out whether there was a roll of honour.They did not have one! However because it was a Wednesday coffee morning I decided to stay for a cup of tea.

I was very nervous being with people but enjoyed interacting and chatting to people.
I met Jo, Steve’s wife there and realised she was also my Avon lady as well as going to this church.

I gradually started coming every Wednesday for the conversation because it was such a relaxed atmosphere. Also I chatted on the doorstep to Jo as my neighbour. I also did not feel pressurised to talk about God or feel I had to come to the church when I met people from the church so kept coming.

I then decided to pop in at the end of the Sunday services after walking my dog Amber. I wanted to say hello and see my new friends. It felt like a family which I was beginning to belong to.

On one of the Wednesdays Steve had printed out invitations to the Alpha course. As always I had arrived early to help and He got me to fold them for him. I read the invitation and decided then I wanted to come.I then came to the Alpha course with Jo. I was extremely nervous but by the end of the evening felt relaxed.

I found it really interesting and over the weeks I had lots of my questions answered about God.
I realised that God was real and had never deserted me and that people were to blame rather than God.Also I realised that I had also done things wrong and I needed God’s forgiveness. This was available because of what Jesus had done on the cross.

I had also started to come on a Sunday. At the end of one of the meetings there was opportunity to receive prayer. I decided that this was the time to make a decision to become a Christian.Since this time things have began to change. I used to be very negative and not confident. I have since becoming a Christian become more of a positive person.

Now my confidence is growing and I have felt more at peace. I know this is the beginning of a new life and direction.

Carl & Jane

When we were married in 1985 we planned to have at least six children, but just over two years later, after many hospital tests, we were told by the doctor “I’m sorry but due to your low sperm count you are unable to have any children!”

After the initial shock we decided to get on with our lives by spending our time with work, holidays and buying things to try and fill the emptiness of our childless marriage. Then came the self-pity, bitterness and especially anger, mainly towards God. “Why was He doing this to us?” We were good people who loved children, “What have we done to deserve this?” As we started to drift away from each other our marriage began to fall apart. But during this time we also began to seriously ask God questions like “If it’s God’s will for people to get married and have children what about those like us who can’t have any?” “What is your plan and purpose for them?”

We soon began to realise that if we were blaming God then we must have some faith to believe that He exists, and if He exists then He might be able to help us! So we bought a bible and started to read it, after a while we read this verse “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him”. (Hebrews 11:6 [show] [6]And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (ESV)
)

We started to believe what the bible says about God was true, but couldn’t understand what Jesus Christ had to do with it! Because we didn’t know any Christians and we didn’t go to church we decided to ring the pastor of a local church to come and explain things to us. He came to see us and explained how Jesus Christ had died for our sins on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead so that we might be forgiven. We thought that we were already Christians because we lived in a Christian country and been baptised as babies.

We knew we weren’t Christians, but we wanted to be, so we prayed with the pastor and told God that we were sinners and asked him to forgive us for our sin and thanked Him for sending His son Jesus to die in our place so that we might be forgiven!

Since that day God has enabled us to adopt a beautiful daughter called Bethany, named after the place where Jesus brought a man called Lazarus back from the dead, and in a similar way God brought our marriage back from the dead! Shortly after adopting our daughter God told us “Although Bethany was not made by you she was made for you!”

Throughout the years God has continually shown us that He wants to be actively involved in every area of our lives, and has provided the church so that individuals and families can find out what He’s really like and share his love and to enable us to enjoy the real reason and purpose for our lives.