I did it, I got baptised yesterday (Sunday 20th January 2008) in the sea at Newquay. Admittedly it was a bit cold around the ankles but none the less I wasn’t going to let a bit of cold water stop my journey with God!
“May I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14)
“You’re the most Christian non Christian I know“ was the comment my wife Teresa made about 7 months ago. The cheek of it! Was my first thought and then followed by a rye smile in the direction of the sky.
My journey with God has been a constant flicker over the past 20 years. As a kid I attended Sunday school in my local Anglican church, the yearly Harvest Festival and Religious Education at College. Although It wasn’t until I met Teresa that I started to understand the meaning of being a Christian. We first entered a church ‘together’ when we wanted to have our son Rhys christened about 4 years ago. It was an Anglican church in a deprived area of Swindon and yet was very welcoming, but being naïve about faith, this did not pull my cord. I suppose I wasn’t ready to sing traditional songs on a Sunday morning and give up my ‘precious’ weekend to something I was not signed up to. During this period I completed the Alpha Course, but again it did not sink in and possibly allowed me to move further towards the evolution theory, I still had many unanswered questions, however I did continue to attend various churches in Swindon on and off, often going to keep Teresa company rather than to bring God in to my life.
In November 2006 we made the life changing decision to move away from Swindon and bring a fresh way of life to the whole family, and boy has that happened. The week before we moved, we had to pop down to Cornwall to check out the School Isabel was going to attend and decided to come down on the Sunday and attend a service at NCC. This was following extensive research on the internet. Bear with me here for a minute, but this church, when we first came, was completely different to any church I had ever been to before; it was full of life and full of people casually dressed and throwing themselves at God, and as a non-Christian it took me eight months to step back in to this fantastic ‘vibrant’ church!
At the beginning of 2007 I completed an Institute of Direct Marketing Diploma in Digital Marketing, which meant that I had gone as far as I could in my profession with regards to learning and by May 2007 was saying to Teresa that I needed a new challenge and looked at opportunities such as MBA’s and diversifying in to new skills, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. By now it was early July and my brother and his family (who are all Christians) had arranged to come down for a week’s holiday. My brother and I, up until this visit, had an amicable sibling relationship, but in fairness had probably not been that close due to our very different lifestyles. Because my brother and his wife are Christians, we knew that we would have to take them to a church on the Sunday and NCC seemed the obvious choice, a happy clappy church not dissimilar to their church we thought! (My brother and I are now much closer than we have ever been)
So we attended NCC in July last year and this time there was something different about it, maybe my guard had slipped or maybe I was feeling slightly under the weather, but when I told Teresa later that day, I wouldn’t mind attending again, I was quite surprised by her action. Is it normal for someone to spit their tea out and nearly fall off the chair at the same time? Suffice to say she was on the phone to my brother within 5 minutes!
By this time my heart had been softened and I picked up a copy of Evolution: Fact or Fairy Tale by Laurie Brown at Creation Fest and this was the first book in a long time that I was so engrossed in that I couldn’t put it down. As I have previously said, I had always veered down the route of Evolution being the obvious explanation due to the facts being there. Reading the book made me realise that maybe the facts were actually fiction and the fact was really with God, and not with attention craving scientists.
A few weeks later I made my commitment here, the place I had rejected nine months earlier. The 12th August is a date easy to remember for me as it’s also my wedding anniversary. I felt a pressure released from inside once I had made my commitment and I knew that I had sins in my life that needed to be addressed and fixed before I wanted to be baptised. And the best feeling in the world is knowing that these sins have been fixed or are being fixed which makes me really excited to be standing here today.
My journey with God since the 12th August has been a busy one; I have spent many hours reading the bible, taking part in a Life Course and Cell Groups, educating myself for daily prayer, watching God TV, setting up a Christian Blog with visitors from all around the world, attending Christian events and observing things which I would have previously denied as an atheist, such as people getting drunk on the holy spirit. “Christ lives within you“(Colossians 1:27) is a bit of scripture I love and no more so than on a Sunday morning during worship when you get that tingly feeling in your body!
At first I wasn’t in a rush to be baptised, I had said to Teresa on a few occasions, one thing at a time, but it wasn’t until I was told “Believe and be Baptised” (Mark 16:16) that it clicked and now I stand here thirsty.
God Bless
Since my baptism I have been praying for the Holy Spirit to fall within me and provide me with the ability of speaking in tongues. I know you should be careful for what you pray for, but I feel that this ability would take me to the next stage of being a Christian and would also build a hotline directly to God. I found out the other day that there are actually nine gifts that can fall on you and they are grouped in three’s. I have referenced examples in brackets.
Recent Comments by you, the readers