Peter's Testimony

I was brought up in a Christian home, but I gave up going to church as a teenager as I found it boring. I continued to believe all the Bible says, and to follow pretty much its teaching. I didn't need the church for anything and God was a peripheral part of my life.

Twenty years later I needed to find a church to get married in as I had no intention of marrying in a registry office. There are plenty of churches in Canterbury, but I wasn't an Anglican, nor a Catholic, nor a Baptist... I looked for something 'reformed' or 'Pentecostal', and the only church I tried was St. Andrew's, which was near where I worked. I phoned the minister without having set foot in the building, and he agreed to see me and my fiancée, Patricia. We had a chat and we agreed to come to church to see what it was like. The wedding was 9 months away. As Patricia lived 40 miles away I usually went to church alone on most Sunday mornings and the forst thing that struck me was how friendly people were. I started to like going, and to be reminded of so much I already knew in my head, but not my heart.

About a month and a half before the weddding, I was invited to an evening celebration service which marked the beginning of a week of street outreach by an organisation St. Andrew's supported. The leader asked all those present at the end of the service to close their eyes. He asked anyone who wanted to give their lives to Jesus to raise a hand, so no one would see. I felt impelled to rasie my hand, because all of a sudden the voice I heard was seemingly just speaking to me personally, not anyone else around me. As I raised my hand, light filled my head, and the words I heard asking me to ask Jesus for forgiveness of my sins were the words I was saying. Tears filled my eyes, and a huge burden lifted off me, a burden of guilt about the past. I was a blubbering wreck, helpless and so happy that Jesus was real and no longer just a figure in history. I knew that Jesus is alive, and why people were Christians. Experience of the supernatural presence of God was something I couldn't wipe away with any logical or scientific explanation, nor did I have any desire to do so. I had seen the light and now I knew what people meant by it! The Holy Spirit does exactly what He promises in John's Gospel and John's First Letter and in Acts of the Apostles. I went home and read the Gospels with a hunger and thirst - the familiar stories leapt off the page with a freshness I had never known before, because now I understood what Jesus was saying to me was relevant and not merely a historical account. The Bible became a delight to read instead of a curiosity or a chore for Sunday School homework.

A week later, Patricia gave her life to Jesus. We got married a month later, beginning our life together happy to be in love with Jesus as well as each other. We now have two lovely children and we have been at St. Andrew's ever since. Love has bound us together and the church family of St. Andrew's is one where love abounds.

God is wonderful and knows our abilities better than we do ourselves. Over the past year and a half, I have got involved with Canterbury KidzKlub because God said to me that I should support it. I was reluctant to give up my Saturday working with some 5-11 year olds, but it has been such fun and so rewarding, that it has become something I look forward to all week. God gives us the desires of our hearts, but He can change that desire to something quite unexpected. Nothing is impossible for God, and He uses men and women and young people in astonishing ways if they choose to obey Him.