Hello everyone, I thought it was be good to share some collected stories from Christians on a post I recieved. They are diverse from mum's with children to pastors. I hope some you identfy with and they uplift you.
Guest story 1
I gave my life to Christ as an adult. As an adult I have been baptised by the Holy Spirit and by full immersion in water. It was a challenging and complicated journey up to the point I stopped running away from Him. Since accepting my Lord and Saviour, life is no less challenging and complicated, but it is full of gratitude, joy, and the peace that passes all understanding. Thanks be to God
Guest story 2
Hi. I'm a lifelong Christian. I was Christened into the Church of England as a baby, and confirmed at 13. As a child I regularly attended Sunday school, and then once I started secondary school was allowed to help as a "young leader." I also went to Brownies/Guides and did church parade and so on. I did a shirt stint the the choir, and was often given the lead role in the nativity play. I regularly did readings in church too, which I absolutely would not do these days.
As a teen I was in a church based dance group, run by my friends mum and based at the local methodist church. We were called The Christian Dancers and performed at a few Church events including a wedding and a baptism.
I drifted away from church for a while, whilst I was still doing the dance group and the occasional service. I never stopped believing, but I was busy being a teen.
I had my own DC really young, they were both Christened at the same church as me, despite it not being my local. They went to the local CofE nursery and primary school, and from there I started attending the church 'Cafe', and then the church. I'm still an active member of both. We have a midweek discussion group, which is loosely faith based and midweek communion at the Cafe, as well as various activities like craft and toddlers. On Sundays I'm on the chalice rota, so take my turn at offering the wine. My eldest son is on the creche rota, and I also help with the children's groups in an emergency. I'm in my second year as a PCC member.
I've been through some really really bad times in my life. I've tried, at times to stop believing. But ultimately I couldn't. I've raged and shouted at God. I've hated him at times.
But I've also found the most incredible love. When I was at my lowest, I felt like I was at the bottom of a deep, dark well
Friends would sit at the top and we could chat. Sometimes I could reach their fingertips. But they couldn't lift me out. Then one day I realised that I had never been alone. Jesus had been there all along, just waiting for me to be ready.
So that's my journey so far. Sometimes I feel like God is calling me. But I'm not sure what for yet.
Guest Story 3
I was baptised in a Congregational Church and attended Sunday School for some years. I joined the church when I was a teenager. Shortly afterwards I started attending a nearby Church of England which had a big and friendly youth club. It was there that I worked out what I’d been hearing for years and committed my life to Jesus.
I returned to the Congregational church and started to train to be a lay preacher. After a year or so I moved to Glasgow to attend Bible College and was a student there from 1969 to 1971.
After that I worked for Scripture Union for a couple of years and married another staff member. .We then worked for the Anglican Church in Israel for seven years.
When we returned to the UK we lived and worked in a Christian Conference centre for a few years until it closed. I then was a self-employed builder for years.
I went to University when I was 44 and followed a degree with a post grad diploma in Drug & Alcohol studies. I worked in a few places helping people deal with addictions.
My wife and I split up and divorced and I expected to remain single but met someone else and fell in love and we got married and I moved into her house. The nearest church was a URC and we started attending it and joined. I then started lay preacher training again and this time I completed the course. This keeps me busy. I am booked to lead 48 services this year.
I am sure I am where God wants me to be and am happy to be here.
Guest Story 4
Lifelong Christian but was drawn into a church community after a significant bereavement just over a year ago. I loved it, grew spiritually and became closer to Jesus than ever before.
2 months ago, I was turned on and torn apart in the church environment in the worst way. I am heartbroken and too afraid to engage at the moment. I am trying to reconcile how to forgive when no remorse is shown, redefine what care for each other looks like when trust is shattered.
Not sure why I am contributing really. I just feel a massive church shape hole in my life and miss my found friends there. Most of all I miss the one who did this to me.
Guest Story 5
Another lifelong Christian here, although I did not really find Christ until my early 20s. Before that I went to Church occasionally and was always interested in reading bits of the Bible, believed in God but didn't know Jesus as my personal saviour. It only took reading John 1:1-14 to believe and accept Christ into my life.
After that I had many ups and down with my health/career and by the time I reached my early 30s I let my own desperation to find a marriage partner take over so rather than asking God, I took matters into my own hands and chose someone who turned out to be abusive. I had 5 years of hell with them. During that time, my belief stayed strong, but I never went to Church nor read my Bible. He was not a believer, in fact, he came from a Muslim background although he said he hated religion because it caused wars. I eventually had the opportunity to break free and got divorced. I had no family to turn to which made things very hard.
So now in my 40s I was still 'going my own way' you might say, and met another man. We didn't get married but lived together - we're still together now, some 30 years later. He has been very good to and for me, but again he's not a Christian, I think more of an agnostic. During all this time my health got worse.
Funnily enough lockdown was the turning point for me, God is persistent and led me back to Himself via YouTube! I am pretty much housebound now so it was a fitting way to do it! I found myself for the first time really getting into Bible study and journaling, and then the Holy Spirit prompted me to find other believers as it's not good to be on one's own. I asked God and He must've thought, 'ooh easy request' and within a few hours I'd found a great online Church, in fact I now attend two online Churches, one in the UK, the other in the US! I love how the Internet has enabled this.
I do know God's purpose for me, in a way I have known it for a long time, it's always been in the field of the healing ministry. I asked Him how can I do this when housebound? Of course, He is not limited and prayer can reach anywhere, so I am reassured I can still work for His earthly Kingdom. Then there's the call to evangelise. Again, if you're housebound, that doesn't stop you,. So I will try to do God's business here or wherever else He calls me. I just pray He gives me long enough as I feel I am far behind where I should be, and I do mourn those lost years even though I know God can use everything for His glory.
Guest 6
I added the below story from a woman who was born blind who is a Christian called Linn Davis which I found online which moved me.
Linn Davies - development team promotions and communications officer at Torch Trust
I have been blessed with an extremely resilient spirit that has allowed me to bounce back from disappointments, bereavements and unfair treatment. I have also been blessed with the ability to tell stories through music, journalism and creative writing, and I am using that ability to do what I can to make sure disability becomes part of the diversity agenda.
Being blind has given me lots of opportunities that I wouldn’t have had as a sighted person. I was a youth delegate for Norway, my home country, in a European parliamentary hearing on disability, and being blind has made it easier to secure high-profile interviews with people such as Lord David Blunkett.
Life growing up was a mixed bag. Being blind from birth wasn’t something I viewed as a problem, but other people made things harder for me. My teenage peers had ideas of what was cool – and I was decidedly not cool. In the Church, I had other issues: faith healing was forced on me a few times, which didn’t work, and people told me the devil had made me this way. I just wanted to get on with life, like everyone else. My family treated my brother and I the same. They had ambitions for me to become something; to get an education, a job and have a family.
The disability rights movement started around the same time as those of race and sexuality, yet the latter two have garnered greater recognition and media coverage. Until disabled people are given the same attention and treatment as other marginalised groups, we have no hope of tearing down the barriers – often attitudinal ones – which stand between us and a better, more inclusive society.
Guest 7
I know my Dad recieved the Holy Spirit he went for a walk up the country road near where we lived which was on top of a hill and a whirlwind came and encircled him and he started speaking in tongues at such a speed he didn't think it was possible, and all he could say was "Yspryd Glân" (Holy Spirit. Literal translation = "Clean Spirit").
When he came back he was clearly a changed man!
Guest 8
My faith journey started in 2017 when my second son was 4.5 and wanted to see the church bell and how it was rung. I wouldn’t normally have been brave enough to just wander in to a church and be nosey as I wasn’t a very confident, outgoing person, socially awkward and had quite a few pre-conceptions about people who went to church but something prompted me to do it that day. son was invited to come back the next day to try ringing it. We started just nipping in for ten mins on a Sunday before a service for that purpose. Gradually began joining in with their Messy Church for something to do with my son.
I was similar in that faith/church was something other people did, but it wasn’t really my thing.
18 months in and I stayed for a midnight mass service. The sermon felt personal to me and made me a bit emotional. By this point I had also made some great friendships with a few of the regulars and “staff”, ( including a lay minister. important for later)
I also got involved in a few events, began enjoying a few of the services and soon the building felt like home for me, but I still wasn’t really that interested in faith.
By March 2020, just before the first National covid lockdown, I had made steps in to faith and was exploring what that could mean for me. My friendship with my minister had grown to a point where I felt comfortable asking him to inter the ashes of my first son who had passed away 16 years before, aged 11 days. I had found someone who I trusted enough to place those ashes in a final resting place.
As my husband, myself and lay minister were stood in the rain having the interment service, I was in the middle holding an umbrella trying to keep us all dry.
Even after 16 years, it was incredibly hard and emotional, and the lay minister could see I was struggling. Without breaking stride from the service, he prised the umbrella from my hand, and in that moment I just crumbled completely. All the grief I had been carrying for 16 years came out and was handed over with that umbrella. I was ready to let it all go.
That was my first big “God Moment”. It was a weight completely lifted.
Since then, lots of things have happened!
The lay minister and I have become best friends, and we’ve supported each other in our individual faith journeys. The lay minister decided to explore ordained ministry and was made Deacon in 2024.
This meant that he was able to Baptise me a few months later.
An extra special celebration, as not only was I Baptised by my best friend, who had played a huge part in my coming to faith, but I was also the first person he Baptised!
It was a privilege for us both.
The lay minister has since been ordained a Priest and has had to move on to another church in the town for his 3 year placement as a Curate, and I’m heavily involved in my church as admin and other duties.
My friendship with the lay minister and the others has changed me for the better, I have a great support network now when life hits hard, and my faith gets stronger all the time. I’m much more confident now too, having to meet new people all the time and attend church related meetings & events that lots of priests/ministers/archdeacons/Bishops also frequent.
If someone had told me 7 years ago that I would be where I am now, I would have laughed at them and told them to get lost as I was the least churchy person ever, to the point that the lay minister didn’t think I’d come back after that first visi.
Guest 9
Today, so few people walk with God and there is such a rejection and denial that God exists... Yet every single one of us who reaches the point where we hear Jesus knock... We can either open the door and receive Him in, or we can say no, or deny we heard that knock.
For me I was around 13 that I knew Jesus was knocking... I felt the urge to become born again, after God sent someone to speak to me telling me how to have this spiritual birth. I was too scared to do it in school, so I went into my bedroom on my own after school and prayed and there and then asked Jesus into my heart, and the change began! Before that date, if you asked me if I was a Christian, I would say "Yes"... I never knew there was something more!
From that day on, when I opened the Bible, it was as if when I read it it was alive! It was dead to me before that time and a struggle to read, so to be honest, I rarely bothered. But now, suddenly after that event, it was like being in the dark trying to read, and suddenly someone had switched on the light and I could see! It came "Alive" to me!
When I got baptized in the Holy Spirit (Two years before I was water baptized), it was like a further dimension became open to me! Now when I read the Bible, it is like reading a 3D book, as I can see things on multiple levels!
I hope this makes sense?
I have NEVER had any other book that I have ever read (Including briefly reading Bibles of other religions or sects...
BUT the key to the Bible is the Holy Spirit who unlocks the door to truth!
Anyway. That is all I need to write, and I leave it in the readers hands to decide for themselves what they want to do. God bless!
