This is me....a Christian woman

At my age, the journey towards my faith in Jesus could take pages.....so I’ll give you an outline…

I married in 1977 and then suffered the loss of a child at 15 weeks; shortly after this, my husband wanted a divorce; it seems he didn’t want children despite my thinking he would come round to it (ladies talk before you marry, talk a lot!!)

My hairdresser - isn't that where all women go when depressed and need cheering up? Well, he invited me to his church some 26 miles away; I have to say I found it all intriguing, but what was it with all the hugging? 

Two ladies told me Jesus could fix my marriage and asked me if I wanted to be prayed with to accept Jesus. It seemed like a good idea and a great deal, to be honest, so yes, why not? I did feel that perhaps something happened, but…...

 

Now what’s the problem with that…I'd repeated a prayer, so that was it, my ticket to eternal life was firmly clutched in my hand......or was it? 

In Acts 16:31, Paul says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved”, ...but in verse 32(a), it says "And they spoke the word of the Lord to him" Was the jailer a stranger to Christ?...this would indicate he was and so it was necessary to tell him who this Jesus was so that he could believe in him.

Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” Now things are starting to become clearer; this is about the death of Jesus, about the fact that Jesus died for our sins so before you can be saved from your sins you must believe you are a sinner…or else what are you being forgiven for?

 

I can't remember when I realised that I was a sinner; I mean, when you didn't drink to excess, didn't sleep around and didn't do drugs, I guess it would be easy to have that opinion, it was certainly sometime after these two lovely ladies had prayed with me that the penny dropped. What I actually wanted when they kindly offered to pray for me was for God to fix my marriage, but what God wanted was to fix me, to show me His incredible love, love that manifested in the sacrifice of His sinless son on the cross...for me. He wanted to show me that it was by believing and putting my faith and trust in Christ that I was no longer under God's wrath, no longer under the penalty of death because of my sin and unbelief, but under the saving grace of God.             I now stood justified before God, who looked at my life as if it were the life of His son Jesus.

The righteousness of Christ had been credited to me. 

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Despite my initial and somewhat shallow interest in Christ as a solution to my problems, God was far more faithful than I could ever have imagined because he showed me over the following months and years just how amazing His grace actually is because he showed me what was wrong in my life, how much of a sinner I actually was despite my naive opinion of myself, and in doing so God's grace truly became amazing to me...just like the hymn.

 

So I don't have a dramatic testimony where Jesus saved me from a drug and drink-befuddled existence, which for me is a blessing because I don't ever want my testimony to be all about me because with that comes a risk because while our stories can be dramatic and powerful, so dramatic that they can draw a big audience, they also run the risk that over time these stories move away from who Jesus is and what he has done for us and start to focus on ourselves and what we have done. Consequently, we are in danger of declaring “God is great because of Me”…when, in fact, “God is great because He is God.”

So, how did it all work out?....you'll have to stick around to find out!