And my uncle died. Well he was my great uncle actually and I was really close with him. It was such a shock to me, because my uncle was in my prayers all the time. I was praying as a child. I couldn’t really understand it properly, but I still had no bitterness against the Lord. I still kept on praying for all the other family. And then, I just remembered then starting secondary school. And as I entered secondary school suddenly like things come in like the word of God says you know. Things come in and they snatch the word away from you. Still at this point I didn’t even know what the gospel was. They were snatching what ever bit of truth I had away.
Friends were coming in and just being in the secondary school. Just so many things, so many things. And the friends that I had were also in the exactly same situation as me. Never had any Christian up bringing, nothing. And I just didn’t fully understand. And then it was like I almost became embarrassed before them to think that I’d even think of Jesus Christ or that there is a God. Obviously then, as you go through secondary school, and evolution comes in. And from the television, from secondary school, from all walks of life. You cant get away from it. And suddenly it was almost like, “Yeah, of course there’s no God.” You know I actually like, you know would. I remember a teacher at secondary school saying: “Who in hear believes in God?” And I remember looking around thinking nobody’s going to put their hand up. I remember this one girl called Jennifer Clegg put her hand up and she must of been so afraid. She put her hand up and I just thought, “Wow, you know, how silly, how silly you know.” And I remember him saying: “So I take it then everybody else is an atheist”, and every body was like so quick to put their hands up. Like it’s some big bragging thing. “Oh yes, of course, I’m an Atheist!” And basically, so that’s where I was for my secondary school.
And then obviously, my life reflected that, because “There isn’t a God.” “I’m not accountable to anybody. What does it matter.” I’m not saying that I was a horrible out and out person. Then at the same time, through my years growing up I wouldn’t even speak of the things that happened in those years. It would be a shame.
And then I met Kevin. We were very young and, and our lives really together were just… your normal, relationship of the world really. “You know, you don’t really have to get married.” “You know, you can still do what you really want to do.” “You know, you don’t have to make a commitment.” And then we got engaged, and we were engaged for like 10 years you know. (Sarcasim)
And then I got pregnant with Dylan, who’s my oldest son. And life really began to change… We had a baby on the way, we weren’t married. and just I think life really sank in. That we were soon to be parents and have responsibility. And then we had a terrible time and we actually… we split up.
And then when I had Dylan. (Crying) Sorry. When I had Dylan we just, I think Dylan was about two, no, no, he would’ve been about six months old. And I remember just wanting to run away from life and just wanting to get away from everything really, to be honest. And then Kevin – one morning, I woke up, and he just wasn’t there. I was in this house at the time, because we moved in when I had Dylan. This was like six months down the line. He wasn’t there, and I thought, “Where’s he gone? Where’s he gone?” And to be honest with you I thought, “He’s gone, he’s left.” “You know he’s had enough, He’s left.” And then he came back around about dinner time, and I said “Where’ve have you been?! Where’ve you been?!”
And he said “I don’t know I just woke up this morning and I felt the Lord.” Well he didn’t say “I felt the Lord.” but he just said “I felt like I had to go to church.” And it was the local Anglican church. I remember thinking, “Church?” “What’s he going to church for, this is crazy!” “You know, who goes to church nowadays?”
And he started going there every Sunday and he was coming back and the Lord was just driving him to go to church. And Kevin wasn’t converted at this point. He then started to take me along because everybody was saying to him, “Oh bring your girlfriend and your son.” You know – “Why are they not coming?” So I started coming along with Kevin. And I remember going there to the Anglican church, and I just, I remember thinking “This is just like taking me back into the past.” All these memories coming back.
Of like being at school, in the church, and with my grandma. And I remember I started singing songs and things. And I don’t know… Something within me that started to light again in a sense. I still didn’t know the truth; I still didn’t know the gospel, But there was something there you know Some kind of, the Lord doing some kind of work.
I guess I was there for seven years and then after those seven years, one day. You’ve probably heard Kevin’s testimony. I don’t know. One day Kevin was in the garden. And I remember that day he came in the house and he couldn’t keep still. He was walking around. We didn’t know what being born again was that day. We didn’t know. But from that day onward Kevin just changed. He just completely changed, but then you see rather than making it kind of, making everything ok.
It was then even harder of a battle for me because I thought, “What’s going on? What’s going on?” And then all Kevin could do was just read his bible all the time. He’d go to every meeting at the Anglican church he wouldn’t miss one. And then he started writing magazine articles. He just had this passion for God. But then I started to read the bible. And rather than sort of like read it to find truth, I was reading it to find fault. And every time I found something in the bible that really just aggravated me. For instance, when Jesus says you know “to pluck out your eye,” and “to cut off your right hand” and I’d picked these text out and I’d be like “Oh this is ridiculous.” “How can people do this?” “That’s just nonsense.” Anything I could grab hold of I would… I’d start trying to almost tear Kevin’s faith down and almost tried to. I just didn’t want the bible.
And then anyway I remember as well then, Kevin then went to Calvary Chapel Church and I met some lovely people there. But what I started to do because the people were so nice and so lovely. I started to try to fit in. Which is the worst thing anybody can ever do. Never try and fit in, if you know your not right with God, never try and fit in. It’s the worst thing you can do. So then because I was trying to fit in, I was trying to convince myself that I actually knew the Lord. You know, I was trying to convince myself, so then… because everybody was so lovely, so caring and I would read my bible… and I’d read it but I wouldn’t read it… I wouldn’t read it with an honest truth of trying to see what God wanted for my life. I’d read it, without really believing as well, the promises of God, and what I was reading.
Another example as well I was just thinking of is when, I was ashamed as well, because I remember going be with family and friends and I’d always think, “Oh no Kevin please don’t start talking about the Lord; please not here”. “Don’t start talking about the Lord, please not here”. And I couldn’t relax for fear that Kevin might actually tell somebody. You know about the Lord. and I remember even in the car, we would even have music on sometimes and maybe we’d have like the window down and I think other people could hear the Christian music being played I wanted to like close the windows. It really was just… yea it was almost like I was embarrased.
And then from that, I’ll kind of move on a bit as well. And Kevin got asked if he could go pastor a church in Fleetwood. And we went there and at this point again I just thought I knew the Lord. I felt I had really grown and I gained so much knowledge. I would convince myself that I was fine with the Lord. I had absolutely convinced myself that I was fine with the Lord. Anyway, our time in Fleetwood was a lovely time, and again when Kevin started to touch on the gospel, and one of his sermons on being born again, there was so many people that were so angry. because Kevin had preached you must be born again. The amazing thing was that the actual sermon even angered me a bit. I remember going home thinking and I said to Kevin, “You can’t preach like that, this is an Anglican church, you can’t preach like that.” “Telling people they must be born again; look at all the people you’ve offended. That’s the end now.” I was no better than them, but at the time I still didn’t know that I was like them, I thought I knew God.
And rather than support Kevin; all I did was pull Kevin down. I just pulled him down, and pulled him down. I was not what a godly wife at all. I was terrible.
And then I remember actually going to the bathroom at Fleetwood, and I remember getting down on the floor and I even said to the Lord, and it was the first time really that I’d kinda of like, come to God knowing, I had no where else to go, I had to come, because it really was desprerate time for us in these times. And I remember getting on the bathroom floor and just saying, “Lord, where? What’s happening? What’s going on,? We’re in this church” “And I think the people just want us to go.” “Where are we going? What are we supposed to be do?” And the Scripture even came to me, where the Lord Jesus said, “the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests…” “but the Son of Man had no where to lay His head.” I just think, the mercy of God because He could even speak to me then. When I was miles away from it, you know the grace of God, the mercy of God. And I just got up off the floor and it was like an answer, and I just knew from that point we weren’t staying. You know we didn’t even have to wait for what the people had to say. It was like the Lord had told us we were going, you know.
So anyway, this was in 2009. In Christmas 2009 we came back. And then after we came back then, because I had set all my hopes up on Kevin kind of having this church, and we were gonna have this lovely man’s house to live in, you know. and a lovely church and I had all this fairy-tale nonsense in my head really. and the Lord, it’s like He just swept the rug from under my feet. all my hopes and all my dreams just gone. So we came back to this house, and I just fell into complete depression. Complete and utter depression because… I didn’t know where I was anymore, I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing anymore. My life was just… I was just constantly depressed all of the time. I would be moping around, and then I was even reading a book by Martyn-Lloyd Jones called, “Spiritual Depression.” And it actually helped.
So I started to seek God a bit more earnestly. Well then, it was 2009 it’ll be, and it was the ninth of March, and it was a monday morning. And I sat in that corner where Evelyn sat now in the bible study. I just, I was just really, really down and the night before, I was reading in Romans and I wasn’t reading Romans chapter 10. I was actually reading Romans chapter 11. Where basically Paul talks about the vine and if we being grafted in, how much more should we live for Christ. But that had like, it wasn’t doing anything, my mind was kind of all over the place. Then my eyes jumped to Romans chapter 10, verse 13. And I’ve heard it said it’s like sometimes when your reading the bible, you have 3-D glasses on and the Scripture just jumps out at you. This is what happened, I just saw Scripture that said, “for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.” And that night I went to bed crying over that Scripture. I said, “Lord, Your word says ‘for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.'” I said, “Lord, I don’t know if your true, I don’t know if Your real, but Your word says this.” I said, “Lord, you’ve got to save me!” And that night I was like this, just crying, and burdened and the weight I can’t describe to you. This weight I had on me. Like I said I sat where Evelyn sat now. But now on the following morning, I just said “God, I cannot go on like this, I asked you last night.” “Your word says, ‘for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.’ I feel no different.” So I got up from there and I went into the kitchen, And I just poured my heart out to God. Absolutely everything. Any kind of anger I had towards people, family, friends, Kevin even. Just everything just came out. Absolutely everything that was on my heart just came out to God. It was just everything: just all the times I would feel sorry for myself, all of my sin came out.
And then, as I was just pouring out everything to God, suddenly it was like… I can’t even describe it. It was like the Lord just sort of like… I don’t know. It was like when your pulling off a shirt and it’s inside out, the Lord did that to me. And He showed me myself, and for the first time in my life, the things I saw, that the Lord revealed to me that morning was absolutely disgusting. I’d never seen such a vile person, and I just broke down. Cause I was just such a vile person and the Lord had truly shown me my sin. and then all of a sudden, it was like… I can’t describe it really. It was almost like a vision.
Like of the cross and it’s almost like I saw the Lord Jesus on the cross. It was like, for the first time in my life, I saw I was a sinner. And I saw that the Lord Jesus Christ actually died for me, for my sins. For the very first time in my life. And it absolutely broke me. It broke me and I just… I just came to the Lord; I was like, “Lord forgive me; how dare I say this about these people.” “How dare I say that about my husband, how dare I say…”
And then after that, it was like… You when the Lord was baptizing it says that the Spirit of God descended like a dove. It’s all I can describe it. It was like the Spirit of God… It was like this peace, an absolute peace, and all this burden that I was carrying around with me from life, it just… it was like, lifted. It was gone. It was like John Bunyan, in “A Pilgrim’s Progress” and he’s got this big backpack on his back, and suddenly he just drops the backpack off, it was like that. it was like, I was free, and for the first time in my life was it was like, I was absolutely exstatic… it was wonderful. and I was just like bounding, it was like the sun suddenly just came up and it was shiny through the window in the kitchen. It was like, “Wow, I’m free”; “He’s forgiven me, the Lord Jesus has forgiven me.” And I just came bounding out the kitchen jumping about and everything and I ran up the stairs.
As I got to the top of the stairs, I was like thinking, “I can’t tell Kevin!” “That the Lord saved me, can I? He thinks that I’m already saved.” But I couldn’t. I had to go bounding in the bedroom and Kevin was just reading his bible. And I’m like, “Kevin, the Lord saved me, the Lord saved me, the Lord saved me.” And Kevin’s like completely speechless and he didn’t know what to say cause I was just full of it. And he couldn’t stop me and I was rambling on. I was just so excited. and then I just started smiling and he was laughing and the children came in… I came back downstairs, and I don’t know. The rest of that day was just amazing for me. It was absolutely amazing and it was just wonderful.
I remember me mom came over that same day. I told her what had happened. And she was trying to explain all the way you know. “Well, you just poured out your heart you know. ” “You feel better really. You know. You’ve had a good cry.” “But everybody feels better you know.” I was like “Oh no!” I was like mommy your just not understanding it. And I remember she was going and I went to give her a hug. But this feeling I got as I went to give her a hug. It was like… Like weight when I went to give her a hug. It was weight. It was the Lord telling me “Your mom doesn’t know me.” “Your mom doesn’t know me and you know where she’s going now.” And it was like there was greif over my mom’s soul.
And I just wished that that weight sometimes would come back, you know, for the lost. Because I feel sometimes I feel like I do the Lord a disfavor. Because I feel like I don’t do enough you know. I should be. Sometimes I feel like I should be going to family and sitting down with family. One by one and maybe that’s what the Lord’s telling me to do even now. So that was the day that I came to the Lord.
And I do remember though the week after that, I actually sort of started to lose that like kind of being up here with the Lord you know. Because I neglected reading the Bible. Because I was living on a spiritual high. It was almost like, “I don’t need the word now.” But then I remember the song… I had went to a funeral that week. It was my uncles and it was the song like, “Do not be afraid for I have redeemed thee.” “I have called you by your name you are Mine.” And I didn’t have a clue that was Isaiah. (Book from the bible) And it was only when a friend told me that it was Isaiah and I read that Scripture, and I just hold on to that now. “I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You’re Mine.” That’s my, you know, my Scripture now, forever. And the other one is of course as well, “That whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
And I just wanted to make sure that you know… Anybody here as well who may feel they don’t know God, again just read the word of God. Believe what it says and ask what it tells you to. Anybody. That’s my testimony anyways.
