Christianity
Ben - His Story
My story of how I came to know Jesus is not a dramatic conversion from a life of hopelessness, nor is it a tale about bliss and earthly prosperity that Christianity has brought me.
Being brought up in a Christian home and having an associate minister for a father means that I have never really been outside the Christian context before – my childhood and teenage years were characterised by the presence of many faithful Christians. I was introduced to church when I was very young, then went to Sunday School and youth group as I got older. With such an emphasis on the Bible and the Christian life, I knew the gospel and it’s saving message from a very young age. However, despite this, it took a real ‘kick in the pants’ for me to actually respond to it.
During 1997, I went through a lot of changes. I had my usual issues with school and friends, but what really shook me up was a time when I became aware that Mum was quite severely chronically ill. Apart from being a huge stress on Dad and the rest of the family, it made me angry to see her suffer like that. My understanding of suffering was pretty limited: we tended to move house a lot, so my family was quite closely-knit, and my existence was pretty insular. I got pretty angry with God because of what I saw as an injustice. If God was a loving and caring God, how could he let someone suffer like that? I asked my youth leader about it, and after he went through a few Bible passages with me, I came to the realisation that while I had all this ‘head knowledge’ accumulated about God, it wasn’t worth anything if it wasn’t translated into a living faith that changed the way I thought and lived. That was when I began to see Jesus’ death and resurrection as a real victory over sin and death, rather than a purely historical event that bore little relevance to me.
My decision to become a Christian was not a magic fix for any of the problems in my life. I still stuff up in God’s eyes, and I struggle with that every day. However, asking God to forgive me of my sin was the best decision I’ve ever made. It means that I’ve changed the way I’ve lived, but it’s also a great comfort to know that the suffering of this world is only temporary. Things are far from perfect, but it’s okay, because I know that things will be perfect when Christ returns.
Catch up with Ben on his blog, tu quoque. You can meet Ben at Sunday Night Church.
