My Testimony

by Julie Edmond

I was born in Aldershot, "down South" in 1965, and I have spent most of my life in a village outside Doncaster. Six years ago my parents moved to a place called Immingham, which is in South Humberside. I went away to university in Birmingham to study French and maths. As a young person I had always thought there was a God, but I wasn't all that concerned and I was never involved in a church. After two years at university my thoughts turned once more to God and the meaning of life. If there was a God, how could we reach Him? I remember praying and asking if I should go to church, but did nothing about it.

When I came to Immingham for the Summer in 1986, I was working with a girl from Grimsby who invited me to go to church with her. I didn't go, but it reawakened my thoughts and I went to the Methodist church, called Trinity, the next Sunday. I was a bit nervous, wondering how people would react to me just coming for a look, and whether they would class me as a "sinner" because I had never been before. It wasn't anything like that. I didn't understand much of the service - it was all a bit over my head - but people were nice to me and talked to me. I thought maybe that if I was confirmed I'd reach God, and so asked about it on the way out, and was invited along to a meeting that evening. I thought I'd better go if I was really looking for God - I might find Him there.

I found it more informal than the service. People talked on a normal and relaxed way about God and Jesus, as if they knew them. When they sang about loving God, you could see and feel that they meant it. I knew that I didn't know God, because I didn't know him. I saw that it was possible to know him and in my heart I told him that I wanted to.

After that night I learnt the truth about God. I'd heard it before, but I'd never understood that it was my sin which separated me from God, nor that Jesus had died to remove that sin so that I could approach God freely. All that I had to do was to ask Jesus to forgive my past and come and live in me so that I could start a new life with God. Once I'd done that, things clicked into place, I began to understand what was said in church and the words of the hymns we sang.

I had become a Christian, but I tried to continue my life in my own way, and fit God in where it suited me. Two years later after a lot of stubbornness on my part, and a few months separation from God, I came to realise that God wanted all of my life, or none of it. That meant giving things up - giving up my free will to do His will. It was a painful decision to make (I had to give up a long-standing relationship which was taking me away from God) but God helped me through it. At that point I realised that God had an individual plan for me, and I had to find out what He wanted to do with my life now it belonged to Him. The seed of service for God was planted then, and gradually grew stronger as I allowed God to speak to my heart. Verses from the bible seemed to apply directly to me, and an inner conviction came that He was calling me to give up my proposed career to serve Him full-time. The next step was to find out how, and God guided me all the way.

At the time this was published, Julie had become a full-time member of Horizons, which has the mission to establish local churches in neglected and unreached communities of the world. This includes "closed" and "restricted" countries.

All articles are (c) their respective authors, and appeared in, or were submitted for the Christian Friendship magazine published in Immingham, England, 1989-1990.
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