My Testimony, Part One. The first three years.

       One evening in November 1980 my older brother had called saying he had something to tell me and would be returning home for good, he was university student in Edinburgh which is about a hundred and twenty mile away from where our home was, had some really important news for me.
He, being my older and wiser brother, is someone I always looked up to, is always sensible and everything he said always made sense, that sometimes annoyed me back then.
      I was 18 and he was 19, he is 11 months, 3weeks, and 1 day older than me but it felt like he was in his 40s when he spoke so I was a bit puzzled what he had to say.
The next evening as I was sitting in my bedroom when I heard the front door, it was my brother, he came up the stairs and came straight into my room shouting   "REPENT!!!! , THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!"
      I immediately jumped to my feet, screamed "YIKES!!!! ran round my room and ended up looking out the window thinking we've just been nuked, sat on my bed, bowed my head and repented.
It was an evangelist dream when I think back about it, after which he told me the gospel of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, even Billy Graham would think he done that the wrong way round, later that evening our two younger brothers came home and we told them "REPENT!!! THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!" and before that day was out the four of us we're all born again christian.
My youngest was 14 the the next up was 16 then me, 18, and the oldest 19, the only bible we had was an old king James, we knew no other christians and we had practically never been to church.
There was on our high street a CLC bookshop where we purchased our first bibles and we also bought some of these small evangelical pamphlets called tracks, we would hand them out to people and witness to them about Jesus, we ended up buying them in the hundreds and go door to door at night in our neighbourhood.
    After a couple of weeks of becoming christians we set out one sunday to find a church to join, we didn't know what kind of church to look for, there were so many different kinds, we eventually came across this tiny church that from the outside was hard to tell it was a church, in a back street not far from the main high street.
     We were standing at the door of this small building when it opened and we were greeted by three old people who were all in their 70s, they were about to leave because the building was so cold, in that church whole history they had never done that before, cutting their service short because of the cold but when they saw 4 teenage boys standing there and asking if we could join their church they nearly danced about with joy, "We've being praying for 20 years for people to join our church" said one old guy.
We stayed at that church for about three years and every now and then we would bring along a new member we witnessed to that had became a Christian.

Through the Wringer

 This is my First entry and the first thing I would like to say is,,,,, Thank you God.
When I was 18, I became a christian, I repented and accepted Jesus as my saviour.
 After about 10 years or so I backslide but my faith of God never left me nor did He leave me, I went way down a sinful road and turned my back on the christian life.
I stopped going to church and being with other christians, my marriage failed my business failed and everything about my life sucked.
I knew God was there but I didn't follow on His way, most nights I would end the day by saying "forgive me Lord" I knew I wasn't walking the christian life and the next day I would continue my backslide way.
Two and a half years ago I began to buckle at the knees with the weight of my wrong doing in not following Christ as I should have been for the past 15 years, my guilt gripped me when I thought of all my sins.
 I begged God to forgive me and take me home, nothing about my life for the past 15 years had gone right, I just wanted to stop living, I felt so hurt by rejection and I couldn't forgive myself of the hurt that I had cause to others so I begged God to end my life, "Take me home" I would cry all the time and in a constant pain, my life was a mess with bad relationships and not following Gods way.
I got no response to my resignation to life, I even prayed that if you don't get back to me on this God, I will take it as an acceptance of my resignation and do the termination myself.
Looking back at that now I see how selfish that I was as well as everything else that was in my life and in january this year I turned up at my old church having not been there for so long, I began to put my life through the wringer as all my sins surfaced, I was wrecked by the guilt of it all and began the process of forgiving myself.
God forgives in an instance you confess to Him, I'll put myself through the wringer but God won't, He puts all my sins as far east of west, His love for me and everyone else was the gift of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ.
Now all I want to do is shout from the roof tops thanking God.