A WEE PEEK – “…He had to remove those limiting traits in my own character to ever move us on to our calling in life, but more than that, he’d brought us to our promised land…”
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Entering the Promised Land
PERSONAL TESTIMONY SERIES
The second operation had gone really well and the doctors thought that it would be a three-month recovery, but I was ready for work in two. It was a bit of a stupid idea to go back earlier than I should have, but I just wanted to get our lives back and move forward. Those recovery months were absolutely great, like a long relief after a long hard season. Little did we know though, that God had much bigger plans for myself and Sharon and he hadn’t forgotten his purposes.
After having been away from our home church for a year, due to the illness, a new senior pastor arrived. This caused the assembly some problems, but it was clear from the outside, that this individual had been called to our area. For the sake of those involved, I wouldn’t elaborate on this one, but basically, we received a letter through the post asking us for a meet. So, we responded in kind and asked him round for a coffee.
He realized quite quickly that the season we’d been through had been extreme and that he understood completely, that we had to focus on family and getting better. So we had a great chat and I felt completely at ease with this new pastor coming to town. So I shared with him the studies I’d gone through during my years of illness and one in particular caught his attention. It was the teachings of the basics of Christianity and as I explained the structure and the details, he just said to me, you have to preach this stuff.
At this point, I’d never really preached to a large audience, far less a twelve-part public teaching season. However, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Before long, I was booked in for the beginning of the following February, to teach and preach for twelve Sunday nights. This gave me enough time to recover fully and prepare for this mammoth teaching season. The funny thing was, I had no fear of preaching, in fact, I was hugely excited and I’d never experienced these feelings before. There was a reason though. If God hadn’t straightened out my life, dealing with issues like pride and fear, I would never have had the confidence to step up and do something so huge. The teaching season was a huge success and moved us into the position of taking on the role of youth and young adult pastors of the church and ministry life just got better from there. But again, I looked back and I could see that although we’d been through a tough four years, that it had been worth it. All those difficult times and late nights studying his word had paid off in a big way.
Hopefully what’s seen through this major breakthrough, is that God always does what he promises and when he says he will transform a person’s life, he means it. He had to remove those limiting traits in my own character to ever move us on to our calling in life, but more than that, he’d brought us to our promised land. In this promised land, everything snowballed and I was literally doing this and taking on projects that I couldn’t have dreamt of before. If someone had said to me in 2002, when I first came back to God, that I’d be pastoring, preaching and operating an online ministry, I’m pretty sure I would have laughed!