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"I put up my hand and answered that I was certain that God existed but I didn’t think He was interested in me..."
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It was a Religion teacher at school who first got me thinking about spiritual things. I remember her asking us one day how did we know that God existed? I put up my hand and answered that I was certain that God existed but I didn’t think He was interested in me. Thus began my search for God or as I’d later realise His search for me! I started to read the Bible because I found relief there for the anxiety I was experiencing because of studying for the Leaving Cert. Soon after this I went to College in Cork and it was here during my first week that I met some students who were advertising a College Society. They asked me to fill in a questionnaire about religious beliefs. Soon after this they invited me to join with them in a Bible discussion on the Gospel of John. I was interested in doing this Bible discussion because I thought that the questions I had about life and God would be answered there.
It was a couple of months later that the penny began to drop for me. As I studied the Bible and what Jesus taught I realised that I wasn’t a Christian according to His definition of one. This came as quite a shock to me. I thought that what made someone a Christian was Church attendance. Now I realised that what made a true Christian was a person who had accepted the death and resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And not only that but someone who was prepared to surrender control of his or her life to Him. I had never heard such a message before now. What was I to do about this new information? I mulled this over and over in my mind. I recognised the fact that these students who had invited me to the discussion definitely had something that I didn’t have. They had a love for each other that I hadn’t seen in my own experience. They said this love came from God and I believed them. So, for the first time in my life I knew without a doubt that Jesus loved me; I knew that he had died on the cross for my sins. I knew that I was a sinner and that He promised to wipe out all my sins if I gave Him control of my life. I decided to take this leap but found great difficulty actually believing that He would come into my life because I didn’t think I was that important to Him. At last I did believe and invite Jesus to come into my life and when I did I had such peace. I knew that he had heard me and that I had done real business with my God.
There were immediate changes – I remember going outside and looking at the trees and the sky, they all looked sharper and more real. Immediately I began to tell my older sister that I was sharing a flat with about my new relationship with Jesus. She thought that I’d gone mad! But after further conversations she listened to me. Shortly afterwards she came on a Christian Weekend I invited her to. It was during one of the teaching messages that my sister made a decision to become a Christian. I was overjoyed for her. My parents were initially worried that we had joined some sort of a cult, but when they met some of our Christian friends they were reassured.
Some people say that when they become Christians all their problems disappear. This wasn’t true for me; I found that all the hurts and problems that I had buried began to surface. This was difficult for me because I had to face issues that I had previously ignored. Over the years my Heavenly Father has given me many Christian friends to help. I have found great healing from my Heavenly Father for many of the problems I’ve had too. One problem I had was to do with over-eating –“Weight Watchers”, trying to cut down on the food myself, none of it worked! The more I tried the more I failed. I began to read a book about other Christian women who struggled with this area. God used this book to help me and He answered my many prayers to set me free from over-eating and being over-weight. I began to eat three healthy meals a day with no overeating and I began to lose weight. I reached a healthy weight for my height and found great freedom and enjoyment in shopping for clothes and not worrying about how overweight I looked any more.
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One other thing that I remember when I first became a Christian was that I had this new love for other people that I’d never had before. I also had a new interest in others and I began to share my faith with many of my family and friends. I knew at this time that I had become a friend of God and that if I died that night I would be certain of going to heaven. This wasn’t at all because I thought I was any better than anyone else but was because Jesus had paid the full price for all my sins.
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Today it’s over twenty years since I first gave my life to Jesus and I’m so glad that He found me and that He helped me to believe in Him and trust Him with my life. He’s been really good to me.
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