Real Life Stories
Julian Haddow
Setting the scene
I had the joy and privilege to live in Austria from the age of 7. I lived in Tyrol with all its affluence and tourism. Many of my school friends had hotels or B&Bs in the family which they would one day inherit. With that in mind many of them went to school, studied gastronomy and in a slightly morbid way just had to wait for their inheritance to kick in.
Austrians are a fun loving, hard working, party people, with much of the time spent entertaining the tourists. As a teenager I joined in this party lifestyle, the tourists want a good time whilst on holiday and we knew how to show them one. By the age of 15 I had dabbled with many drugs and started drinking almost daily up to the age of 17.
I was training to be an indoor design cabinet maker at the time, but along with some of my colleagues, the regular drug taking and drinking made the company go bankrupt. By this point I was making some money from the occasional drug deal with contacts in different countries, so the unemployment didn’t hit me too hard.
Crunch time
There was one problem with this lifestyle, it was empty and pointless and I knew different.
My dad, you see, was a missionary and had brought me up in a Christian environment. At the age of 9 I had made a simple, but never the less real commitment to following Jesus. But I was knowingly choosing to live life my way and not in a way that would please God.
I should have known better, but God caught my attention loud and clear when I was 18. He convicted me of the wrong of living a self centred life, whilst ignoring my loving creator.
The difference knowing Jesus has made
- the willingness to leave my old lifestyle of drug taking
- moving away from the temptations of my old lifestyle and living in a new area
- joining and becoming an active member of a church
- it made me want to find out how I could help others
- it made me eventually move back to England
- I had a desire to work full time of Jesus
- it made me become a missionary in 2002
- it taught me the importance of marriage
- it changed my life and gives me joy and meaning
- it gave me eternity to look forward to
Ian McCaffrey
“Sometimes you need to be rescued from a storm. And sometimes the storm rescues you.”
I spent a large part of my life as someone who considered themselves to be vaguely Christian. I can’t say I thought about Jesus much, but if you’d asked me I would have said that he seemed like a good man – a wise teacher who had said many commendable things. And while I rarely went to church, I still liked the idea of sending my kids to a nice church school like Aldrington. And that was probably about it.
That complacency was shattered on the night our twins were born in 2005. They arrived three months premature after a difficult pregnancy. Max weighed just over one pound and Lily three pounds. A few hours later Max’s lung collapsed.
As doctors fought to save him, I did what many people do in desperate times. I got down on my knees and prayed. Max eventually pulled through and after two more months of highs and lows the twins were finally well enough to come home.
My prayers had been answered. And something inside me had changed. When the twins were a year or so old we started coming to BH. After a while I joined a Christianity Explored course to find out more about Jesus. It wasn’t what I expected. For starters, the Bible seemed to be full of people either moaning about God, or just plain ignoring Him. In other words, people just like me. And yet it said that God still loved them. And that Jesus connected us to God.
I’m paid for a living to look for truth in stories. For me, suddenly, truth seemed to pour out of the Bible.
Adam. Eve. Apple. Temptation. It struck me the stories were true then and they’re true now. Temptation happened then and it happens now every day in our own lives.
A teaching about Jonah has stayed with me. Here was a man so determined to ignore God that he got on a boat to go in the opposite direction to where God wanted him to go. It was only when the boat was being tossed about in a storm that Jonah came to his senses. It showed me that sometimes you need to be rescued from a storm. And sometimes the storm rescues you. My storm happened when the twins were born. Two-and-a-half years later, one Sunday here at BH, up in the balcony, I put my trust in Jesus properly for the first time.
Mark Whiffin
I’m Mark Whiffin, married to Wendy, and we have two girls, Abi and Emily. I’m originally from Guildford (as is Wendy) and we moved to Hove about 16 years ago, after we had got married.
I was born into a Christian family and went to church each week, but didn’t have a personal faith until after a school trip to France aged 12. Bizarrely, and I don’t think it had any relation to what happened next, we (from a boys school) were staying in some accommodation in a convent near Rouen (I’m still not sure how we ended up staying there!)
Anyway, some friends from school had become Christians at a summer camp, and on that trip held a meeting one evening, where they talked about their new found faith. I had gone along being been pretty skeptical, thinking I knew it all from my church background, but that evening felt a real sense of God’s presence, the sin in my life and realising there was more to it than “just” going to church or just being a ‘good’ person. That night I said sorry to God for those sins, asked Jesus to be in my life and committed to trying to follow him.
I work in a public sector organisation, which is probably like a lot of other organisations in the public sector, where a lot of people are there to “do good”, so at one level its hard to stand out. However, I do try and think WWJD, (What Would Jesus Do?), and show that I am not relying on my own strength but his. Work is always v busy, and there is very little time for chatting, but I try to make an effort to show a caring side for people as well.
One part of the Bible that was read at our wedding was from Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Its not always easy to do this, but I have found, since that evening in France, that God really does sort things out for you it might not be the way you wanted or imagined it, but it will always be for the best check out Romans 8:28 as well! (And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him)
Tim Lambert
Just over 10 years ago I was engaged to my future wife and in the process of hunting for a Church in which we could get married. At the time I had little interest in God, in my mind I had decided what he was like, and really had him down as just a rule maker. I decided that his rules were too hard to for me, so I came up with a set of my own that seemed more reasonable and hoped that if I ever had to answer to him I might just scrape by and get his approval. On the whole I was happy and content with my life the way it was.
After a tour of several different churches we we’re surprised to find one that was a bit different, the people were warm, friendly and genuine. We ended up returning a few times and then accepted an offer to attend some sessions to find out what Christianity was all about.
My main memory of that time is not the sessions we attended but what happened afterwards. I needed some advice and decided to ask the leader of the sessions we had attended, he seemed trustworthy and reliable. I remember sitting in his living room and asking him for the advice. He looked at me and said something like ok but can I just ask if you believe that Jesus died on the Cross in your place and returned to life so that you can have a right relationship with God, do you believe that? we sat there in silence for what seemed like a long time. I thought about Jesus and what I had learned about him, it’s probably summed up best by a verse from the Bible 1 Peter 3: 18 “Christ died for sins once for all the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” At that moment I realised I did believe it – the life of Jesus his death on the cross and God in control.
Since that time I have been a follower of Jesus and I can honestly say without reservation that it was absolutely the most important and best event of my whole life, a real turning point. Before, I had rejected God’s rule and turned away from him, now I had accepted the forgiveness won by Jesus and had turned round to live in a right relationship with God. Since that time little by little I have been changed, I believe by the work of God’s spirit in me. Before, my main aim in life was happiness and contentment, my main aim now is to follow Jesus that means I want to learn from him, to understand what he taught, to try to be like him. Before I might have prayed if I was in real trouble now it’s the first thing I want to do before I get up in the morning and generally continues on and off throughout the day. That change in me doesn’t mean life is always easy, or that life always feels good, or that I get it right all the time, far from it and it doesn’t mean that I’m now trying to earn favour with God. The change in me is due to God’s work in me now that I have given my life to him. When I get it wrong every week, every day, ever hour I know that I am forgiven not because I’m better, not because I deserve to be but because Jesus died for me.
As I look forward to the rest of my life, I know that the best thing is to stay close to God to keep following Jesus. There is another verse from the Bible that really encourages me in doing that, it shows me that it’s not all down to me. So I want to leave you with that verse now maybe even as a challenge for you – James 4 verse 8 “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you”.
Steve Funnell
I have been going to church since I was two years old, and therefore have been hearing about Jesus since then. I went to Sunday school & Boys Brigade, but I guess at that time the reality of Jesus just hadn’t sunk in.
In my teens, I went through a period when life in general was getting on top of me. With the pressures of working, college and exams, I felt somewhat isolated and unable to cope.
One summer, I went off to the annual Boys Brigade camp at Glynde. One evening when everything had calmed down, I sat outside my tent. It was a clear night, the stars were shining and I thought about the beauty all around & how peaceful it all was.
As I reflected on the day’s events and the Bible reading we had looked at earlier from Philippians Chapter 4 which said, we should not be anxious about anything, but take it to God & He will meet all our needs, I came to the conclusion that the world could not have been an accident, but had been carefully & lovingly created in every minute detail by God.
An overwhelming sense of peace and a realisation that all I had been told about Jesus being the son of God and that he came to earth to die on a cross for my sins, enabled me there and then to ask Him into my life.
What now? Well, I was less troubled than I had been for some time and although I was quite settled at the church I attended, events caused me to move on. As I walked through the door of the new church for the first time, I was greeted by a lovely young lady called Jacquie, who some years later became my wife. God was already answering my prayers! We’ve been married now for nearly 30 years and have two lovely children & two adorable grandchildren.
When our son Matt was three, he was diagnosed as having kidney stones. Doctors at the time were unsure how to treat him as no one so young had ever had the problem. All known treatments were for adults. We and the church family prayed, we saw a miraculous improvement and upon our return to hospital, it was revealed that the stones had gone. The doctors could not explain it, but Jacquie & I looked at each other and said we can, God has answered our prayers.
Over the years there have been many difficult times as well as good, but as I look back I can see God at work and thank Him for answering our prayers.
In my daily living, I find it very difficult to live up to God’s high standards and I know I am constantly letting people around me down but more importantly letting God down.
But the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 11, Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what we cannot see. I am thankful to God that as I use the gifts he’s given me and seek to serve him; He never gives up on me, even when I struggle to live up to his standards.
I know from studying his word & personal experience that when He is at the centre of my life and I put my faith and trust in Him, He graciously provides me with all I need to cope with my responsibilities at home and at work and I have that great assurance that my future is secure with him in Heaven.
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