If you had asked my parents what religion they were and how they had bought up their children they would have said, without hesitation, that they were Christians, and that we, my brothers Gary and Paul, and my sister Carol, and I, had been brought up in the Christian faith, except of course that my parents rarely, if ever, went to church, except for Weddings and Feast Days like Christmas and Easter.
Instead, Sundays were an occasion for my parents to lie in and for us, the children, to be sent to Sunday School, rather than be taken.
I’ve told you the story before of how we were each given sixpence, that 2½ New Pence for the collection, and how we decided to send my sister Carol into Sunday School so that we had One Shilling and Sixpence each week to spend on sweets, for the four of us, every day on the way to school.
My two brothers and I would sit on the wall outside the Sunday School and Carol would brief us on the way home so that we could speak with authority about Sunday School at the Sunday Dinner Table.
Not a particularly auspicious way to start my relationship with my God.
It would be fair to say that at that point I believed in God. But I didn’t take Him seriously, and I knew nothing about Jesus except that the anniversary of His birth was Christmas Day and we got presents, and the anniversary of something else was Easter Sunday and we got chocolate eggs.
Between leaving Sunday School in about 1965 and 1978, for 13 years, I believed that God was some kind of supernatural being and the story told by the German author Eric von Danikin, whose book, ‘Was God an astronaut’ was serialised every week in the Sunday Mirror Newspaper during the 1960’s, fitted that belief perfectly.
By 1978 I had been a soldier for about five years and whilst serving in Northern Ireland I met Lynda. She was already a born again Christian.
Within 7 days of our first meeting I had proposed marriage and she had accepted me, and we set the date for the wedding for one year, to the day that I had proposed, the 31st March 1979.
What I didn’t know, because no one told me until afterwards, was that the minister, Rev’d. Trevor Anderson, was unwilling to marry us unless I became a Christian, and there was a whole crowd of church members who had me on their prayer list.
By November 1978 I had been attending Lynda’s church regularly, whenever my army duties allowed, and I had heard The Gospel message preached repeatedly.
I often sat in our regular pew and spoke to God in my head telling Him what I thought was obvious, that I couldn’t become a Christian because I was a soldier and the two things didn’t go together. One was incompatible with the other.
But, just as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus discovered, we can encounter Jesus in the most unexpected places and at the most unexpected times, and one Saturday evening Lynda and I went out to a nearby town called Ballynahinch for a fish and chip supper. After supper we strolled arm in arm through the town and were met by a girl who was about 17 years old.
She explained that her church was having an outreach event and she invited us back to the church for a cup of tea and some cake. I was on the verge of refusing but Lynda accepted her invitation and so we went.
It’s clear that Lynda was in charge even in those days!
Over a cup of tea, practically the first question out of our new friends mouth was, ”Are you a Christian, do you know The Lord Jesus Christ?”
Lynda was able to answer “Yes” and of course I had to say “No”, and as I tried to explain my spiritual dilemma between being a soldier and being a christian the girl came out with the most amazing statement!
“Did I know”, she said, “that there were many Christians who were also serving soldiers?”
I had no idea, and I said so, and she then listed a good number of Christian soldiers. I can’t remember them all but here are just a few;
St Francis of Assisi
Joan of Arc
Ignatius of Loyola
St George
St Thomas a'becket
All of whom served The Lord whilst still serving as Soldiers in their various armies.
I was awestruck. Not just because of the knowledge of the young lady who had invited us to tea but because of the fact that The Lord had used her to directly answer the question that had been uppermost on my mind for weeks.
Of course, when she invited me to give my life to Jesus, and be saved from the consequences of my sin, there and then on the spot, I still couldn’t bring myself to do it, and it wasn’t until about a week or so later that Lynda and I attended another church event, this time at her church, that I finally surrendered my life to Him.
Every year Lynda’s church held an evangelical outreach event called ‘A Bible Conference’ and in 1978 we attended on the Wednesday and Friday evenings.
On the Friday evening the guest preacher took as his text Revelations 20:11-15;
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
As a soldier in the British Army I had been trained, brainwashed even, to believe that I was on the winning side. But in the sermon that night I discovered that actually, I was not on the winning side after all because my name was not written in The Book Of Life, and on the Final Judgement Day there would be no place for me in heaven, just a second death in the lake of fire.
At the end of the service there was an appeal for anyone to come forward and to give their life to Jesus and be saved, but I still resisted.
The church had been packed with, I am sure, what must have been about 400 people, and Lynda knew just about everyone of them, and everyone had to stop and chat, and so it took a long time for the church to empty. Eventually we went out to our car and I got into the driver's seat and prepared to drive Lynda home, but I just couldn’t do it.
Lynda was very surprised when I insisted we go back into the empty church. We sat at the back. Once I was seated I found that I couldn’t stand up again. It was like I was glued to the spot.
At about the time that Lynda thought of going to get help the door to the vestry at the front of the church openned and Rev’d. Trevor Anderson came out.
He looked at us with no surprise, as if he expected to see us sitting there, “Ah, Mark”, he said, “We’ve just been praying about you. Do you have something to say to us?”
I said that I did and immediately was able to get up from the seat and walk down to the front of the church where I gave my life to Jesus, there and then on the spot.
Hallelujah, Praise The Lord.
You would, of course, expect to encounter Jesus in a church but perhaps not in such an unexpected way or at such an unexpected time.
The following evening was Saturday, and we were at Lynda’s friends house for supper, and it was there that I heard how many people had been praying for me, and how many were rejoicing because I had been saved.
Within a very short period of time I discovered many Christians within the armed services, many in my own unit, who I had never been aware of before.
It’s clear to me now that we will encounter Jesus in the most unlikely of places, and when we least expect to find Him.
In Jesus name, amen.
