With the passing away of my mother last week there is always the temptation to use the Blog for an outpouring of mawkish grief . However, I hope the account below of how my Mum came to faith (written in April 2005) will be both be an encouragement to readers and honouring to her memory.
Mum started attending Greenview Family Services in August 2004 and then attended the Alpha course in Autumn that year. She admitted being quite defensive about being on the course at the beginning but warmed to it and found it challenging to her. She spoke of how she had felt a great peace since coming to Greenview and that her previous anxieties about life (so afflicted with ill-health) had receded.
On one occasion the Alpha talk used the illustration of Christ knocking at the door – and how the handle was on the inside, i.e. it was up to us to open the door to Him. She said at the following discussion that she ‘felt that she didn’t have a handle’ and didn’t know how to receive all the things other Christians spoke of. It was suggested that she should pray about this and ask that God would show her ‘the handle’ – to which she replied she couldn’t pray, she didn’t know how to. The course ended but it was clear that her attitude to Christianity has softened and she was much more open to the gospel.
In January 2005 she attended the Alpha course again, saying she hoped to get much more out of it this time. On the previous course she had bought a Bible and on this course bought some daily reading notes to use. I asked her, about half way through the course, if she had been using the Bible notes – she replied ‘not really, I don’t read much at all these days’. I then asked about prayer, if she had managed to pray especially as it had been something she felt she couldn’t do previously. She replied, ‘Yes, I pray all the time, thanking God for all the good things He’s given me’. I then asked how she would feel about praying for something such as forgiveness. She replied, ‘Oh I have, I asked God to forgive me for being so hostile to Him all my life’. I said that was great and it sounded like she was ‘almost there’. She said she was still ‘a bit hesitant’.
In the Alpha Away Day discussion group someone asked how you become a member of Greenview. I said that the basic requirement was that you needed to be a Christian. Mum then asked ‘How do you become a Christian?’. Taking a deep breath I explained (again!) that it was simply to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and to trust that through His death on the Cross your sins can be forgiven and that you are accepted into God’s family. I added, it’s a prayer like the one in the booklet I used at the Family Service recently. On the way home I asked her if she thought she could become ‘a church member’ on the basis of what was said. She said she did believe in God and that it had given her a real sense of peace. I asked where Jesus fitted into all this as He had to be at the centre of what she believed to be real Christian. She said she would think more about it.
The following week (in April 2005), after Alpha she asked me for a copy of the booklet with ‘the prayer’ in it, which I got and she took home. The week after that, I asked if she had looked at the booklet and if she been able to pray the prayer. ‘Oh, I’ve prayed it every day, it sits beside my chair’, she answered. ‘You know that makes you a Christian’, I said. ‘Yes, I suppose so’, she replied.
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