How it happened.

Many folk are brought in the Christian faith but reject it as they grow up. I did not. Here is an outline of how I came to a faith I was to retain. It does not include the various contributions and nudges it received from folk like a milkman Andy Wilson and a scholar like Charles Martin. It also does not include the many touches of grace that God has given me.

As a child of seven, already knowledgeable about the Bible stories and brought up to pray and read the Bible each day I was sent to some children’s meetings at the local Gospel Hall. We were given tracts. I was given “Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment” by George Cutting. It compared life to a railway journey and divided the passengers into three classes, those who knew where they were going, those who did not know and those who did not care. I got my mum to read it to me and in a deep desire for certainty I decided to follow Christ. After such a childlike conversion I was ripe for rebellion. The miracle was that though rebellion threatened it never came. I joyfully took my stand as a believer. At Grammar School. I argued each point with my RE teacher. The threat of rebellion had to wait until my University years.

As a student I contemplated rebellion against what I had accepted in my childhood. I had come against the Judeo-Christian moral code and realised I could not fulfil it. This produced an agony of guilt. If I could not satisfy God I would do away with Him. The trouble was that creation got in the way; not its intricacies and interconnectedness but its existence. Matter required a maker and laws required a law giver. The stone exists and when I throw it into the air it inevitably returns to earth. God had to stay.

The challenges of moral inadequacy developed in my soul throughout my teens. It was a verse in Romans that came to my rescue. Romans 10:13 (AV) “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”. I gave into the God who had given His Son to die an unimaginably horrid death to deal with a man like me. The man endorsed the faith of the child.

Peter M. Grinham 3^rd August 2017