Living Outside The Box - The Church Comes Home

In June 1977 something happened that would change my life forever. At that time I had little or no interest in God, in fact I came from a non-Christian background my dad was quite anti-religion. Then I met some one who would change my life in two very important ways, firstly she later became my wife, and secondly she introduced me to people who knew God in a way that I never thought possible.

I was 18 years old in 1977, and Janice was just coming up to her 16th birthday. Right from the start I knew that she was different from any of the other girls that I had dated. I can remember days after first meeting her confiding in a friend that I thought we would spend the rest of our lives together. Unlike me Janice came from a church going family and was a member of the local Methodist church. She was quite active in it and taught Sunday school and she sang in the choir. She also attended the church youth club every Friday and I started to attend with her.

The youth club was like most other youth clubs I had seen except for one thing. In the middle of the meeting one of the leaders would share something from the bible, this time was known as the God Spot. I used to try to avoid the God Spot because it made me feel uncomfortable, and I thought that anything to do with the bible was un-cool! In fact church completely turned me off! The little bit of experience that I had of church told me that it was boring, out of touch, old fashioned and full of old people. Not exactly attractive to an 18 year old lad! My mates and I would often hangout in a local park that was behind a church. We often heard the hymn singing and would mock them. The songs were just so boring! I was more interested in getting drunk, girls, and listening to heavy rock than I was in God. There were odd moments in my life when I thought about what life was about and whether God really existed, but I soon shut those thoughts out. After all church seemed so un-cool and made God look boring! So enduring the God Spot was not for me. If I was unfortunate enough to turn up when it was happening, I usually made sure that I was mildly drunk!

Drinking had become quite an important part of my life. I was a very shy young man, and found meeting people quite difficult. But I found that after having a few drinks my shyness left. I was drinking more, and more frequently. In fact I was getting to a point were I was drunk most nights. I enjoyed the buzz that alcohol gave me.

It was a few months after meeting Janice that the net started to be drawn in. The church youth club started to hold meetings in someone's house every Sunday evening. Here they would discuss what Christianity was all about. I started to go to these meetings with Janice. I felt quite comfortable going to them mainly because they were in a home rather then in a church building (I wouldn't have wanted my friends to have seen me entering one of those things!), I also enjoyed debating, particularly after a few drinks. This was the beginning of the end of my old life. Attending these meetings opened my eyes to a way of life I could never of dreamed of.

The Sunday evening meetings continued for some months. They were much more informal than expected. The living room was usually full to bursting, with people sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs. There was some singing, but they were modern songs led by a guitarist. I was very impressed by the Christians that took the meetings. They weren't afraid to try and answer some of the hard questions that we put to them. They seemed to have a quality in their life that I hadn't seen before. They also appeared to really love me. No one challenged me about my drinking and smoking. They just seem to love me as I was.

It wasn't until the final meeting of this group that I was captured by His love. Someone was sharing about how they had a personal relationship with Jesus and how he was with them all of the time. Their eyes glowed when they talked about Him and I could see that it was very real to them. Now, I had always been quite lonely as well as shy, and the idea that I could have a relationship with a Being who loved me unconditionally was very appealing. At the end of the meeting the leader asked anyone who wanted to be prayed for to have a deeper relationship with Jesus to stay.
Janice stayed and I stayed with her. As she was being prayed for I prayed along too, secretly. As I prayed I felt an overwhelming sense of God's love for me. I suddenly felt clean inside. I knew that I had been changed! I couldn't explain it but I knew that it had happened. I have never been the same since.

When a person finally surrenders their life to Jesus, change is inevitable. They get a new nature with new desires and needs. This is not to say that everything that is wrong with them goes away in an instant, some things do, but others take time often with many successes and setbacks. What does happen is that the whole of their lives is re-orientated.

It is this new desire to want to please God that brings about changes in the life of the new believer. To be sure, some things change instantaneously, for me it was the sin of blasphemy. Before I became a Christian I was always blaspheming. This stopped over night. Whenever I went to blaspheme it was like a bad taste in my mouth. Whereas before I would do it without even thinking, now it would take a real effort. This was indeed a miracle.

As a new Christian, I was still doing many things that were not in keeping with my new life. I was still drinking heavily, smoking and other things that I would rather not talk about here. I wanted to change but I knew that I couldn't. I would resolve not to do something anymore but found that I gave in as soon as temptation came my way. I suoght the help of an older Christian and his advice was probably the best advice that I could have been given. He told me to concentrate on developing my relationship with Jesus, to spend time worshipping him, praying and reading the scriptures,and to confess my sin when I failed. He reminded me that the reason Jesus died was because we are powerless to overcome sin. Overcoming sin is something that he does in us through our relationship with him. He is able to maintain a relationship with us through the price that he paid on the cross. We confess, he forgives, the relationship is restored and the healing process can continue. The natural response to guilt is to hide from God (remember how Adam and Eve hid?), the very person who can help us. But the right response is to run into his arms and find forgiveness and restoration.

As I followed his advice I started to notice changes in my life. I no longer wanted to go out and get drunk. I had new interests that took up my time. My smoking habit became more disagreeable to my and after many failings I finally quit. This was also true of other more obvious sins. This process still continues. It's sad how Christians major on the obvious sins and forget that greed, selfishness, gluttony, and pride are all sins that separate us from God. No one is guiltless before God without Jesus.

I wasn't the only one to get saved via the young people's group. I was the first of many and soon there was a move of God that was bring new people into the kingdom and bring refreshment to people who had been believers for some years. Many of them wanted to be baptised by immersion, something which was against the Methodist church's tradition. Also many of the people that were becoming Christians found it hard to relate to the traditional way of doing things. They found many of the traditions irrelevent. I very rarely attended Sunday morning because I found the whole thing very formal and boring. Add to all of this the fact that many of us got baptised in the Holy Spirit and started to move in the gifts Of the holy Spirit.

After much time spent trying to change the church from the inside, the inevitable happened, we were asked to either conform to the traditions of the church or leave. Most of decided to leave rather than quench what God was doing amongst us.

So a new church was formed. This time it was much less informal. Those who were leading it had very little idea what to do, so we had to rely on listening to God for direction. We would spend a great deal of time worshipping God using modern choruses, and there was a real sense of family and being part of a family rather than being a member of an institution. We would meet every sunday in a local hall, but we continued to meet in each others homes. Deep fellowship was the result of this, and I thrived. Jesus and one another were more important than structures and who should bein control. But as you will see later, this wasn't to last.