Christ Church Moreton Hall

I had been attending church for about four weeks following an invitation from young people who lived in my area.  I had come to the place where I realised that Christians were a very different sort of people from the ones I had encountered before and that I was not one of them, although I was a member of the church.  A week before I was converted I found that God kept breaking in to my life in dozens of different ways so that He was always on my mind.  I had chance encounters with Canadian missionaries and other events as I drew closer to the time.  Then on the particular night when I gave my life to God I went down to the Youth Club and found that it was not on and it became obvious to me that all my friends were Christians and that I would be very lonely without them.  Fortunately somebody came along and encouraged me to go to a film event at the local school which the Youth Club were organising.  There were two films, the second of which was one called : “The Thief in the Night” which made the point very clearly that God would come back and take all His special people to be with Him and leave the rest of us behind to get on with it.  This had a profound impact on me because I knew I was not one of God’s people.  I then got a lift to a follow up coffee bar meeting and on the way there I leant forward in the car and said to God, “Look, I know that you’re there.  I know that I’m not really one of your people.  I want to be one of your people and I don’t want to be left behind”.

When I got out of the car it was as if something had left and I felt empty inside.  While I was in the coffee bar I got chatting to an older lady who listened to my story and was very helpful to me about the Christian faith. 

As I walked home I suddenly became aware of a Presence which I would now call the Holy Spirit, and I realised that whatever God was, He was now inside me and with me.  One of the first things I did was tell my entire family when I got home that I had just become a Christian to which their reply was, “But you already were”.  Despite that unpromising start I knew God was now in my life.

 Since that time I can honestly say God has never stopped speaking to me.  It was He who led me to consider being an ordained minister rather than a member of Her Majesty’s armed services.  It was He who caused me to speak to my Vicar at the right time.  It was He who suggested that I join the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen by a combination of scripture readings and a strong impression.  It was He who led me away from that organisation to something else.  And it was by His speaking and prompting that I married my wife, went to St. John’s College, Nottingham and was ultimately led to Herne Bay, St. Andrews and then Christ Church, Moreton Hall.  God speaks in various ways, mostly through the reading of scripture, sometimes through significant conversations but the best time of all is when I am praying and I think I hear a voice, which speaks to me, also from time to time there are circumstantial signs.  There have been so many of these I cannot recall them all but one in particular I would share.

When I was in the process of constructing Christ Church, Moreton Hall, half way through the appeal we had twice sent out letters to every charity and place we could think of and were still short of the money.  I remember lying in the bath, being very tired and calling out to God saying something to the effect “I have shot every arrow in the bag, we have no arrows left, there is nothing else we can do to raise money.  What are we going to do now?”  I felt God say, “Jonathan, no matter what happens, you still have Me.”  It was almost an audible voice but not quite.  After God had spoken in that way I felt greatly assured and at peace and as you know money did come in and Christ Church, Moreton Hall was built.