I don’t come from a Christian background at all. But I found myself in a Church and that was it really. I just used to go on Sunday and that was me being a ‘Christian’.

I didn’t realise how much more there was to know about God and his Son Jesus and the fact that the Holy Spirit can touch you and enable you. But I have recently, well over the last 3 years or so, become a 24/7-on-fire-for-God Christian. I know Jesus is working in me.

For the first time, at re:gen, I felt the Holy Spirit when I was worshipping.

I realised that everyone around me had a deeper relationship with God and I wanted that too. I didn’t know how to get to that place and thought well I’ll just ask Him. So every time I worshipped I would ask God to come into my life. I would sing the worship songs, and when I sang it was a personal thing from my heart to God.

Gradually I realised that I had issues with God. I thought I was a pretty together person and then I started to doubt. It was then that I realised I blamed God for lots of awful things in my life, things that had hurt me very much.

I felt my heart was broken (at the end of 1992) when my Father died very suddenly after emigrating when I’d said goodbye at the airport only 2 days earlier. I wanted to scream out to the whole world that my Father had died. How could life go on!

My Mother passed away 7 years later, very unhappy without my Father in the same country in again tragic circumstances. For reasons beyond my control I did not attend either funeral. A few years later my Sister became terminally ill having moved back with her family to England from the country my parents had died in.

I didn’t give up. I would bring the issues to God in prayer, asking questions, perhaps going to the prayer ministry team. I even asked God to help me feel the way I felt I should be feeling which seemed strange but I was reassured that was the right thing to do.

During this time of longing for Jesus to come into my life I did a number of things to help myself; I started reading my bible daily, read quite a few books by Jennifer Rees Larcombe, went to a Healing Day, went on an Alpha course, watched Jen Rees-L’s DVD, read Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, watched quite a few Nooma DVD’s, went on an Alpha residential, went to Soul Survivor and went on a re:gen residential.

While Reading Jennifer Rees Larcombe’s books gradually I knew God was speaking to me through Jennifer’s words. She is a remarkable lady and I have actually met her. Through Jennifer’s personal faith, my faith really started to grow.

During this time I was having a particularly tough time at work. I now know that God was with me and got me through. I really don’t know how I would’ve coped with the difficult times without being able to call upon Jesus to strengthen and encourage me.

In the Summer of 2008, I went to Soul Survivor with such high expectations as I had heard so many personal accounts of truly accepting His forgiveness and finding release in Jesus. (Bearing in mind that I had never ever been camping or had any interest at all in camping I decided to go for my relationship with God. Apparently my face was a picture after I got off the coach and was standing in a muddy field not really knowing what to do).

I knew that God had started to work in me and thought that I could achieve that giving up of all of my hurts at Soul Survivor. Well I went for prayer a number of times to the prayer ministry team in the big tent/marquee where there were about 10,000 people worshipping (awesome) and I did have an amazing time - I spent so much of it in tears as well as knowing, at one point that Jesus was standing beside me. I even went to a little room in one of the buildings for a chat to a lady hoping I could release my heavy heart full of hurt and resentment. She said she could feel it in me and I would need to let it go at some stage.

I could not understand why I had not achieved what I had planned and I suppose I was a bit disappointed really, but now appreciate that was what I wanted not what God wanted. I did realise that what one of the prayer ministry team had said to me at Soul Survivor must be true - it is a long process of keeping on giving more and more to Jesus.

Late October 2008 I attended a residential; nervously I went to the middle of Exmoor hoping again that this would be a time of release and forgiveness. The theme was ‘When Life Hurts’ and this somehow seemed so appropriate for me. I asked again for prayer a number of times and personally prayed for God’s help.

On the day we were due to leave I took a walk alone down by a little stream and tried to let go of some of the hurts that I had blamed God for but I now had the understanding that God works for the good in all things and accepted that he had not caused the bad painful things to happen.

I needed to be able to let go and give the weight of my heavy heart to Jesus. I know He died for me and was waiting there to take the pain and free me. After my walk I ran back to the house and was just overwhelmed with emotion. I couldn’t stop the tears, I kept wiping them away, but they just kept coming.

When I was at home after this residential I did realise, through God speaking to me in a few different ways, things that related to the residential, even through a song and a hymn, that I really had ‘broken free from my chains’.

This was like the step I took to really help myself in forgiving others. There were a couple of people, very significant, that I truly felt unable to forgive. By my obedience with finally letting God take my baggage I feel this opened another door for me being able to actually forgive those I had felt impossible.

By Christmas I knew I had achieved true and complete forgiveness.

God is so amazing. He can help you do anything. If you keep trying, God knows your heart and you just have to never give up.

It says in the Bible ‘when trouble comes’ it doesn’t say if – so you know trouble will come along and you just have to know in your heart that God will carry you through. God uses your struggles and painful experiences and He uses these through you to encourage and strengthen others.

I have really worked at my faith, I’m still a work in progress with much to learn, but I am so excited and can’t wait to see what God is going to do for me next. How He is going to use me and is already using me to help others. He has a plan for my life and I do trust Him now.

If you are going through something you feel you will never recover from, however big, whatever impact it’s had on your life, you feel scarred; then take the first step on your road to recovery and eventual freedom by asking for God to come into your life today.

To have a personal relationship with Jesus, to call him ‘friend’ to know He is always there even when sometimes you don’t feel him, to know He hears you when you pray, to know that He knows what you need before you ask Him, He will never let you down – Wow, what a friend is that!

Jesus opens the door; all you have to do is knock. (Matthew 7:7).