A
Pastors Testimony
I
can remember when I was about ten years old getting caught by the police for
riding
my
bike like a nutter, and I felt so guilty that I just couldnt keep it a secret,
and when
my
dad asked me how I was? I had to confess
to what had happened through floods
of
tears.
As
I got older though I still carried on getting caught for different things but
discovered
that if I could creep in after everyone was in bed and sleep on it, the
feeling
of guilt would eventually pass and I could get away with just about
anything.
The thing was though, the first time it happened I confessed and owned up
to
what I had done and after a brief moment of pain from my dads boot it was over
and
forgotten and I been had been forgiven. But when I didnt own up I felt awful,
I
couldnt
look my dad in the eye and I felt Somehow separated from him, it was as if a
barrier
had sprung up between us. This is no different between God and us, we
continually
do things things that separate us from him, and its these things that are
called
sin, that eventually cause us a big problem.
In
the bible it says quite simply that sin separates us from God and the outcome
of
this
sin will kill us.
In Jesus
day there was a character called Nicodemus who was a well-respected and
religious man, who thought the same thing. But Jesus said to him, Nicodemus you
have got to believe in me, because I am the way to everlasting life and only I
can save you, without me you are not going to make it.
So
all my good stuff was not enough.
There was nothing I could do.
20
years later as a married man and father I came across the same truth. At the
time I
was
an aspiring musician and Karate instructor with a marriage that was in deep
trouble,
but everything suddenly came to a head when our first son Tom was born.
Tom
was born with some serious physical problems, and even though the doctors did
the
best they could, there came a low point where his life hung in the balance. I
can
remember
it clearly as if it were yesterday, holding him in my arms in the middle of
the
night and having the terrible knowledge that there was nothing I could do to
save
this
tiny little life. I had no power to save him and stop him slipping away, and
everything
that I thought I was, all the training and toughness I thought I had,
amounted
to absolutely nothing.
I
was never a religious man, in fact far from it and I had run just about as far
away
from
the cross as possible with the scars to prove it. But it was at his point, at
the end
of
all my resource and strength that someone told me the truth about a man I
always
thought
I knew, Jesus Christ and that he could help me.
In a tattered little bible I read that these simple words
who ever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
So it was in a Church service in 1991 that I called on that
name, and like many others
before me, confessed Jesus as my Lord and Saviour and gave
my life to the him.
I can remember the feeling of relief as I prayed and the
feeling of an incredible weight
being lifted off my shoulders as I was set free from the
chains of sin that had bound
my life.
It was soon after this that my son Tom made a complete
recovery and contrary to
all the specialists diagnosis confounded them all by having
none of the problems they
had predicted. My marriage was miraculously restored, and my
life was turned
around.
I had been given another chance and another life, so I took
it with both hands.
.
This probably is not what you were expecting, but it is the
best explanation I have
for the miracle of Good Friday. You see for me it was Good
Friday because that is
when I met Jesus and he saved my life. But it is also Good
Friday because Jesus
didnt just die for me, but for every man, woman and child,
so that they would
always have a choice of life or death.
Have a wonderful Easter. Rob
Frankson