Hey guys! A few weeks ago Andrew posted his testimony and mentioned that I'll be doing mine soon - so here I am! If you haven't read Andrew's yet but you'd like to, you can find it
here.
So, Hello! My name's Hannah. I'm seventeen and this is my story.
I was raised by a non-Christian family. This meant that the only information that I got about God was the prayers I did in assembly and from my Grandfather. When I was about four, I went to my first Church. Even though my Mother had been baptised, she'd lost faith and had never encouraged me to go to Church. I loved every minute of it. I loved singing songs about "some guy" called Jesus, and sitting on massive comfy sofas in Sunday school to hear stories about Jesus. I wanted to go back, so I did. I went to Church for about a year when my family received some devastating news.
My Nanny had primary liver cancer and secondary bowel cancer. She wasn't going to get through it.
Through the time of her having cancer, she started coming to Church. She became a Christian and even started to read me stories from the Bible. On January 19th 2002, I was rushed down to my Grandparents house and waited upstairs while the grownups mourned. That night I prayed my first prayer to myself; Please, don't let her die.
I think it was after I'd learned what had happened, and after I realised that my prayer didn't 'come true', I started to blame God for things. Something wrong? Gods fault. Friends not talking to me? Gods fault. I did this all through primary school and most of secondary. Not a great start, eh?
When I was 13, I got into a pretty rubbish relationship and was stuck in it for just over a year. That year was one of the hardest years of my entire life, and my partner just didn't understand what I was going through and why. After a year we said enough was enough and broke up. I thought that this was God sending me a sign, that things were going to get better, but they didn't.
Skip forward six months - I'm sitting in school hating everyone and everything. My parents have just got a divorce. Dad's moved in with his new girlfriend. I have more homework than there are hours in the day and everywhere I turn, people are coping with stuff I'm not.
It's fair to say that life at this point was pretty rubbish. However, it was at this point I met my lovely boyfriend & best friend Andrew. Andrew and I used to hang out all the time and talk about everything. For once in my life, I felt like I was being myself with someone I could trust. One day, Andrew invited me to his baptism.
"I've been to one of those things before. It's (and I quote) the thing where they hold you under the water and bring you up really fast!"
*face palm* I know, I was an idiot. anyway, Andrew got baptised and he was stupidly happy. And I mean like, over the top sunshine and rainbows, all the time. So naturally I asked him why he was so happy, and he started telling me about God.
At first I was all "great I've managed to get mixed in with a mentalist Christian like you see in films". However, what he was saying made sense. It was like something in my brain was plugged back in and finally I could see what I needed. I needed God! And so one day after school, Andrew came down to the cricket field with me, and I became a Christian.
However, after two weeks I started to feel like I'd been cheated. I wasn't happy, I still had problems and things definitely weren't getting any easier. I'd been to Andrew's youth group, cried, run out and hadn't gone again. Being Christian was not as easy as people made it out to be. I looked at other Christians and was jealous of their relationship with God. Why didn't I have that? I prayed about it for a year. Then something happened.
In the December of 2012, Andrew asked me to go to this festival called Soul Survivor. "Why not?" I told myself, and so I found myself going to that same Youth I had cried in and going away to spend a week with them on a field. I'll be honest with you, I'd painted a picture of me standing in a field, in the rain, crying, surrounded my thousands of insane people.
Instead, I found myself standing in a MASSIVE tent, listening to songs about the same guy I'd heard stories about as a kid, laughing until my ribs hurt and meeting with God and the Spirit - and it was freaking awesome!!!!!
I'd never experienced anything like it in my whole life. I cried and laughed, and laughed with crying in between. I'd met people and made awesome friends and had THE BEST MILKSHAKE ON THE PLANET. And that was just day 1.
On day 1, all my prayers from over a year were answered. The speaker Mike Pilavachi asked those who weren't Christian to get up and be saved. I watched hundreds of people get up and feel God's grace. Then Mike said something that changed my life forever. "If you're unsure, confused, feel you have no relationship with God - get up". Before I could even finish my blink, I had grabbed Andrew, blubbed something about being saved and dragged him to the front.
I was saved in front of TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE.
Having social anxiety and just general anxiety, THAT WAS THE WORST THING I COULD HAVE EVER DONE EVER IN MY LIFE.
But it wasn't the worst - it was THE BEST!! I felt like I was happy. For once in my life i was being taught that it's not just the awesome good people who get Jesus - its the depressed and the hurt. It was damaged beyond repair people who get him too! And I'm one of them!!
I spent the rest of the week getting healed by Gods presence, and realising that I was never on my own. It was an amazing experience, and if you ever get the chance to go to Soul Survivor - GO.
After Soul Survivor, I started taking Christian Union seriously. This was about teaching young people that God is for everyone not just the people who are raised in the Church.
I absolutely love running Christian union, and I hope you guys enjoy coming.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed! If you've got any questions for us - you can reach us at christianunion.blog@gmail.com
Speak soon! : D
~ Cats and pizza (Hannah)
