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About
twelve months after my baptism, a friend came to see me after a Christian Union
meeting one evening. His eyes shone excitedly as he recounted the talk that he
had just heard. I remember very little of what he said apart from one verse
from the Bible: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the spirit”
{Galatians 5:25}. After my friend left, that verse remained with me and
disturbed me deeply. I knew that it was addressed to Christians, to people who
already “live in the Spirit”, and I was forced to face up to the act that I
knew nothing about living in the Spirit, let alone walking in the Spirit. I was
endeavouring to please God through my own attempts at leading a good religious
life, and I was not succeeding. My stomach felt tied up in knots. I cried out
to God, confessing that I was not good enough for Him. I felt desperately
confused and depressed by my failure. Moments later a feeling of deep relief
swept over me. My heart found peace as I realised that God did love me.
For the first time I experienced Him as a person with whom I could have a
relationship, rather than as a rather impersonal being whom I could never seem
to please. When I had reached the end of the road as far as pleasing God
through my efforts was concerned, He showed me that I was accepted through
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. His life had been pleasing to God in a way that
mine could never be. In His death He had paid for my failures. Life took on a
different meaning. The Holy Spirit had filled me replacing guilt with real
peace and joy. The sense of freedom was exciting; prayer was exciting, like a
conversation with a new friend. I knew the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ
with me throughout the day. The Bible which I had previously read regularly out
of a sense of duty, became like a book I was reading for the first time, as I
heard God speaking to me personally through verse after verse.
Christadelphians have no assurance of forgiveness or eternal life. They
concentrate more on speculation about Christ’s Second Coming than on the
achievements of His first. They deny the presence of the Holy Spirit in the
life of the believer, and cannot know the joy that comes from living and
walking with Christ day by day. Two and a half years after I joined the
Christadelphians I realised that I could no longer share fellowship with them.
My experience of God and my expectations of worship were so different from
theirs. I felt that my baptism prior to my conversion was of no value, and
wanted to demonstrate publicly that by the grace of Jesus Christ, not through
any good works on my part, my old life had ended and I had received new life. I
left the Christadelphians and was baptised again — this time a real believer’s
baptism. (Mrs Ellen Call)
“AWARENESS” — Winter 1985
