Ruth Maycock

A Brand New Life

Nine years old. Sitting in church. Suddenly something the speaker said seemed to catch my attention. He was describing how that during the week he had noticed water running down the road from a burst pipe at his house. He had been able to trace the leak and successfully patch it up. On going inside the house and looking out of the window he was surprised to discover that water was once more running down the road. He realised that in order to rectify the problem he would have to buy a new section of pipe to replace the broken section. Of course he did this and the problem was solved.... until he looked out of the window and saw water running down the road again. It was then that he realised the only way he could solve the problem once and for all was to get a complete new pipe and do away with the old one altogether.

"That's like our lives," he went on to explain. "Many people try to patch up their lives, and hope that that will be good enough for God; others try to have part of the new life and part of the old. But we need to do away with our old life and receive a brand new life from Jesus."

Only nine years old. I'd been brought up in a Christian family and had been to church and Sunday school from further back than I could remember. I must have heard the same things many times over, but that evening it was different. Probably for the first time I recognised that I had to make a personal response. My parents' faith couldn't save me. Going to church and reading my Bible wouldn't make me fit for heaven. Being good.... well I could never hope to reach God's standard anyway. Yes, I needed to ask God to forgive me for all the wrong things I had ever done and ask Him to take over my life. There was no doubt at all in my mind that this was the right thing to do. But I refused to do it. Or at least, I decided to wait until I was older. After all, I was only young and I didn't really want God to take control of my life yet. "No," I reasoned with myself, "I'll wait until I'm older."

And so it was that I went through a period of living against what I knew to be right. Whilst I was convinced that I should yield my life to the Lord, I was equally convinced that I didn't want to! Now it seemed that I was faced with challenges from all directions. Having understood my first sermon it seemed that I was able to understand many more - and they all amounted to the same thing. The Bible verses I learned for a special award at the children's club all told me that I was lost without the Lord; the booklet that explained my daily Bible readings kept suggesting prayers for its young readers to pray if they wanted to "ask Jesus into their lives;" then to crown it all my best friend came to school one day and told me that she had done just that.

It wasn't long after that that I finally stopped putting off what I had known for so long I should do and, alone in my room, I prayed and asked Jesus to take over my life.

Maybe you feel that I was too young to know what I was doing. Well, of course my understanding was limited, but then you don't need a theology degree to come to Jesus. Moreover it was nearly twenty years ago when I committed my life to the Lord and I've never regretted it. That doesn't prove anything special about me, but it shows that God is faithful. If we yield our lives to Him, the new life He gives us will last forever.

The Church at Gun Hill is an Elim Pentecostal Church
Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance :: Registered Charity 251549 (England & Wales)