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The Commentary

God is saving people

Recently we had a couple of folk baptised at our church. It was a great Sunday evening service and afterwards I got talking to one of the Christian relatives who had come to see his niece baptised.

‘Do you have any baptisms coming up?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘we are due to baptise 13 people in November’. ‘Wow!’ I thought, ‘13! We hear of ones and twos being converted [we’re talking believer’s baptism here] but 13 is wonderful’. He did explain that it wasn’t quite so dramatic as might first appear because, for building reasons, they had not been able to hold baptisms for the earlier part of the year, so this group included a little backlog of candidates. But, nevertheless, it was great to hear of 13 folk coming to faith in one ordinary church.

Older and younger

Eight of those being baptised are from the young people’s group. The church has a policy of not baptising anyone until they are over 16 years old; so all these youngsters are older teenagers. A recent youth camp was crucial in bringing them through. ‘They show every sign of really having put their faith in the Lord’, my friend told me.

The other five people are older individuals who have become Christians over the last year or so. One of the women is from a Spiritualist background. She was brought up in a Spiritualist family. Her brother had started coming to the church and told her to come. She began attending in May this year. After four consecutive Sundays she was enjoying being with the church, but felt the gospel was not for her. ‘My past and the things I have done in my life are so bad, how can this be for me?’ she thought. But she heard in the preaching that the invitation to be saved is for all and she signed up to a Christianity Explored course. It was sometime after the sixth session that she was driving home from work thinking these things through when God touched her. She stopped the car, broke down in tears and there and then gave her heart to the Lord.

Another older couple came along to try a Sunday service. They were invited home for Sunday lunch by one of the not-so-well-off families in the church. This so spoke to them they kept coming. In the past the wife had had some bad experiences through a church and said to the pastor, ‘I love the people here but I don’t want anything to do with your faith’. But, by contrast, the husband, it later became clear, had always regretted not going forward at a Billy Graham Crusade 50 years before. Eventually, having invited the pastor to their home, the man said, ‘I’m now ready to repent and trust Christ. Will you pray with me?’ And there, in front of his wife, he turned to the Lord and went on to pray for her. Both of them are now to be baptised.

Now is the time

At around the same time as I heard this news, my wife Ann was taking a three-evening parenting course elsewhere in Surrey. She came back very excited that similar growth was taking place at that church too, which had long outgrown its little building. God is at work.

This is a reminder that though many of us are rightly looking forward to the Passion for Life missions next Easter-time, let’s not get into a mindset that is not expecting anything to happen until then. It may be that for some people, now is the time.

John Benton