by Sue

Looking back over the years, I have some fond memories. One of them was one Sunday morning when I really felt I just had to go to church.

You may have read in my personal testimony that I started praying to Jesus when I was a small child. When I was about 4 years and as I took myself upstairs to bed my mum would say to me, “Don’t forget to say your prayers, to the Lord Jesus,” Which I did. My mum and dad needed me to pray and bring the family in prayer because my brothers were ill, and I was also suffering a health issue. But I always prayed that the Lord would help my brothers and my mum and dad.

I went to Sunday school one time when I was about five years old. It was held in an old farmhouse and a ‘big girl’ - one of my mums’ friends’ daughters, took me and another girl, there. After we came out of the Sunday School we went across to the park, for a ride on the roundabout and seesaw, before going home. That was the only time I went to that farmhouse to Sunday school as shortly after they bull-dozed it down. But I still prayed to Jesus before I went to sleep.

We moved house and when I was 12 years old, I really felt an urge to go to Sunday school. So, I went to an Evangelical church just down the road to our house. We sat around in small groups in a circle and listened to the stories of Jesus. Every time I went to the Sunday school there, I was given a token for attending. I was told that once I had collected six tokens I could go to the table where there were some lovely items and pick what I wanted, in exchange for the tokens. On that table was a little red bible that I had my eye on for those six weeks. I remember that each week I went to Sunday School I look around to see if it was still there on the table - it felt really important to me.

How happy I was when the time came for me to exchange my six tokens at the table and I left the Sunday school with that little bible held close to my chest, and said to the Lord, “I am going to read this Bible and understand it.” And I made that promise.   When I arrived home I showed my mum and dad what I had got, and held fast to that promise I made. I still have that Bible today.

Years later, when I came to know Jesus as my Lord and Saviour, in a real and living way. I read that bible from beginning to end whilst patiently waiting and praying for my husband Malc, and my family to also come to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour. During that time, all I could do was pray and read the Word of God waiting for Malc to come to know Jesus - which he did 4 months later!  The Lord answered every one of my prayers. And as I prayed for my family, Jesus knew my heart's desire to serve Him and He has blessed us mightily as a family.  And I have seen others of our wider family saved also saved, after much prayer.

I know I am loved by Jesus because He paid the price for my sin on the cross at Calvary. It is a sad thing that in the days in which we are now living, Sunday school and church services are so restricted, with all of the rules now imposed by the state, that it is far removed from how Jesus instructed Christians to assemble together as his church. It is interesting to note in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, after the first three chapters which describe how the world will look at the end, that there is no further mention of the church.

The reason is that all Christians - not church-goers, but those who are truly born again of God’s Spirit - have been raptured. The rapture is the return of Jesus in the air, when He will call out His church before the beginning of what the Bible calls the great tribulation, to be with Him forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

Turn to Jesus while He may be found and before the time runs out - do not be left behind to face the dreadful times that are going to come upon the earth at that time, far worse than we are experiencing now.