My Faith
For me the 27th March 1988 was the beginning of a new journey in my life, it was on that Sunday evening as a boy of six that I gave my life to God, Surrendering my life into his hands, truth be told its only as I have gotten older that my relationship with God has improved and grown deeper.
For years I was involved in Christianity in very shallow ways, attending kids meetings, Sunday school, camps and youth fellowship etc, they were great and helped me learn more of God at a young age. As secondary school progressed I started to realise that living a life for God isn’t all plain sailing, I had to battle many temptations and choose not involve myself with people and things that I knew would not help my faith in God grow deeper.
I made many slip ups, but I thank God that every time he has helped me to my feet again!
At the age of 16 I had the opportunity to visit Israel for two weeks, for me this was a turning point, a moving into something deeper and more intimate with God, seeing the places Jesus fulfilled His earthly ministry just brought a reality check to my faith in Him.
I Thank God for my upbringing, I was brought up in a Christian home and faithfully taught the word of God from an early age, I thank God for the prayers of my parents and grandparents and wider family and friends that helped me find Jesus when I did.
I attended Ballykeel Baptist until I was about 17 and am grateful to the many saints there who taught me in children’s club, Sunday school, Youth Fellowship and the Church itself. At 17 like everyone else I hit the ‘I want to change the world stage‘ and just felt that the countryside was not the place to be doing that, after months of travelling around various churches I stumbled upon Emmanuel Church in its early days in a chicken farm in donacloney, this church had a vision that aligned with mine and had a leadership that were determined to reach their destiny, a surprise was to follow when I realised while Amy was in America that Philip Emerson (the senior pastor) was Amy’s Dad.
In 2000 I finished my A-levels and decided to go to university at Jordanstown, Belfast. This proved to be a very testing year, several tough decisions were made during the year, but at the start of the year I met Amy, just a week before she flew to America for a year on mission, The next year I battled through uni – I hated it, hated my course, hated the travelling and just didn’t ever feel that uni was for me,
On the 29th May 2001 Amy returned from America, that night I asked her out, and I guess you could say the rest was history. In July I quit uni and decided I just wanted to get a job and get to work, that November I asked Amy to marry me and on the 3rd October 2002 we married at Emmanuel Church in Lurgan.
I’ve always been involved in the IT stuff in church which I enjoy as it’s what I like to do naturally, in 2005 Cells started in church so Amy and myself started to lead one of the cells, this was great fun and challenging but was such a blessing to work with the same group every week as we did life together and pursued God together. This was followed by becoming a cell coach for over a year but in January 09 I felt I wasn’t were God wanted me and stepped down from this.
In the almost 10 years we’ve been married, Amy and me had not only loved working on our own marriage and seeing it blossom, but it’s been our desire to see our friends happily married as well, we love our marriage and love the concept of Godly marriages, so in January 09 we took on the couples ministry in church, this is exciting as we are working on this together, and I know we work well together in the day to day, so being able to minister in this area is just a doubled blessing. We will be running the odd couple’s night in church, a pre-marriage course every year and hopefully organising marriage events every so often.
Ben, Maddie, Charlie & Sam
I’ve the privilege of being a father to four beautiful Kids, Ben, Maddie, Charlie & Sam. They keep us both very busy, but are a great bunch and love doing life with them all!
As well as being involved in my Church I also sit on the YFCni Board – Youth for Christ Northern Ireland.
This is just a brief overview of my Christian walk so far but please any questions in relation to God ‘stuff’ please drop me an email.
