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What I Believe

  • I believe in a living God who has developed a relationship with me. He talks to me, often through others and through circumstances and sometimes through the Holy Spirit which I carry inside me... something like a conscience.

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  • I believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, my Saviour, who taught me about servanthood and humility. Jesus is part of the Holy Trinity, a Godhead.... three in one... God, the Father, God, the son and God the Holy Spirit.   My Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ came to earth to be  the perfect human,  to show me what I need to do in my journey. He showed me, especially, how to obey God by going to the cross, so that I could have forgiveness for my sins. I openly avow that I truly believe this. God has said he will take me into heaven after my death if I acknowledge this about Jesus.

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  • I believe that God created the heavens and earth in their entirety.  I don't know how but that is faith... believing without seeing. He may have been responsible for the Big Bang.

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  • I believe he created each of us  as a single independent entity, giving us free choice to use in our lives. In the Garden of Eden all was perfect until Adam and Eve used their free choice to  ignore a warning from God and so created sin, which separated us from God.

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  • I believe that God enhanced His Word, through the Bible, giving incite and guidance as it was written and developed. I also believe  He is still doing this with updated versions of the Bible such as "The Message"

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My Childhood Journey

My childhood journey in Christianity was similar to many in my time, in the 1950's and 60's.

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I  was one of 6 children who walked with Dad to church and Sunday school every week of the year. We did the trip again, most Fridays, to attend  Pathfinders, which my father ran.

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We also attended the monthly dances which were a mixture of social  dancing like The Hokey Pokie and  the Progressive Barn Dance, Scottish  folk dances like Strip the Willow  and ballroom dances like The Canadian Three Step and the Gypsy Tap.

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Part of these nights was the potluck dinners and desserts and supper where we always took home some left overs.

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Perhaps the best days I remember were the Church Picnics which included bus and ferry rides to Neilson Park , races, games, fruit, great food and swimming!

 

You can see my Christian life was based in the social aspect of Presbyterianism and not spiritual. I won many awards and filled my books with attendance  verse stamps we received each week.

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I sang in church as a soloist  a number of times  when I was about twelve or thirteen. I loved staying after church to play on the organ, where I learnt to play God Save The Queen.

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From a large family, I was the only one who chose to be confirmed when I was  14. It was a very formal journey of 6 months of weekly meetings and formal  acceptance of the  chatechism and all that it meant. I look back now and see the catechism was more  important than the bible in those lessons. At this time I saw God as the great master of all and the designer of a most wonderful universe. I never had a personal relationship with him. I was just an admirer of this powerful entity.

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I now have two brothers who came to Christ through the Catholic Church and I see that their journey has been very different to mine.

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Even by the beginning of high school I knew that God had given me  the special gifts. of empathy and sympathy for others. Though I was not part of the groups, many "difficult kids came to me with their problems, perhaps because of knowing I had  was involved in ISCF or perhaps it was because they all knew me as a kind sports star at school.

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I went on to Armidale Teachers College in 1968 and was again involved in a Christian Students Network which was quite insular and focussed on Bible Study and pointing out the wrong doings of non-Christians.

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When I met Bill I was five years into working as a teaching and again God's gifts  helped me so much.  I found all the lost sheep at my schools and I supported them in many practical ways. And when I found Bill I knew instantly that he was a lost sheep too. I was going to get him into church  and we would do God's work together. I chose to get married at the Wayside Chapel because Bill was not a Christian. 

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Our life together showed me how God works in lives. He moved me iin so many ways...always with Bill's support. My prayer life was that we would have children, that  certain children were safe, that  after school activities I started would succeed. And all the time, God was  working in Bill to say... "go do your work Marian. I understand".

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The times God intervened in my life are too many to list here, but the  work He did, to give us Sharna was understandably amazing. Thank you, Lord.

When we moved to Quakers Hill I joined  the church in the  army hut and remember   fundraising for the new church and some great  Church Picnics.

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During this time I thought my focus was to be on Sharna as God wanted waited so long to allow us to have her. I did this at the expense of going to church.

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And of course when troubles came when she became a teenager.... who did I call? Not the Ghost Busters but God of course.  Through prayer and reflection at first, then returning to church, then using my Bible Study group as my therapist, we all got through those times.

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Sharna is a wonderful adult now and I hope in time, she will feel God working in her life.

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Bill's illness and his last ten years of life are another testimony   which shows God's love for everyone in my life.  I can now leave , after being bashed by God's hints so many times,  the directions and worries of my life in God's hands.

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I don't know what the future will bring me, but I do know that God is walking the path and can deal with anything that comes up. And I now see those hints every day. I just have to look for them.

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My Journey as an Adult

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