Hi all,

I just want to use the opportunity to thank God once again for being at the Men’s Conference.

I already sent an email earlier expressing my thanks to God and those people God used.

However, I just thought I should share this with you all.

Last night while I was back in the house I lodged and meditating on the things we were thought at the conference and praying during the course of the meditation, God showed me what I needed to do to reach out to my colleagues at work.
I will be pursuing that this week and it crossed my heart yesterday that God will reach out to all my colleagues through this means.

Also, I received last night confirmation about where God wants me to worship before relocating to Africa. This has been an issue for the last couple of months.

Lastly, while I was preparing for the conference on Friday, I was ironing my clothes and my iron stopped working.
I quickly checked if I could find the receipt/bank statement to show that I bought it at Asda but I couldnt.

I cycled to Asda but was told that I needed to get the receipt or a Bank Statement showing exactly the cost of the iron.

I couldnt find it so I left for the conference.
On saturday, during the break, i went to M&S in Exeter to see if I could get a new iron.
I already picked up the iron but thought to myself that I should get back home and check again if I could find the cost of the iron in my bank statement.

I got back home and checked but I couldnt find it..
I picked up the iron, to be sincere, i just picked it up, without thinking I touched the iron and thought that I should switch it on.
I did and it worked..

I am grateful to God for the fact that the iron worked.
although the iron cost £15 but I am too grateful to God and sensed I should share this with you all.
The same God that saved me from wasting another £15 is all powerful to save me from wasting millions and could use me to save lives from dying, businesses from failing and institutions and societies from wasting efforts on replacing things that still have long life.

Thank you God and thank you guys.

Love you all

Abraham

I grew up in a Christian family in Romania with twelve other brothers and sisters. I’m sixteen now. I had a normal life, as a child of Christian parents. I respected the Church’s schedule but as I grew up, I began to walk with friends from outside of the church and with the time I began to stay away from the church and maybe, away from God!

When I began to follow Jesus, I was in a camp together with other friends from a local church from my village. A man was preaching and I believe that while he was saying God’s words, I felt God’s love surrounding me and I fell on my knees and I began to weep. After that service, I went to the preacher and asked him to pray for me. That’s how I began to walk with God and I can say that there was very bad moments in my life.

After I was baptized with water, the time of wilderness came in my life, when I was tested by God. I failed in those moments somehow. There were sins in my life that I walked in before I turned to God. Sins like immorality, sins of a teenager. I began to walk in those sins again for a while. There were times when I felt God very far from me but also there were moments when I just danced before Him.

Thank God that He pulled me up from the miry clay of sin!

I grew up being forced to attend a methodist Sunday School together with my brothers. This turned me against ‘organised’ religion. I wasted my academic ability, at school,through laziness. Instead of going to Uni I left the 6th form before taking my A levels.

In November 2008 my wife and I attended her late father’s funeral, he was a treasurer of a Church of England church. The funeral was boring and I wished I was elsewhere. This must have been the turning point because the Go4God Church Barnstaple advert was on the household noticeboard for weeks before we attended in the New Year.

I’m more than happy we did go to Go4God in Barnstaple. The Word of God is amazing and meant for all of us. Faith, for me, is part of a process of growth and not a ‘one stop fix’.

Thank God He saved me from laziness.

I was born on a little farm just out side of St.Ives, on the Zennor road called Trevessa. My father used to be a lay preacher in the Methodist chapel but in sixties moved to the Anglican church at Halsetown, St.Ives.

I went to church most Sundays and was a choir boy. It was at this time that a family turned up at church for a christening. What brought my attention to this family was a young girl that caught my eye! She was, I learned afterwards, called Sally, her parents were dairy farmers from Lelant. Church began to get very interesting! After we were married we didn’t attend church very often. After a couple of years we were expecting our first baby, I was a very happy man.

One busy day in February, Sally was felling sick. She went to the doctor who said that it was a bug and that there were a lot around. On getting home Sally was sick and became unconscious, having fits and throwing herself around on the floor. I came in and found her. I called 999 & the ambulance arrived as did the doctor and Sally, 37weeks pregnant, was rushed to Truro in ambulance followed, very nervously, by me driving the doctors car.

Sally was rushed into the theatre and after I had signed that they could do what ever necessary to save her, they carried out an emergency caesarean section.

I was beside my self! What if she dies? What about the baby? After a short wait I was told that I was a dad, and that Anna had been placed in the Special care Baby Unit. She was asleep because of all the drugs that had to be used to drop Sally’s blood pressure.

I remember going in with my mother in law to see Sally in a very dark room. There was a nurse there and Pam asked what the prognosis was. The nurse indicated that she was not supposed to tell us anything to which Pam replied “its ok I’m a pharmacist and I understand these situations”.
The words that then came from the nurse’s mouth will be with me forever. She said “In these cases it is usually the baby that dies first!”

That was it. What could I do my world had been torn apart & I was totally lost. Thankfully they both survived and we had Anna christened in the small Towednack Anglican church. I had vowed never to have any more children but on 22nd Feb some 2 years later George was added to our family.

Life was good. But I was working all hours. My father had retired and we were running the dairy farm. I would often be up to milk the cows at 6 andthen off for a days contracting often not returning home until 10- 11 o’clock at night. To do the same the next day. This was no fun for a young mum who had to look after 2 tiny children as well as organise the events on the farm when I was not around. Circumstances Changed and because of our actions we suddenly realized that we were in a mess, BIG TIME! OUR MARAGE HAD HIT THE ROCKS.

We had both been neglecting each other and needed to sort things out. We went to see John Harper the guy that married us as we figured that if he put us together then he could mend us!

I remember he asked me a question? “Do you read the bible?” “No” I responded “but I do occasionally read a hymn book!” Why I said this I do not know but it seemed good at the time! He spoke some God stuff into my life and I didn’t really know what was going on but I wept buckets. (It was as if God was cleaning me from the inside!)

Several nights later I was in bed with Sally and although we were only inches apart it felt like 1000 miles, I said this prayer, “‘Dear God, I don’t fully understand all that is going on in my life BUT if you are real would you come into my life in Jesus name Amen.”

I awoke the next day and I felt good. I said “hello” to the work chap who was working on some machinery, and then it happened: he dropped a spanner or something and said the name “JESUS”  and I went “WHAT WAS THAT!” It was as if someone had stabbed me in the heart. I had heard blasphemy before but now it hurt me and I knew something had changed. I had become a Christian.

That was when the He saved the Day for me. He rebuilt our marriage and transformed our lives. Praise His Name.

I was a clubber into the house scene in the midlands during the mid 90′s. I got interested in voodoo and black magic. I called spirits into me in order to do ouija and to access the voodoo spirits. Thankfully God warned me what I was getting into – after trying to find something to help me escape all the spirits I had called in I looked through a bible – saw in the bible about “passover”. I did not know what it was but I sure wanted some help as I wanted the spirits that were on me to passover!

One day I was sitting in a pub and I heard a voice say “are you ready to meet someone?”. I looked around the voice was in me around me so strong – it was the voice of God. In my heart I said Yes! The next day I was on a train I heard two men talking about Jesus like he was real. I asked these guys when we got to the station to help me – I said “I had been invloved in some scapes!”  I prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to be my saviour and I accepted that he had died on the cross for me and my sins.

As I called Jesus into my life – my legs gave way – I was very dizzy – as God came into my life – since then I have grown in the Lord – got to know Him – he has given me a new life – a wife – a family – a career – a new path away from drugs – the occult – sleeping around and trying to please people all the time.

Thats my story of how He Saved The Day !!!

From a young age I always thought I had believed in God but it was more like believing a story than a reality. I had prayed for things and was a typical ‘good’ boy who didn’t get in trouble and tried hard at school.

My parents divorced when I was thirteen which is a hard age for a boy when he is starting to find himself. I suddenly became the ‘man’ of the house and felt like I had to step up to fill my dad’s shoes. The reality was I was still a boy and failed miserably.

I lost a lot of my self worth through this and began going out drinking with mates. Being a rather hairy lad I didn’t have trouble being served in pubs at 14 with a beard, meaning there would be many nights when I had drunk far too much causing all sorts of mischief, leading to a lot of regrets. I didn’t get the grades I was capable of at school and was at a bit of a lost end. I lived this life for a few years, just floating from one day to the next without any real goals to aim for.

When I met my beautiful wife Susanna, through our many conversations in our friendship before we started dating, she asked whether I was a Christian. I said yes, still believing this was true. However, once we started dating I realised how far from the truth this actually was. Going out night after night drinking and the types of places I was going were nowhere near ‘Christian’. I had to change.

Susanna had been ill for the first eighteen months of our relationship, in bed for most of the day, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome following Glandular Fever. She had been in hospital a couple of times and when shopping sometimes had to be pushed around in a wheelchair. God completely healed her in a meeting we went to in Birmingham. From one day being in a wheelchair, to the next playing basketball for a couple of hours with me being the one having to stop because I was knackered. God was now a reality!!

We got married a couple of months later and moved to Exeter. I became depressed following our tough first two years of dating and the pain of my parent’s divorce really hit me. I again slipped back into the old trends, drinking heavily and not feeling like I had a purpose. I needed God, desperately.

Finding the River Dream Centre was the best thing that has ever happended for me and Susanna. Rather than judge me I found I had real friends and Pastors who encouraged and guided me, leading back to the realness of God. I am now moving forward and feel that over the past two years I feel I have grown tremendously. I am now able to serve in the Church I love and thank God for what he is doing in my life every day. I still have a long way to go but with God’s grace I will win the fight.

I’ve got a pretty good idea what my life would be like without God… Boring.  More than that, I’d be facing him without forgiveness and that’s a scary thought!

God has convinced me through my family, through friends, local church life, hard times as well as overwhelming historical evidence that Jesus really did die for us and rose again from the dead so that we can have forgiveness, peace with God and life to the full now and forever and this is why I’m still a Christian today.

I still struggle with my own selfish thoughts and actions each day but I’m free to live my life for God now and I struggle onwards in his strength to use every opportunity I can to love him and to love others so they can leave their own ‘boredom’ and know God for themselves.

Everything is an adventure now.  I’m free from guilt because I’ve got forgiveness from God and I’m free from boredom because he’s called me to do great things for him.  Bring it on!

Just before I started college, I started coming to the River Dream Centre, and Pastor Michael’s messages completely changed my approach to God, and life in general. Nine years later, I know I have walked a completely different path to what I would have without the injection of purpose and direction that a real relationship with the living God gave me. My life is more exciting, fulfilling, and stretching than it ever would have been without the challenge of reaching for a life that meant more.

The realisation that my Creator has made me for purpose, for playing a part in something much greater, and that this purpose is the most fulfilling thing I can possibly do, has changed my life. Although its not a dramatic “road to Damascus” type testimony, it means the world to me, because I know I would be broken, struggling, compromising and frustrated if it wasn’t for God who stepped in to save the day.

My testomony starts about fourty years ago just smoking dope and weed for weekend fun. The next thirty years that followed was not as much fun, I was involed in drug importing selling crime of all sorts what ever it took to stay off my face. I lost my first wife and daughter, friends and family at this point in my life. To put it mildly, I was one son of a, you know what. Then about twenty years ago my life took a big dive – I found myself in the gutter with a heroin habit, and at that point I felt down and out. Yet  God did a wondrous miracle – He spoke to me and He told me that He’d look after me and supply my needs – and over the years he has restored all the things I lost.

He saved the day for me when I was 16 years old. My years before that were a bit of a train crash waiting to happen. Between drink, drugs, joy riding, fighting and shop lifting there wasn’t much room for Jesus in my life.

My mother and father had divorced, which caused me to give up on life. My main aim was to do as I liked, no matter what the cost to myself or others. My mother tried her best to raise me as a single parent, between her and my sister they were frequently taking me to hospitals and getting me out of police cells.

In November 2001 my mother decided to take me to Disneyland as a treat. We went out to the states for 3 months, she was working with a Church as a worship leader, with the aim of visiting Disneyland on our return journey.

As the weeks went by, there was no real change in the way I looked at the church, although I had made a few very important Christian friends, there was no real concern for God. I met a few people that were into smoking weed and drinking and hung out with them instead.

So finally the time came for Disneyland, I was so excited by the thrill of going but God was the last thing on my agenda. I think it was the second night in our hotel room, I was really bored and my mum was sorting stuff out for the next day.

So I decided to sit out on the balcony and listen to my CD player, as I sat there I felt the urge to go and get a CD about the prayer of Jabez. I sat listening to it, but I didn’t really know what it was about or why I had chosen it. As the music played I started to cry, tears rolling down my cheeks, I started to think about what Christ had done for me, I felt the Lord come down on me and it was like he was holding me in his arms and embracing me as a father. Instantly I knew that God was real and that after all he had done for me, my life was to be lived for him.

I came back in to the hotel room beaming from ear to ear, I told my mum what had happened and she was over the moon with joy and thanksgiving, she had been praying for me to find Jesus for many years.

As I return to the United Kingdom and to the life I had left behind, I was a completely changed man. My friends could not understand what had happened to their rebellious friend, who was always game for trouble and now wanted to go to church.

Didn’t want to get drunk anymore, didn’t want to get high, didn’t want to steal things.

Through God’s work in me, 2 of those friends have given their lives to the Lord.

Thank you Father for saving my day, that day in Disneyland.

On starting uni last October, I was lusting after ‘the student lifestyle’ and wanted to show everyone I was a real ‘Essex Boy’. I wanted to get drunk, get laid, get high. Then after losing myself in a world of sin, I wasn’t even looking to go to Church, read my Bible or even take time to talk to God. Then my pastors back in Essex nagged at me to go to the RDC. Halfway through the second term I finally went. After a shakey second term, God turned my life upside down at Spring Revival Conference.

First of all He made me choose between him and the drink and drugs, then He knocked me off my feet and filled me with the Holy Spirit. All of a sudden, I was on fire for God at last, I wasn’t looking for the sex and every sinful thing the Essex culture tells me is normal. I was looking for ways to become a more Godly man, actually just being a man and not a boy was the important thing!

Now I am walking with Jesus. God has saved me from everything I thought was acceptable before. That, in my journey with God, has been the greatest thing He could save me from. I’m just so thankful that my old ways didn’t completely rob me of my purity.

Thank you Lord!

The reality was there was nothing special about me.  I was held back a year at school, didn’t excel at any particular sport; I loved adventure and fun but often struggled with loneliness and depression.    I guess I always believed in ‘God’ but I just saw him like a maths equation, which exists but holds no value or relevance in my life. When I went to college I attended some Christian events, mainly because of a girl I liked. I meet some people that had a real God and over the course of a couple months He became real to me.  I found out that Jesus was a lot different to most of the wimpy, buck toothed, boring losers that called themselves Christians and had previously formed my opinion of Christianity.  Jesus was full of life, adventure and was literally down to earth; this was the kind of guy I could go with.  Best of all Jesus could turn my life upside down and change me inside out.  I not only have more adventure and zeal for life than ever before but he healed my brokenness and touched my mind in an incredible way.  When He came into my life I kissed goodbye to mediocre manhood!

He saved me; He healed me; He gave me purpose.

My testimony is not a dramatic, overnight transformation but is that of a man slowly, but surely finding himself, his God, and his purpose.

I had what you might call a typical, “Christian” upbringing – I went to Sunday school, I went to church each Sunday, sang a few hymns, said a few prayers and then went back to enjoying my life throughout the week. I was quite content believing in God and living life for my pleasure.

During my final year in High school God became more real to me than ever before at a Christian conference called Spring Harvest. I stopped getting drunk, stopped swearing and wanted to do what He wanted me to do. The problem was, I didn’t know what He wanted me to do. I still went to church but the church I went to didn’t really tell me how God was relevant to me and my life.

A major change came when I went to college and met some other Christians who went to another church. When I visited this church I was blown away. There was no religious tradition, no hypocritical preaching of laws and rules, just a genuine belief and love of a real and powerful God.

The things I have experienced since coming to this church are incredible. I was miraculously healed from asthma – God INSTANTLY took every symptom away. I went from taking steroid inhalers twice a day and ventolin inhalers whenever I did exercise to nothing and I have not needed to use an inhaler since. God has given me joy, peace, health and a purpose to live for.

I did not experience these things before because I did not know how real and powerful God is. It was only after coming to this church and experiencing the REAL Jesus that I found true fulfilment and true LIFE.

He saved me, He healed me and He gave me purpose – He will do the same for you. Have you experienced the REAL Jesus?

Sam

I grew up in a very religious, catholic church and like almost all of my friends, I stopped believing. There simply was no reason to believe, I never heard about a ‘personal relationship’ with God either. I became really sure there was no God and that I could do everything I wanted to do, without God, all by myself. Not knowing how much more is possible with him.

Then, about a year ago, I came to Exeter. During fresher’s week, when almost everyone I met was drunk, I was surprised to find Nooma, a perfect place to escape the rush of the first week. I met some great people there, people that were loving and caring, without even knowing me. I kept going to Nooma every week, still not believing, yet realizing there was something more about these people.

A few weeks later I was walking home after Nooma, when God revealed himself to me. So powerfull. Years of disbelief were blown away in a few seconds. It changed my life completely. He did not only save my day, he saved my year, he saved my future.

Korneel.

I grew up in a christian home with fantastic parents. Although I believed from a young age that God was real, I had little more than a religious relationship with Him. I would turn up on a Sunday and I would read the bible and pray every now and then because of a guilty feeling.

I grew up in a hard school, and was bullied a lot, both because of what I believed and because they didn’t know any better. When I decided to go to college I wanted a change. I decided to be the one who fitted in and was not trodden on. However all I felt was bitterness, and this grew along with a deep depression. I was so sarcastic people would just sit around me to hear the tirade of whatever I decided to cut down with my tongue.

At the same time, I was living the ‘life’ I was partying and getting drunk, always seeking to fit in and to be excepted. But I was denying who I was, I still would turn up on a Sunday and I still believed God was real, but I never really lived my life for Him. I had no purpose and my depression grew deeper.

At uni I continued to live this way, but slowly the Lord drew me into His church through the motivation of my family and a large part due to my own self-frustration. At the end of my first year I left uni for the summer still depressed at my lack of purpose wondering what the point of me being there was and why God brought me to such a void and empty place. But during the course of the summer God revealed to me that the void and emptiness was not in Exeter, but in me. I decided to go for God and I have since recovered completely from depression, I have purpose, I am more secure with who I am than ever before, i love prayer and the bible and just want to follow Christ with all I have. He Saved The Day For Me!

My life got stuck in a rat race of bigger… bigger house, bigger car, bigger wine collection, bigger stereo, bigger belly, bigger TV, bigger house again, bigger title, bigger holiday, 2 cars (and bigger), bigger garden, bigger everything. 
Life was all about my bigger things; it was all hope I had – just bigger!

Then His voice came: …”move to Exeter; get trained…”! – so I did; packed up the career, the house, the cars, the things.. and the family.
The ups and downs are still there; but He saved my day; and with Him guiding, leading, teaching and training me – we did it! 
(all I actually did was make the decision; He pretty much did the rest!).
He saved my day.

Loving Jesus, loving fun, loving life – let’s have a party!
Olav

I grew up a Christian with no vision or real living for Christ in my life – like so many men, I was just going wherever life took me – never actually pursuing Christ.

At a crossroads, when University was my next move, Christ saved my future from the auto-pilot I was on, and put me onto the path that follows HIS calling.

Years later, married and wanting to buy a house, I had got back into auto-pilot. But God challenged me to trust Him for a house – a complete impossibility.

As I dared to believe and stepped out onto the water in faith, God met me. He saved my future again from a purposeless, non-victorious life, and gave me a testimony that I can tell everyone about.

Countless are the instances where I understand that the way He Save My Day was by saving me from MYSELF.

At the same time as a raw police re-cruit at 22, I was in a relationship with a girl whom I thought the world of, some one who I though could eventually marry. Due to various problems the relaitionship ended .
It was on the evening coming home on the motorway from Bristol (uk) down to Exmouth my emotions got the better of me and broke down.
My own world that I had built up around me was now in ruins. I happened to be parked in a motorway service station car park at the time and I spent some time mulling over my future plans.
Being the wreck that I was at that time I asked God to do something in my life. To my surprise I heard a voice say “go back to your youth group” a simple instruction, a calm voice, a simple direction which was the first time the realm of Jesus was real to me. I was shown a vision of a castle portcullis with hands and arms trying to reach out to me from the other side, I knew from this vision / picture, that I was now on safer territory.
From that defining moment asking Jesus in to my life and through a jigsaw pattern of plans and purposes, people and places, I now live and move and have my being different to that of 29 years ago.

Looking back from that defining moment, I would have never dreamt that I would be doing the exciting things I do today if it wasn’t for God’s intervention in presenting His Son to me, Being born anew has changed my veiw on many aspects of life, eternal grateful, to The real Jesus

This is my story, and It’s always still under continuing development,
Graham (Exeter.UK)