www.thegilmours.co.uk

“I was nurtured within a Christian family. Many of my childhood memories relate to life in the community of the church- in fact, I don’t remember ever not going to church. But, going to church or even being baptised as a child didn’t make me a Christian “by default”!

As a teenager, I began considering my upbringing and I put my principles under the microscope… regularly. In fact, about every sunday morning at 11am!- I spent a lot of time at church youth group debating, questioning my assumptions about God. I studied philosophy in my final year of school which only confused me further, helping me to ask increasingly irrelevant, abstract questions to myself, to youth group leaders and to God. Strangely, I still stubbornly believed that God would help me to understand over time- in fact, he had already had provided all the evidence that I needed but I just couldn’t “see the wood for the trees”. But at least I got my philosophy qualification!

I left home to University in 1997 where I met with what can only be described as diversity itself! Halls of Residence are incredible- living each day with more than 140 different people with radically different upbringings. Joining university-wide clubs and societies was a way to meet those with shared passions and interests.

Despite joining 7 other societies, from ultimate frisbee to the real ale society, the society in which I made most friends turned out to be… yeah, you’ve guessed it, the Christian Union. “Why?” I kept asking myself?! I was frustrated that I had moved from one comfort zone to another, but I found myself taking responsibilities in various societies as a “christian”, while still unsure of my personal faith.

It reached a point in early 1999 when I was still holding deep doubts and questions inside, while, on the outside, I was exuding a fragile confidence and certainty. I marvelled at God’s creation and all the wonderful friends He had given me, but inside I was struggling to enjoy these gifts. I was deceiving myself. And I knew it. So I prayed to God to give me a new understanding of Him. I begged Him to help me to stop questioning and doubting. I asked God to bring me to account (I think my actual words were “to the foot of Your Throne”, an admission of how small and helpless I was). But when would I get an answer?

The only one who could force me to decide between God and everything else was God himself. At that time, there were so many distractions: duties, a lovely girlfriend, parties, holiday adventures, praise services, ambitions, job applications, summer jobs and money (student grants and loans went up!).

One sunday night, after a great, loud and joyful evening praise service at the St. Andrews Baptist Church, I returned home anything but joyful. Infact, I was almost in tears with despair. I was so tired of my doubts. I sat down and wrote down every question spinning through my mind. Did God create the world? Did he create me? Does he know me? How can we know me? How can he forgive me? Why send Jesus when he can do anything from his position as God? Why does God let suffering happen? If God is a judge, why doesn’t he finish his deliberations now?!

By midnight, I was getting to the answers. I got through half of them through knowledge “inside”. And then I was forced to turn to the Bible for the rest. Flicking back and forward through Jesus’ words, through the more philosophical assurances of Paul and through the Psalms, I realised how much I had been relying on this instinctive, inherited knowedge. I had never answered my questions using the words of God himself.

I was fascinated and challenged by the book of Romans. Chapter 12 seemed like a manifesto for a life in which Jesus Christ comes first. It provided answers to so many of my questions. I felt like a new, scared, rebel believer in the city of Rome. Despite being at University, a centre for study, reflection, controversy and maturing, as Rome was in Paul’s time, I was living “underground”, avoiding controversy, scared to take a side and to defend it. Now it was time to change.

At 3am, I fell asleep, having answered almost every question with “I believe….”. I think I missed class the next day.

I looked back at the answers. My defence of my faith surprised me. There in front of me were the answers to the questions I was asking over and over. In those answers was an admission that I was of no value to God without accepting Jesus as my saviour.

At last I had the answers. But they weren’t my answers. I had “visited the foot of His Throne”. I knew that these answers were God’s answer to my prayer. My inspiration and assurance were renewed. My knowledge was consolidated and my doubts subsided.

In fact, those doubts never returned, although I obviously still have doubts about other things! In March 1999, I set about living according to Romans 12, “in view of God’s mercy”. I began limiting the role of my surrounding Christian community and reaching out to get to know others who did not believe, accepting that I was not in any way less sinful or more Godly than them (thoughts that I had harboured in the past). I deliberately reduced my responsibilities within the church to make more time for God and to be more genuine before Him and others. Life has not been the same since. Later that year, a close friend from my Hall of Residence became a Christian, in part because God had changed me and made me more able to serve Him. It was such a source of encouragement, to know that living for God included winning hearts for God!

In hindsight I can summarise my testimony as follows:

It wasn’t until I lived in relationship with other people that I realised the value of a relationship with God.

It wasn’t until I realised how badly I could get things wrong that I appreciated the lengths to which God went to forgive me and you, through giving his Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice for our individual and collective sins.

It wasn’t until I had the choice between hanging around with Christians or others, that I appreciated the community that God makes of His people.

It wasn’t until I was asked to sign on a dotted line what I believed (at a Christian Union joining meeting), that I discovered I had a choice about what I believed.

It wasn’t until I met other Christians only hanging about with other Christians that I decided I wanted to live a distinctive life for Christ.

It wasn’t until I surrounded myself with non-believers or even those who had never read or heard the news of Jesus Christ, that I wanted to meet and spend more time with them.

Today, I want to serve God in every part of my life, building a relationship with everyone I meet with the objective of sharing my faith with them. I am determined to follow Jesus’ Great Commandment even when the going gets tough; ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ “(Mark vs30-31). Thanks to God, I’m no longer Doug the doubter. All praise and honour go to Him!”

June 2006