Short Testimony: With you Always
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The Great Commission
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” -
Testimony
I go a long way back with FGB. As a teenager in 1970s I would attend Belfast Chapter meetings, in the Europa Hotel, with my father (he was Vice President and secretary). I met Demos Shakarian in 1978 at a convention at London’s Wembley Conference Centre. He wrote ‘The Happiest People on Earth.’
I was a delegate at the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Blackpool Convention on Saturday 2 June 1979. I was due to meet up with my parents. Family friend and leader of the Christian renewal Centre, Rostrevor, Rev Cecil Kerr one of the main speakers.
Sadly it never happened. On 30th May 1979 the car I was travelling in was in an accident on Honister Pass, the Lake District, Cumbria, UK.
As I lay motionless on Honister Pass feeling life draining away, lungs collapsed, internal bleeding, broken back spinal cord severed – the Lord spoke words to me, words that I had learnt as a young boy at Sunday School.
“I am with you always “ – Matthew 28:20 It is a promise I held on to. He knows my days. He is the Alpha and Omega. He knows my life and my ending. As I lay, broken and barely able to breathe, I prayed that I would live. I held these words ‘with you always’ repeating them in my head to the rhythm of my heartbeat. I was an inpatient in Hospital for ten months!
Two of the things that kept me going during my 10 months in Hospital was
1. personal times of devotion and
2. Fellowship – visiting friends, family, letters, phone calls. Bert Sture, Bradford President was at the Conference in Blackpool, he visited regularly. My family were at my bedside constantly. The Lord continued to be with me always….
As I recovered in Pinderfields Hospital – the chaplain visited me. We prayed, shared Holy Communion, and fellowshipped. That was my first-hand experience of Chaplaincy in the NHS.
“I am with you always.” Matthew 28:20
Isa 30:15 ‘in quietness and trust is your strength’
Much later the Lord spoke clearly to me about a career change. I was appointed Hospital Chaplain at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and in 2010 I moved to the Isle of Wight and was appointed senior chaplain at Mountbatten Hospice and St Mary’s Hospital.
Because that 23-year-old was pinned under a car in a ravine at Honister Pass in the Lake District (UK) and because he clung to the Lord …. tended by a chaplain ….and in time I became one of those chaplains who visited and comforted and brought prayers and a message of healing to people who were going through their own trauma.
