SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHY:

The amazing thing about being a Christian is that it's neither something you're born into, nor a spiritual attainment. It's something that happens to you quite apart from yourself.

It happened to me when I was just 13, but my memory's still good enough to remember what it was like not to be saved, and still to appreciate it's the best thing that's happened in my life.

My father had been to Guildford Crusaders Bible Class in his youth, and suggested that I might enjoy it, possibly to get me out of the house of a Sunday afternoon. There I met some incredible role models - tough, witty, anarchic kids mostly a few years older than me, but with a huge amount of love and a vital faith in Jesus Christ I'd never come across before.

There I also heard, for the first time, a gospel that wasn't about being good and getting to heaven, but about the fact that because of my sin I wasn't going to get to heaven at all. Yet Jesus had died on the cross to pay the 

penalty for all I'd done wrong, and  all Ihad to do was put my trust in that fact. I didn't like it at all, because I didn't want to think my destiny wasn't in my own capable hands. But the message had an inescapable power - like a cold shower, you couldn't ignore it.

Well, it took me 3 years till I got to the point, at a summer camp in Wales in 1965, when I had to come off the fence and ask Jesus to take my life over. I had to accept this gospel, even though it didn't even make complete sense to me at the time.

Now, an awfully long time later, it's really the only sense the world makes. I've been through school, university, most of a medical career. My faith's been challenged by intellectual opposition, the usual personal tragedies, the deceptions of prosperity and, in common with all Christians nowadays, the wholesale

denigration of the Bible and everything to do with real religion in our society.

But the truth is, despite all my questioning, doubting, backsliding and getting older - it's still the most wonderfully true good news this world has to offer. There is a truly good God behind the ambiguity of the world, and he's the God who sent his Son into history to bring back lost people into relationship with him, with each other, and with his creation. That's the real motivation for any creativity I might have.

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst

1 Timothy 1.15