Our Stories: Adam
I was brought up in a Christian family and have always believed in God for as long as I can remember, but I had never really thought about it or acknowledged it until recently.
Both my parents were Christians and they took me to Church every week so I believed I was a Christian without really thinking about it, throughout my first few years on Earth. I have been at The City Church all my life and attended the Kids’ Work like most children, but never really knew much about what it meant to be a Christian.
I joined the City Youth in the summer of 2016 and went to my first Newday Festival that same season. For those who don’t know, Newday is a Christian festival that happens every summer in Norfolk for Churches across the UK. It is a week-long youth event and thousands of young people attend every year; 7000, to be more precise. This gave me a taste of what Christianity really was, and I loved it, but there was still so much more to know.
It was the summer of 2017 when I began to understand what it truly meant to be a Christian. That year an American Pastor and author called Francis Chan spoke about how holy God really is, and how powerful he is. After his preach, I felt the Holy Spirit within me and it really moved me. During that week I purchased Francis Chan’s book, ‘Crazy Love’ and started reading it practically straight after I got home. When I was reading, I came across the same subject that Francis Chan spoke about at Newday. Once again I felt the Holy Spirit within me and my mum asked me if I was alright and I spoke about what happened that Thursday night at Newday and how I felt God was telling me that I should get baptised. The Bible tells us as Christians to be baptised and I thought I was ready – and what was stopping me? So in October of 2017 I was baptised.
Being baptised is not the end of a Christian’s story, however. You cannot just say, “I’ve been baptised so now I’m a real Christian,” you have to live out a Christian life, live as ‘… more than conquerors through Him who loved us…’ (Romans 8:37). We should ‘…offer [our] bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…’ (Romans 12:1), and this is what I hope to do in life as a Christian. Christians believe that ‘…God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16). We believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died and was resurrected so that we could be made white as snow.
I believe that God has this in store for every young person and I invite you to investigate who Jesus is to take up a unique testimony today.
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About the author
Adam is 13 and is a member of the City Youth Year 7-9 Canterbury Small Group.
He is one of the editors of the City Youth blog. He likes reading and painting Warhammer figures. His favourite subject in school is Philosophy and is also into Art and Computer Science.
