00:00
I certainly wasn't gonna
be one of those where
00:03
wife goes to church and I didn't.
00:05
But it was like being on
the outside looking in.
00:11
[Both] This is our story.
00:12
I grew up in the home
of Salvationist parents
00:17
and it wasn't something they
put on with their uniform.
00:19
It was something that
completely overwhelmed every day
00:23
and every moment of their lives.
00:24
When I began going out with
my wife, Dee, I realised that
00:28
that was so deep in her
that I wanted to find out
00:32
why her faith was so unshakeable.
00:34
He said to me one day,
00:36
"Do we have to go to church tonight?"
00:37
And I said, "No, of course we don't."
00:40
And he said, "Oh great."
00:42
And I said, "But I wanna go,
because that's what I do,
00:45
and that's who I am and if
you can't understand my faith
00:48
then you won't ever really understand me."
00:51
But even that wasn't
the warning bell that,
00:53
that marrying somebody who wasn't saved
00:56
was going to be complicated.
00:58
There's a lot of temptations
in the military lifestyle.
01:00
Booze is cheap, there's a lot of partying.
01:04
Friday night is party night.
01:05
And most of experience of
01:08
church and Christians
01:11
had been quite touchy feely.
01:12
It can be difficult as a
wife, a Christian wife of a
01:16
non-Christian husband
in as much as you think,
01:19
"If I were a better witness,
01:21
if I were better at living this out,
01:22
at looking more like Jesus
he'd really get this."
01:26
We had this Christian men's group,
01:27
we met at seven o'clock in the morning.
01:30
And it was talking about making faith
01:38
Which really made the difference.
01:41
I woke up about 1:30 in the morning,
01:45
and song running through my head
01:49
about my chains fell off.
01:52
And I felt just a surge of
heat running through my body.
01:57
And a voice in my head
saying, "You're forgiven."
01:59
That was the point at which
it became real for me.
02:02
I was absolutely elated
and felt incredibly humbled
02:07
because although I'd not been
faithful in praying for Kim
02:10
every day, God knew my heart for him.
02:13
One of the shocking things
was that a lot of people said,
02:16
"We didn't know he wasn't a Christian."
02:18
You can't assume because
people live a good life
02:22
that they actually are in
relationship with Jesus.
02:25
The impression that people
have got of Jesus is of some
02:29
almost feminine kind of person.
02:33
But when we look at the life He led,
02:36
He was trained as a carpenter.
02:39
He could relate to working men
02:41
and, as I look back,
02:44
I realise there are many times
02:47
when I could really have been in the poo.
02:51
And it's only through God's
grace that Jesus is my saviour.
02:56
I feel that we are finally both
02:58
travelling in the same direction.
03:00
There is a bedrock now to our marriage
03:05
that simply wasn't there before.
