
This weekend, I had a wonderful time for the second year in a row at the Living Waters festival in Hokitika. It was a blessed time filled with fantastic music and wonderful testimonies of God's goodness.
This time I had the privilege of singing 8 of my original songs that I have written over the last 14 months and a chance to share a little of what God has done in my life.
To recap a little of my testimony, I was brought up as an atheist. Although I remember sneaking out from a music lesson to go to a Christian bookshop at 7 to get an Anglican prayer book with bright colorful pictures so I was seeking, but as a teenager, I was an atheist who argued with the Christians in my class and I could not see any reality of God. My mother had said that the worst thing I could ever do to her, was to become a Christian.
I seemed to have a lot of Christian friends, and when I got to university, I reconnected with my Christian aunt and uncle in Gore. The drinking and party scene at university got old fast, and I spent a lot of time with my family in Gore. I used to watch soppy movies about Jesus and would cry but still, I could not see the reality of God. The story of me becoming a Christian was unique and I wrote a novel about it which I fictionalised for effect. The terrible and great year of Molly Evans was loosely based on my story of becoming a Christian. Click here to go to the novel.
My uncle asked me what would it take for me to believe and I said I would need to see evil. At that time in my life, I believed we were only physical and there was no good or evil. However, after I read a horror story, I could sense an evil presence in my room after I had a nightmare. My delving into the darkness unaware had woken me up to spiritual reality.
I tried at that stage to use crystals to protect me from evil, but my uncle advised me that only Jesus could protect me, and I needed to make a commitment to Him and get off the fence. I prayed a silent prayer, wanting to know Him, but it wasn't until I got to Auckland in the holidays and got a holiday job that I made a full commitment to the Lord and started going to church.
It was the first time I was getting on with my mother for years until I went to church one morning and she asked me where I had been. I said to church and she asked me if I had become born again. I said, if you want to call it that. It took a day until I felt the full effects of her wrath, with her yelling at me I was dead to her and that my father would be in hell after what he had done in the past, even though he had become a Christian before he died. Mum said that he had reverted to his childhood and was very derogatory about it.Â
It took years before she softened, with her often putting me down in front of her friends. My sister later became a Christian, and I am thrilled we are on a similar journey.Â
The Lord has brought me through so much in my life and I am so grateful. And still, daily I often need to choose life and to take every thought captive. When there are stressful situations, I need to remember what He has done in my life and how he has brought me through. I now have so many testimonies in my life, testimonies of emotional freedom, financial provision, and physical healing.
At the festival, I heard some very vulnerable testimonies and I felt privileged to hear them. For example, two brave souls sharing how God has healed them from addiction and sexual abuse. God is so good.
I hope that more people can make it to the Living Waters next year (it will be January 17th, 2026). It was amazing and such a time of connection with God and a reminder of His goodness. I met so many wonderful people.Â
In the meantime, remember that God is always good, all the time! And He loves you.Â
John 3:16 God so loved the world , that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.
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