I have been a Christian for over forty years , having come to know Jesus as my Lord and Saviour when I was seven years of age. In 1978 I met my husband at Bible College- the Bible training Institute, Glasgow where we were both studying. Mind you the college was nicknamed as a Bridal Training Institute.
God blessed me in that I was born of lovely Christian parents, but that was not enough I,Irene, even young as I was back then had to make my own decision for Jesus and ask Him into my life , repenting of my sins. That was only the beginning of my walk with the Lord though. I used to say I loved Jesus and I meant it, I really did, but you know now I find I am falling more and more in love with Him and my greatest desire is to know Him more.
In my late teens I first encountered the Charismatic Movement, the Holy Spirit became more of a person to me, I started to see that God was still in the healing business, although my understanding was weak. However although I had an initial experience of the Holy Spirit, outside influences had me question the tongue language God had given me so it was suppressed for many years. I was engulfed by a Spirit of Confusion.
However, even although the Lord took me into Bible College I had no idea what victorious Christian living was all about, I got married and graduated from Bible College and I would like to be able to say I moved from strength to strength in my Christian life but I can’t say that. Within five years of graduating from Bible College I had three small children and spiritually I was on a slippery slope. Whole days would go by without me giving God the time of day, yet I would attend church every Sunday, my husband was by then a Baptist Church Deacon regularly preaching the Word of God yet we were barely praying together, we would argue about financial problems, and didn’t really look to God for provision. I was a Bible College graduate who didn’t really know that God wanted to provide for us. Our marriage was shaky at times and if it hadn’t been for God we would never have survived the twenty- eight years which we have now been married. Years went by and both my husband and I were both active in Church, We thought we really knew God, but really although we were both saved and had some knowledge of God at a personal level, it was more knowing about Him than knowing Him.
Twelve years ago God TV came on the scene in the UK. My husband and I got Sky TV shortly afterwards and I also got my first PC in 1997. I started watching the God channel, particularly at that time Joyce Meyers, my Spiritual eyes started to open. We connected to the internet and I started visiting various Christian sites on the World Wide Web. God sneaked up on me and got me back to really studying His Word again particularly the Book of Acts at that time. As I read through Acts and studied this wonderful Book new revelation started to come through to me, I let my Spiritual language flow freer than ever before, God started to reveal so many new things to me as I studied His Word.
I found God did stuff with my emotions, I would walk along the streets and break into tears crying for the lost. I had always felt a compassion for unsaved but not like this.
God was starting a new process with me. A few years later I came across a certain Ministry and Internet Forum and I became a moderator there and then a director, I was the Director of Education not because I was a Spiritual Giant but because I was a Bible College Graduate. I became full of my own importance, I became puffed up, I was also by this time a Prayer Ministry Leader and Secretary in a small Pentecostal Church.
For a few years though my husband and I had been attending our current church and we had been learning much of the Father’s heart of God and God was starting to radically impact our lives. Within a two month period after I had cried out to God to be humbled God asked me to resign from my position in the Forum Ministry and He asked my husband and myself to put aside our positions and leave the church we were in and move on into Glasgow Elim that we might learn of Him, that we might seek His Face and put our relationship with Him before our positions.
Our Pastor is a lovely man who is on fire for God, the presence of God in our church is awesome, but the greatest thing of all is that God is revealing more and more of Himself to me, I am on a journey a journey of discovery and it’s a wonderful journey I may have been on it for a long time but I’m probably aware more than ever now that I must die to self and I can do nothing without the Holy Spirit empowering me.
Taken from a fuller version here
http://www.discipleofjesussite.com/aboutme.htm
Then the Lord got me involved with the Salt and Light Ministry and took me into the work almost full time. For a year or more the Lord had put Salt and Light on my mind before we actually moved into our current church and within 3 months I was fully involved, previously I had done some work with the homeless on a one to one basis.
Baptism in the Spirit is an initial opening up to the power of the Spirit but there is always a more, there is a deeper place for us all to go and we need to Seek His Face.