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Prayer and Salvation

I have always been a Christian. I was lucky enough to have been brought up in a church with good men as priests who I was able to admire, and a good sense of community. My faith has never felt irrelevant or outdated, as I know it often seems to many people. Before I ever understood the theology behind Christianity I was given a deep sense of what it means to be a Christian, of the mission of love we are called to. As I have become older I have started to challenge my own faith, but at the same time I have learnt about the reasons why we do what we do and I have never felt the need to rebel. I have always had the sense that God is there for me. However lonely we feel he will be there for us. We do not have to do anything. His love is real and totally unconditional

I am a deeply, deeply insecure person. I have a huge degree of paranoia about being accepted by other people and I find it difficult to accept myself. Not that unusual, I know lots of people who have had a great deal of pain in their life. I have had to lean on God for support often when things have been hard. Over the past few years I have found myself more and more putting God in a box, and I only just realised. I have been clogging my faith up with doubts and qualifications. At the same time I have found myself hiding the real me from people more and more. Before the summer some very painful things happened to me, and I have been very fragile for a while. I have not been able to lean on God as I once did, because I was no longer sure I was a Christian.

In the last few days I learnt something that upset me a great deal. My course involves a huge amount of work and I find it difficult to release anyway. I had worked myself into a stupor with worry. Then, yesterday, someone I used to be extremely close to decided to go all out to hurt me, I still do not know why. The things that were said ripped away my ability to cope any longer. I found myself in my chaplain’s office (Tony Lester) in tears. He is a wise man and what he said helped me tremendously, but I have needed more healing than just words. Following this I went to Mass in York Minster, it had been planned for some time but with the way I was feeling I was not going to go. I am very glad that I did because I found myself once again able to feel God’s love for me. I know that Jesus is able to know my needs far better than I. Yet when I have prayed it has been like a child, reciting what I think He wants to hear. Last night I found myself finally able to open up and simple let Him love me and heal me. I did not need to say anything because He knows.

This is not quite the happy ending you were expecting. My life still requires a great deal of sorting out. The point of my article, though, is a message of hope. Christianity teaches that when we Know that Jesus loves us our salvation is secured. I have always believed this but never understood it. I hope that you never have to feel as low as I did, but because we are Christians we never have to despair. No matter how much we struggle to see God he is there, holding us up. However lonely we feel he will be there for us. We do not have to do anything. His love is real and totally unconditional.

Matt Topping.

Last modified: 25th November 2005