Acts 26:18 – “..to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”
The following is the testimony of Clare of London, England of how Almighty God worked in her life by His grace to bring her ‘from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that [she]..receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith’ in Lord Yeshua the Messiah, Son of the living God.
Clare, how long have you been saved?
42 years.
In your own words, what does “saved” mean and where in the Scripture do you derive your understanding?
Saved means being rescued and redeemed by God. I see it a bit like a court room: we are all guilty in the eyes of God and therefore we are all condemned but as we stand in the dock, somebody else takes the punishment so that we can then be declared not guilty. To me that’s what being saved means. The Scripture I always go to for this is John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ I think its that word, ‘whoever’ which particularly strikes me because for most of my life I have felt that I don’t deserve it, but then none of us deserves it. The point is that – it is whoever believes and looks to the Lord.
That’s how I see it – that basically I am guilty, but I’m declared not guilty because the punishment has been paid by someone else and that Someone is Jesus the Christ.
Clare’s background
Can you share with us about your family background?
I was born in Cheshire, North-West England to parents who were musicians; my dad was a professional violinist. When I was a very young child my mum was what I would describe as a nominal church goer, but my dad was an atheist – as he would say himself, ‘a complete heathen.’ In fact, he wasn’t just an atheist, he was hostile to God, and although I didn’t know it then, I later learnt that he was also into the occult. I am the eldest of the three children.
In 1978 we moved to North London and my mum started taking me and my sisters to a local church fellowship. I was five years old by this time and shortly after our move, the Lord saved my mum. My siblings and I all attended the Sunday School, and I can remember listening to all the stories with interest. My dad however remained hostile to God, and we all knew it. I have two particular memories of that time which stand out: we were asked to make a booklet at Sunday School about what we were thankful to God for and so I made mine, which included being very thankful for my mum and dad and took it home. I can remember my dad coming upstairs to say goodnight to me, picking up the booklet and saying, ‘what’s this?’ Although he would never have hurt me, I remember the fear as I listened to the contempt in his voice. I told him that I had made it in church and him just slamming it down but not saying anything else. Another time, when I was reading a little booklet called ‘Helpful Penny’ and my dad asked me about it, after I told him I had received it at Sunday School, again he slammed it down. My dad made it very clear that he thought we were being indoctrinated.
What were your thoughts and feelings as a child when you thought about God? Can you remember when you first heard the Gospel? What were you told? What impact did that have on you?
I can barely remember much before I was saved but as a very young child my view of God was just love really. I’ve just always known that God loved me. Because God is described as a Father in Scripture and to me, my father was so loving that I had no problem with the concept of a God of love. I know some people have a real problem with it if they’ve not had love in their lives, but I had so much love that to me, a God of love made total sense. I just knew I was loved, and I’ve always had this sort of image almost of a father figure just stroking my hair and face – which may sound ridiculous but that’s how it is for me.
I heard the Gospel at a very young age through going to an evangelical church Sunday School and hearing the Bible stories and about Lord Jesus. When I thought about God I thought about Lord Jesus and as a child, thinking about God was just thinking of love. I honestly cannot remember what I would have thought about God before this time.
When did you become conscious of the Gospel of Lord Yeshua, that Messiah died for your sins, personally?
At age 7 when I was saved and as I grew older, that conscious awareness deepened.
Clare’s Journey to Faith
What was your journey to saving faith from then on? How did God work in your life to bring you to the light of the saving knowledge and salvation of Lord Yeshua the Messiah?
As mentioned above, the Lord saved my mum when I was very young so it was difficult to remember much before I was saved except that I can’t remember visiting a church before we moved to London.
My memories are therefore of going to church and although I can’t remember the date, I remember the day the Lord saved me very clearly. I was seven years old and was at church sitting near the back listening very carefully to the talk the preacher was giving us. He held up a Holman Hunt picture called ‘Light of the World’ depicting Lord Jesus at a door surrounded by brambles etc, pointed to it, and said to us that this was our heart, and that Jesus wants to come in. I listened as he told us that our hearts are dark, we’ve shut Jesus out, but He’s knocking because He wants to come in and He will not force Himself. When I think of it now, I don’t know whether its theologically sound but, in a sense, I don’t really care because the Lord used it. As I listened, I thought to myself, ‘yes, that’s me, my heart is hard, and I do want Jesus to come in and I want Him in my life.’ I can’t remember now whether it was at home or at church, but I remember experiencing conviction of sin and sincerely praying – and meaning it – telling Lord Jesus that I had sinned and I needed Him to come into my life. I think it was especially the brambles in the picture which touched me so deeply, because I just knew that this was my heart – I knew it even then at seven years old that it was a dark place. I knew I wanted the light and that I needed the light. As I say, I can’t be sure where I was when I prayed that prayer of faith to Lord Jesus, but I know it was that day.
When did the assurance of salvation come? When did you know you were saved? Can you describe how that felt?
It may not have been immediately; it may have become deeper over the years as I heard more teachings and continued on in the Lord. I knew however that Lord Jesus had rescued me and that my salvation depended upon Him and not on me. I’m not sure whether this was an instant realisation from the time I prayed to the Lord, but I certainly never had a fear of death from that moment. As a child and teenager, I never had a struggle with assurance – that came later as I got older.
The more I have walked with the Lord Jesus in faith, the more acutely aware of my sin I am! That might sound strange, but I’ve become more and more aware of this the older I have become and it’s not external sin so much as the internal sin. The sins of the heart that nobody sees! I’ve become increasingly aware, especially as I’ve gotten older. My mum told me that after I had got saved, I stopped having so much anger – apparently when I was very little, I used to have tantrums, and these went after I was saved. I do remember when I was five, I used to lie a lot. For example, I remember I lied at school about being related to someone on a very popular children’s television drama series at the time; I told people that one of the girls in it was my sister! I don’t know why I told lies, but I know that after I was saved, I didn’t do that anymore.
In your own words what is repentance and its connection with salvation?
Repentance is acknowledging and accepting that you are a sinner, that you were born a sinner, that sin has separated you from God; you know that you are helpless to do anything about this, resulting in being deeply sorry for your sins and therefore turning away from your sins to God through Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour. For me, the best picture of repentance is the parable where Lord Jesus talked about the tax-collector and the self-righteous Pharisee recorded at Luke 18:9-14:
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
The Pharisee was saying he was so glad I’m like this and I’m not like that and I’m doing this and I’m giving that – me, me, me, me, me – and I’m going to make my own way to heaven; he was trusting in his own outward righteous acts. The tax-collector however couldn’t even look up and just said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’ and to me that’s repentance. God have mercy on me, a sinner – and knowing in our hearts that we are sinners! As the Scriptures say, ‘All have sinned’ [Ed. see Romans 3:23] – all of us – and even ‘our righteousness’ it says ‘are like filthy rags’ [Ed. see Isaiah 64:6]. It’s that knowing therefore of our need of mercy from God because of our sin – and sin’s penalty – and turning to God for His mercy to be poured out upon us, because Lord Jesus has atoned for our sin. It doesn’t mean that we never sin again – I wish it did! – but it does mean that you are deeply sorry and also turning away from sin, knowing that without Lord Jesus, your sins will land you in hell.
Being sorry for your sins is not enough – sin has still got to be paid for. Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died in becoming the Sin-offering for our sin when He was crucified as the sinless Lamb of God, His sinless blood shed. He died, was buried and rose on the third day as the Scriptures tells us. He did this to save us from our sins and it is through repentance that by grace through faith we can receive God’s salvation and be clothed by the righteousness of Lord Jesus.
From Then to Now
Since then, can you share a little bit about how the Lord Yeshua has worked in your life?
Around the time the Lord saved me, with child faith and understanding, I knew that my dad was destined for hell. The faith of a child may be that of a child but it’s very profound. I used to listen to the sermons at church and they would say that if you don’t believe you will be lost. I used to say to my mum that dad was lost and although she tried to fob me off that it didn’t mean my dad, I knew it did. I remember one Christmas one of my mum’s best friends coming around as we were putting up the Christmas tree. She had been saved around the same time as my mum and she told my dad he needed to be saved, I remember getting onto him too saying, ‘you’re going to go to hell daddy. You’re going to go to hell.’ I remember his response was that he would never believe, that we would never get him to believe and that it was all rubbish! I knew in my heart that if he didn’t believe he was going to go to hell – even though I was only seven or eight at the time, I really knew it.
The reason I mention my dad is because his conversion had a very profound impact on us as a family. In 1982, I was around nine years old when he was very powerfully saved in a service at church. We were singing the hymn, ‘It Is A Thing Most Wonderful’ and he said he just knew the words were true. I was in Sunday School, and I remember my mum coming up to me saying, ‘Daddy is taking communion. He’s got saved’ I can remember this so clearly.
Our lives then really did turn upside down because my dad’s conversion was very dramatic in the sense that he went from being a professional musician to being a street preacher. We then had to leave London because he joined a Christian Mission ministry and gave up his music. To be honest, I can’t say that I went rejoicing when the family moved to Wales. It was a very very difficult time for me because I just didn’t want to go. I had been in London since I was five and I was fourteen by this time. It sounds really trite now, but it was a most powerful wrench at that point that I had ever had in my life. As I saw it, I was being dragged from London, which to me was everything I had known, to a little village in South Wales. It was not easy at all! The day we found out we were moving on 11 July – and I know that because The Daily Light, a Christian devotional I’ve had all my Christian life – the Scripture was Isaiah 41:10, ‘Do not fear because I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’ For me, this Scripture enabled me to know and believe that God was going to be with me, because it was a massive wrench to go from London to South Wales. So, we had a very dramatic change, and I was taken away from everything I knew and at that point, it was the biggest trauma of my life.
It was not easy to be a Londoner in Wales, especially when your dad is a preacher! There were difficult times in school, but the Lord did sustain me. He brought me good Christian friends and the church we attended as a family had a fantastic ministry to the youth. I also met these on other youth groups and Christian camps and between the ages of 14 to 18, my faith was strengthened and really grew.
At eighteen I left the family home in Wales to attend University in Nottingham [Ed. East Midlands in England] during which time my dad began pastoring a church in Wales. At some point great difficulties arose for my dad and the horrendous experiences towards the end of his ministry there really shook my faith – not in the Lord and I want to particularly emphasise that – but rather in Christians. I found university to be a big challenge because going there was, for me, like entering a cesspit! This was around 1992 – so goodness knows what universities are like today! I remember walking into my room at the university after my mum and dad had left, feeling overwhelmed and there on the table among all the Freshers’ leaflets was one from the Christian Union. I thought to myself, ‘Yes! There’s light here!’ and the Christian Union became my lifeline for those three years. I ended up having a great time there, meeting lovely Christian people but also others whose understanding of The Christian Faith was somewhat different to mine. I remember meeting one girl who was a Minister’s daughter and so in my naivete I thought she must therefore be a Christian but in a discussion on faith one time, she called me ‘a fundamentalist.’ I had never even heard that word before and didn’t know what fundamentalist meant! I think what she meant was ‘oh, you’re one of those Bible-believing nutty Christians.’ So, my eyes were opened to different views of all sorts of people who wore the Christian label. I remember having an argument with the President of the Christian Union who wanted to show as an “evangelistic tool” a film which was blasphemous! As I argued how wrong this was, the response was that I was being narrow-minded! Nevertheless, although it did have these dodgy bits, a lot of what the Christian Union did was excellent, particularly the missions. The Lord kept me through university, and I do believe that this was largely through the presence of the Christian Union and small fellowship groups as well as being a part of various church congregations through my time there.
As the Lord worked in my life, I can see His unequivocal clear guiding at certain times in my life. For example, after my degree I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and it was my dad who suggested I should be a teacher. I initially thought I shouldn’t but, in the end, listened to the suggestion and applied to do my teacher training in Cardiff, Wales. However shortly before starting the course was cancelled! I was then offered a place in Nottingham and to me, it was the Lord saying that He didn’t want me in Cardiff, He wanted me in Nottingham and so I remained there for a further year for my training. After this I taught in a school in Derbyshire for about 4/5 years where I ended up having some amazing conversations with the Head of my department about the Lord. I don’t stand on the streets evangelising like my dad does, it’s just not my way, but now and again, through friendships I am enabled to share the Gospel in sharing my faith. You just never know when ‘seeds’ are being sown. I do believe there was a particular reason the Lord wanted me at that school but after a short duration, I had become very unhappy there and again through the Lord’s grace and leading I left. By this time I had met the man who would become my husband and so wanted to move to London, where he lived. I needed a job however and one of my mum’s friends mentioned to me that her daughter was attending a school where they were looking for a Head of History (I’m a History Teacher) and so the job landed on my lap! This, for me, was a clear leading of the Lord that He wanted me to be in London.
When I moved back to London, I was just amazed that I had actually left it and that after the sadness I had had about this, the Lord eventually brought me back! The Lord gave me a job that I loved, and I got married at 27 to a fellow believer in Lord Jesus and settled in North London. The Lord has done great things in our marriage, kept us together and blessed us with wonderful children but it has not all been plain sailing.
In 2003 at 20 weeks into my first pregnancy a scan revealed that my baby was too small. I was then referred to a Foetal Unit in a London Hospital where the thing I feared most was realised. On Friday 28th February 2003 I was told my baby had died. It had been the thing I dreaded most happening to me because as a teenager I had known a lady that this had happened to. Sometimes the Lord allows you to go through things which, humanly speaking, is your worst fear. The worst thing about this all was going through labour which happened on 2nd March 2003. The Daily Light Christian devotional (mentioned above) on that date had written for that morning reading, ‘God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction’ [Ed. Genesis 41:52 KJV] and it was all about the sufferings of various griefs working greater purposes in and for us [Ed. you can read the entry online for this date, e.g., at https://www.youdevotion.com/light/march/2]. I was in labour for 8 hours and the church fellowship my husband and I attended were praying for us at the evening service. Shortly after, while the mid-wife had popped out for something, with my mother there with me, I gave birth to my daughter. I knew I had given birth because I could feel it despite her being so small. For that evening, the Daily Light reading is headed with the Scripture, ‘There remains a sabbath rest for the people of God’ – Hebrews 4:9] and begins the devotional text with the words: ‘There the wicked cease from turmoil; and there the weary are at rest’ [Ed. see Job 3:17]. It was all about Heaven. The hospital kept me overnight and I held my daughter. We didn’t actually know at the time that she was a girl because she was so early but six months later the Consultant told us. In later years my husband and I named her Talitha, after the little girl to whom Lord Jesus spoke, saying ‘“Talitha, cumi,” which is translated, “Little girl, I say to you, arise”’ [Ed. see Mark 5:41]. But that night, in Barnet hospital, I had one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had. In the dark and peace of the hospital, knowing my baby was next door, the Scripture ‘there the wicked cease from turmoil…there the weary are at rest’ was being spoken into my head all night. Literally all night!
After this terrible experience I fell into what I could only describe as a very deep very dark time of despair. I came home from the hospital in just utter darkness. One morning after a sleepless night, I came downstairs, thinking, ‘where is that baby? The baby never made a profession of faith. The baby could be in hell!’ Demonic attacks often come at your weakest point, and it was such an attack! In my head was the thought that I didn’t know anything in the Bible about being stillborn so had come downstairs to look in my Bible Concordance and looked up the word ‘stillborn.’ The Scripture given was, Job 3:16 so I started reading the passage, which records Job at the time he wished he had never been born because of his terrible experiences. It begins with these words: ‘Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day? 17 There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest’ (John 3:16-27, underlined for emphasis). Talk about the word of God being a living word! It was like the Lord was saying to me that the baby was with Him! This Scripture was about a stillborn child, and I didn’t know that the Scripture I had read the night my daughter was born, and which was spoken into me throughout that night was about a still-born child! It was like an assurance after all that doubt and all that despair. The despair didn’t immediately disappear, and I grieved for many months but the knowledge that my baby was with the Lord was certain. He told me that through His word. At your deepest darkest point the Lord is there. He doesn’t spare you from the suffering, but He is there with you in it. To this day, when I think of how the Lord met me at that point of deep despair through His word, it still amazes me.
Roughly eighteen months later I became aware one day that my monthlies were a bit late, and I wondered whether I might be pregnant. My Daily Light that day on 20th June was ‘Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you’ and as I read this, I knew I was pregnant [Ed. see Exodus 2:9, underline for emphasis]. I also knew my baby was a boy. When my son was born, we named him Samuel because I completely identified with Hannah in the Scriptures who was so desperate for a child the high priest thought she was drunk! I had so longed to be pregnant after losing Talitha. 1 Samuel 1:20 records: ‘So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.” A couple of years later the Lord blessed us with our third child, another son.
Over the 22 years of marriage the Lord has kept my family and I going, and we trust in Him to continue to do so.
Can you tell me about the ministry you in serve in, what it is and how you came to know the Lord was calling you into this ministry?
The Lord gifted me with good communication skills and enabled me to teach history from the age of twenty-two. At the same time, I also sensed a need and desire to use the teaching skills for the Lord’s purposes as well and so also taught in Sunday School from this time. It has been a privilege, blessing and joy despite at times wondering how much you are impacting the children you teach. You can go for years without seeing any real fruit but every now and again, you do see it and it is amazing. I recall one occasion where I was talking about the sinful woman who came to the Lord, recorded at Luke 7:36-50, explaining the Lord loves us, that we can come to Him for forgiveness as we are and how we cannot earn our salvation. There was this young child about eight or nine years old who I wasn’t even aware was listening to what I was saying, but she was. As part of my explanation, I played a song by a Christian songwriter Don Fransisco, called ‘You’re Beautiful to Me’ based on the same passage of Scripture, gave an application of it all and didn’t think much more about it. At the end of the Sunday School however, the little girl came up to me and she was crying and wanted a hug. She was really really touched, and this really touch me – I just thought, ‘wow!’ I’ve come to see that the children’s ministry, teaching the word of the living God to them, is really important. Recently, I overheard my youngest son, now well into his teens, discussing the Trinity with a friend. He explained it like this: ‘an egg has got a shell, a yoke and a white – there all different parts but there all one egg’! I had given that illustration many years ago to the children when he was in my Sunday school class – and its stuck! So, I do believe this is a vital ministry, especially in this day and age when who knows what is being taught to our children in schools! I look forward to resuming using the gift God has given me for this ministry in the Lord’s time.
Within the will of God, do you have any hopes for the future that you can share with us?
My hopes are that my children will be kept by God in the Faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and that if my boys marry, they will marry Christian girls and raise Christian children in the fear of the Lord. This is my deepest hope. This hope includes my nieces and nephews, that they also keep, and all marry within the Faith.
Last words
Can you share one Scripture passage through which the Holy Spirit has really encouraged, strengthened, or instructed you in your walk of faith in Lord Yeshua?
I struggle with acute awareness of my own sin and how much sin is in the human heart. We can be very good outwardly but inwardly; in our heart of hearts, it can sometimes feel like a constant battle! One Scripture which is a deep comfort to me in this is 1 John 1:8-9: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Not some, ‘all unrighteousness.’ This is one of the Scriptures I keep going back to. Praise God! There is something a Pastor of a church has said that stays with me which is this: ‘We are more sinful than we are willing to admit, but we are more loved than we dare to hope.’ I think that is just so beautiful and profound – and true!
Finally, how can sisters in the faith of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah pray for you?
That I would continue to walk with the Lord, be a good wife, a good mother and always show love.
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