Twenty eight hundred years ago God promised to the Prophet Joel that whoever would call upon the name of the Lord would be delivered (Joel 2:32). The apostle Peter believed God's promise and repeated the promise in the first Gospel message after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I was saved that Spring day of 1939 and proved the truth of Gods promise.

Knowing God through Jesus Christ is a lifelong process which stretches into eternity. Due to our human stubbornness and rebellion, however, there may be many detours and wanderings in our lifetime here on earth. Many of us die before we rest fully in the peace, blessing, assurance, and fellowship of a Christian life in submission to God. I spent 31 years there myself, from the spring of 1945 to that of 1976. But God's grace was greater than all my sins. In God's own time He restored me and brought my whole family into His blessing.

We published an account of how the Lord had worked and was working in our family in a form letter in December, 1981. At that time I reported:

Great things have been happening to our family during the past 5 years. It was none of our doing. God has been very good to us. All we did was begin to be positive towards Him.

Up until five years ago we lived as though we did not really believe in God. I grew up in a Christian family. I became a Christian myself at the age of 14, three months before World War 2 began."

When I was twenty years old, I had  abandoned my walk with the Lord. At the end of the philosophy course at the University of British Columbia, I described myself as an agnostic and pragmatic humanist. My life proved once again that no one can live a sane and rational life without faith in God. I became a schizophrenic. Six months after meeting my future wife Joan, in the fall of 1957, I was in a mental hospital.

The next 20 years were spent in and out of mental hospitals, going to psychiatrists every week, shock treatment, insulin treatment - the works. Nothing worked for long. Then, suddenly, just over 5 years ago, in June 1976, the Lord brought me back to faith in God.

The thing that initiated it was just a single Bible verse which caught my eye at the U.N. Habitat conference at Jericho Beach in June 1976. The verse said: "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." (Psalm 127:1). I instantly knew that there lay the answer to my problems. So I decided to turn my life and my family over to Him.

From then on God took over and we've had nothing but good things happen to our family ever since. First of all He started me reading my Bible again. In 6 months I no longer needed a psychiatrist, so I dropped him and his pills. The Lord started me attending church every week - the one I had left over thirty years before - and I began to know the joy of Christian fellowship once more.

My wife and children began to see  positive improvement in my life. This must have started them thinking. Then, in October 1978, my oldest daughter Diane "happened" to attend a Baptist young people's retreat on Vancouver Island and came back a totally changed person. It was exciting - the Lord was beginning to answer prayer.

The following summer, at a Christian camp in the Okanagan, both my wife Joan and youngest daughter Arlene came to God through Jesus Christ; and all three were baptized in our little chapel in Vancouver, BC.

The Lord has been good to us day by day. The Christian life is just one long marvelous and endless growth process. It is tremendously exciting. And the beauty of it is that it does not stop at death. In fact, death is only the beginning. by Hilary C.

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