Episode 2 City of Faith

This is hymn that I heard sung a number of years ago.

And it's about this city of Armagh.

"City famed for saints and scholars.

"Turn again and seek the Lord.

"Through these ancient streets of Armagh,

"let the shout of triumph reign.

"God alone is our salvation,

"Jesus is our coming King."

For those folk who may not have read the Bible...

..God created the heaven and the Earth...

..and every living thing and all that's in it.

'And he made it six days and every day when he had finished,

'he said it was good.'

'And then he made man out of the dust of the ground.'

'When you're working here, sometimes you're on your own...

'..and you have a lot of time to think.'

You look around you.

You see the frost and the snow in the winter time,

and sometimes it starts freezing

and it drops down, down, down,

and it has to be somebody in control

that it doesn't drop on down

and freeze us all to death.

But when you see that and you know that God's in control,

you know that you're not going to be froze to death.

And you know there is a God in heaven,

and you know that all will be well.

You're happy to work,

and you're glad to see Sunday coming to get a rest

and also to go to worship Him.

Open our eyes, Lord, who want to see Jesus,

to reach out and touch him and say that we love him.

Open our ears and help us to hear.

Open our hearts and help us to respond.

In Jesus' name we pray,

Amen.

'It's an awesome sense of God's presence

'when you step into the pulpit on a Sunday morning

'to preach God's word.'

'I know what it feels like to be in amongst worshippers

'and get the sense of joy that you feel

'when you're truly worshipping together

'as a community of God's people.'

In a sense, that's a picture of what heaven will be like

as we joyfully worship God in his presence.

I thank God every day that I was sent to Armagh.

It's been a good place to start off in ministry.

The Methodist Church here is relatively small

compared to other places

but they have been helping me enormously

as I've grown in ministry.

And part of our job is to try and discern what is his path

for this church here in the city of Armagh?

How can we seek to grow as part of God's kingdom here?

I think sometimes in established religion you feel,

"I have to do this and I must do that."

And initially maybe you do think it's a bit of a rule book.

But that love that you have that God gives you

is something that you do for him

because you love him

and because you feel this is the purpose for your life.

I couldn't live without my faith.

Faith gives me meaning, it gives me purpose.

It is everything that I am.

And I couldn't even begin to imagine life without that purpose,

life without that hope, life without that living hope.

We thank you, heavenly Father, that you love this world

so much that, even though you'd created it

and we had gone our own way and we had turned our backs on you,

yet still you found a way to send your only son, the Lord Jesus,

into this world to live a perfect life

and to die our death on that cross in our place.

And thank you, Lord, for the many gathered in this building tonight

who've come to the point in their experience

where they realise they're a sinner and thank that you've given them

that free gift into their hands just for the asking.

'The Bible tells us that we should congregate together.

'It says not to neglect the fellowship with each other.

'And you've that sense of belonging and you feel the weight

'of your brothers and sisters in Christ

'praying with you and for you

'and you feel a part of that church community.'

'The Bible is a living word and I think it still speaks to us'

and it spoke to me.

It convicted me, if you like, of my sin.

'And sometimes you have to go through stuff

'that proves that God is real,

'that God can be there in the hard times as well as the easy times.

'It's not all mountaintop experience, I can assure you.

'I have been through lots of valleys.'

We're now going to Blackwatertown,

and that's where I went to school.

And when I was going to school,

I had to walk two-and-a-half miles.

And it was a long walk, especially in the wintertime.

And then, in the summertime, in the hot weather,

a lot of the children walked to school and home again

and had no shoes - they went in their bare feet.

Used to know every house down this road.

It was only a small school,

and there was only one teacher.

She was called Miss Bowles.

She was a goodChristian woman,

and she told me the way of salvation.

Sweetest name I know

Fills my every longing,

Keeps me singing as I go.

Father God, I pray that you'll save this village of Blackwatertown.

I pray you, God, that you'll even stand a mighty Holy Ghost revival...

'The teacher told us that we must be born again.

'The teacher told us to give our lives to Christ.'

'And I was walking up the road home.

'I must have been on my own.

'I knelt down on the road

'and I asked Jesus to forgive my sin

'and come into my life.'

Now, I rose up.

I didn't feel any different.

Some people, when they give their lives to Christ,

oh, they can feel a mighty change.

But I knew the great transaction was done.

'And there's a hymn and it goes like this -

'Since I started for the kingdom

'Since my life he controls'

Since I gave my life to Jesus

The longer I serve him, the sweeter he grows.

John Wesley is the founder of Methodism.

'John Wesley travelled throughout England and Ireland,

'preaching the message of the gospel.

'He would gather the people who made a commitment to Christ'

'into little groups called Societies,

'that the people would be encouraged'

to meet regularly to pray together and to encourage each other

in their faith and to be accountable to each other in their faith.

'He came to Armagh on many occasions,

'and he had a powerful influence on people,

'especially in the country areas.'

'One particular theologian described it as the "four alls" of Methodism.

'All people need to be saved, all people can be saved,

'all people can know themselves saved

'and all people can be saved to the utmost.

'There's nobody that the Gospel cannot reach.

'God wants all people to come to him to respond to Jesus.

'He was teaching the Gospel, of course.

'He was teaching salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.'

And to help them as their lives changed,

just like my life was changed when I came to faith in Jesus.

As a youngster we would have been sent to church

and it was something of a routine.

I knew the Gospel. I knew that Jesus died for me.

There was a spirituality,

but it hadn't been kindled.

The spark hadn't lit.

So it really wasn't until my brother-in-law, Harvey,

my husband's brother, was killed

that I really started to think about life.

He was killed by the IRA.

It was mistaken identity

and his wife had brought down a number of items.

She brought down a black bin bag

and she left it sort of sitting in the house.

I remember looking at this bin bag and saying,

"This can't have been just all of Harvey's life."

And that's when I started to really search and I started to think,

"What is it about?

"What is life about if this is the way it ends?"

At that particular time I had a Christian milkman

and he had said something to me,

he'd admired a clock in the hall or something,

and I said, "Well, the one thing that Harvey's death has taught me

"is that you can't take it with you."

So he challenged me then and said, "Are you a Christian?

"Have you a personal relationship with God?"

I struggled with that for a while.

I started to read the Bible, really read the Bible.

And God started to speak to me through the Bible.

And that's when I really felt, "I really need purpose."

I have a sister who was a Christian and I rang her up and I said,

"Look, what is this Christianity about? I'm searching for something.

"I don't know what it is. I really don't know what to do about it."

They had a meeting on a Sunday night

and I spoke to the preacher that night.

To say that a man leads you to the Lord...

He can lead you to the Lord but he can't make you right with God.

There's a gulf fixed between me and God

and the person who, if you like,

bridges that gap is Jesus, because Jesus died for my sin.

'It was 13th March in 1984.'

And the Bible talks about being born again,

so that was my second birth, if you like.

That was the day whenever I knew

that I had to give my life to the Lord.

I knew then that my life would have purpose.

Man meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

So, God made something really good come out of the evil

that had happened that man had meant.

But God turned it around for good in my life.

I grew up in a part of Dublin called Raheny,

where I spent about the first ten years of my life.

We went to church every Sunday to Mass,

from a committed Catholic background.

I remember feeling very close to God as a child.

Faith and church was an important part of my life then.

Part of the journey was when I was 16 I met a young girl

who was a Methodist and her dad was somebody who

no matter who was in the house of an evening,

would always bring out his Bible

and go in to the backroom and do a little Bible devotion.

That was something that, as a young man, I would have noticed.

We got married when I was 24.

We settled in Bray in County Wicklow,

and Carol started to go to the Bray Methodist Church.

We had two sons, and one day Carol said to me

than my oldest son was enquiring as to why he had to go to church

on a Sunday morning when his dad could stay in bed.

I determined to try to live a better life

and set a better example for my sons,

so I started to go to church more regularly, to Bray Methodist.

And at that time a new minister had come

and he started a thing called the Alpha course.

So, on one particular Tuesday you would have had the local priest

who would have spoken about a subject

and then the next week it would have been the Methodist

and the next week maybe it was the Presbyterian minister in the town.

It was a wonderful experience,

especially when we got into the groups and chatted about our faith.

It was like just a light came on.

I suddenly got what the Gospel was about.

But it wasn't just about living your life by rules and regulations

but it was about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ

and the Gospel had never really been explained to me like that before.

I suddenly had a desire to know about Jesus, a desire to pray,

to read the Bible.

The journey from feeling that sense of calling to full-time ministry

happened over a very short period of time, maybe a couple of years.

Things people said to me,

things I felt Lord said to me in my prayers and my Bible reading.

There was a verse in Hebrews,

"See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks."

And it really just confirmed to me that God was calling me

into this ministry and that I needed to respond.

'I pursued that and was accepted for training

'in Edgehill College in Belfast, where I did three years' study'

and I was stationed, thankfully, to Armagh.

And I've been here since 2009.

God spoke from heaven and said, "Saul, Saul.

"Why are you persecuting me?"

And he went on to say, "It's hard for you

"to kick against the pricks," -

in other words, "to fight against me".

And then Paul, he says, "Who art thou, Lord?"

And the voice says, "I am Jesus,

"whom you are persecuting."

'I have been teaching Sunday school...

'It could be 40 years, it could be more. I don't know.

'All those years.

'I do my best to explain the way of salvation...'

'..and there's only one thing I'm sorry about,

'that when I started to teach I didn't know as much as I know now.'

'But I know'

if you do your best, God does not expect any more.

'I was born with asthma

'and some nights I couldn't go to bed and lie down.

'My father and mother had to sit up with me at the fire.'

'And, as the years went on, I would get an asthma attack.

'I couldn't have walked hardly 20 yards.'

'But I had two good friends -

'And they were terrific Christians.

'They were praying for me'

and Mrs Agnew interpreted a message.

"I will allow you to be tempted for a season

"but after that, I give you fresh air to breathe."

And all I wanted to know was how long was the season?

One night I went to bed as well as I am now.

Awaking in the middle of the night

and I never was as well caught with asthma in all my life, never.

I tried to get down to the kitchen

and I was getting worse every second.

I sat down on the couch.

I turned a chair around, I held on to the back of it,

and the sweat fell off me onto the floor like rain.

And I thought, "This is it. I'm finished."

And I thought, if I had a pencil

and a piece of paper I could write "asthma" on it

and if I was dead in the morning, they knew what killed me.

And the heat got up and I started to come out of this asthma attack.

I never told my wife to this day.

I don't go around telling people.

But shortly afterwards, the season was up.

I'm a better man now than I was 40 years ago.

I give God the glory. God has wonderful ways of working.

The Bible says his ways are past finding out

but I'm thankful for the doctors, as well.

Everybody has to play their part.

But I'm very, very thankful for health. Very, very thankful.

'Our house would be a bit of a madhouse.

'We always had an open door.

'There were always a lot of people coming and going

'and the caravan, for me, was my escape, if you like.

'It was always my place of study.

'I could have got the kids settled, got into bed, read my Bible.

'And that's where I'd have done a lot of my spiritual growth.

Sometimes you need that quietness, that stillness,

to hear his voice and it's getting that quiet time sometimes...

..helps to discern what it is we need to be doing next.

We're all on a journey

and some people's lives take them down roads that they wouldn't choose

so the first thing I had to do was tell my husband.

'Initially he sort of felt, "Don't start the preaching thing.'

"Don't ever preach to me, Maggie." Stuff like that.

So, initially, that was difficult enough.

Marrying our two different paths again,

because he would have seen me as changed.

And I couldn't deny that, I was changed.

My friends just couldn't believe. "What are you at? You're joking!"

But I think part of friendship is accepting people how they are.

People think that Christians are judgmental,

but other people are very judgmental of Christians

because people have an idea in their lives

of what a Christian should look like.'

The world judges us in what they perceive a Christian to be

and I would say, you know,

just because I love Jesus

doesn't mean to say that I'm not human either.

Faith is so real to me and so precious

I do want other people to get it.

I do want to give that faith away. I do want everybody to have it.

But if they don't get it, I mean, that's up to them.

I don't judge them for it.

And I praise you, Lord, for the day whenever you called me

to yourself, Lord, the day that I bowed my knee and, Lord,

accepted you as my Lord and saviour.

So, Lord, I praise you. Just thank you for this day...

'I think sometimes you have to go through hard stuff

'to realise what God is made of.

'God has brought me through.

'I turned to his word and he has answered in his word.

'And that's my solace.'

'But at least I know that at the end of that I have eternal life.

'I will be going to heaven.'

And how many people can stand up and say that?

But the Bible gives us confidence to say that.

Because you have Jesus in your life,

because God has given you the gift of the Holy Spirit,

you can be assured that you're going to heaven when you die.

That really changed my life,

knowing that Jesus is with me,

knowing that the Holy Spirit is guiding me in the things

that I say and do, as I seek to respond and live out

the call that I feel God has given me

and how God's plan for my life and for the world

is working its way out

as we reach to the point where Jesus will return.

Jesus said to the disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you

"and where I am, there you may be also."

And Jesus is now away nearly maybe 2,000 years, preparing a place.

It's going to be tremendous.

And, not only that, when I get there,

I'm going to see my mother.

That'll be some day.

And all those good Christian folk will meet again,

never to part no more.

There'll be no tears, no crying, no sorrow.

# ..gone down

# My rest a stone

# Yet in my dreams I'd be

And over a decade with BBC Northern Ireland,

the one constant to cross all Stephen Nolan's programmes