Mark grew up around church and faith. He was interested, involved – but it never quite clicked. Over time, he drifted. Other things pulled him away.
People around him were being saved. Mark watched, wondering: Why them? Why not me? He tried again, was faith for him? Yet still, something was missing and if it wasn’t going to happen for him, he was going to disprove it – it must be nonsense. But the deeper he looked into Christianity, the more he found himself agreeing with it. That unsettled him so Mark decided to ignore it again and get on with life.
Mark’s wife was going to church but he just made excuses not to. But when he did go, he was made to feel genuinely welcome. He joined a Christianity Explored course and reached a point where he really believed everything the course was presenting, but he still wouldn’t have called himself a Christian.
He was waiting for something. A supernatural moment. A feeling. A lightning bolt. He didn’t know what ‘getting over the line‘ was supposed to look like – until one of the leaders suggested he might already be a Christian and not let doubt take over.
Mark still wrestles with doubts. The temptation to compare himself to others distracts him from the faith that he’s come to hold and his own journey. Now he’s one of those guys at work he used to envy – someone who’s been saved. And excitingly for Mark, more of his workmates have come to faith too.
In a factory full of ‘guys’ guys’, the conversations have changed, the banter’s different. They’ve become a spiritual hub in the factory.
Faith doesn’t always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes it grows quietly, through welcome, through truth, through the slow realisation that you’re already there.