Testimonies

Davide Ratti

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:46:28 +0100

My name is Davide Ratti, I am 42 years old and I am married with Debora; we have been blessed with three lovely daughters.
I was raised up in a Christian family attending to a little brethren church of 20 believers in Tortona (AL), in the north of Italy.

When I was a boy I remember enjoying the family worship and it was then that I started to desire reading the bible by myself more often. I also faced the thought of eternity before going to bed and found great comfort when I’ve been told to learn by memory the psalm 23. There was also a bible verse written on my bedside wall that helped me many times to overcame my fear of going to sleep at the time: "I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety."
I can say I did really lack of anything, good family, many things to enjoy, holidays and friends…but a certain point I came to realise that my happiness was not in possessions.
At the same time I tried with all my efforts to be nice with people and be good before God.

Reading the bible, praying, going to bible camps was not something that made me better or happy. God was still something ‘out there’ and I became more aware of the fact that I was not right with God; the more I tried to live better the more I saw the defeat.

While reading the book of Romans I was very impressed to see how the word of god described so precisely all different kind of sins and attitudes of men…It seemed pointing right at my life in some things. I was sure there was something wrong in me and was frustrating not reaching peace with God with all my efforts.
One day, alone in my bed with the bible I asked God to help me understand the truth.
If you are really there, I cried, let me now for sure.
The astonishing fact is that right in that moment, like if it was for a light switched on I understood. It was by faith in the Lord Jesus and in his work that I was saved. It was already done in a perfect way what I could never realise by myself.
I cried for joy and started to thank my Saviour; from that day on I started to see life in a different way. I changed motivation for many things and faced obviously new problems. I can’t remember the exact day in that process but I know I was about 17 years old.

As many years have gone by I see how feeble and simple that decision was; but also realise how strong now is the promise the Lord has for his children: ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you…’

Gavino Fioretti, Student

Mon, 7 May 2007 10:47:38 +0100

My name is Gavino Fioretti. I come from an Italian island called Sardinia. It is a very famous island among travel agency for her beautiful beaches and weather but not for gospel reasons.

My father, like the majority in Italy was a nominal catholic. He did not care of religious matter. Thus, when my mother was converted, one week before I was born, he gave her total freedom. I was brought up in the church. Since my early childhood I manifested a particular interest in spiritual things. I do not remember personally, but my mother always tells me that when I was two years old I asked the Saviour to come into my heart. I was not ashamed to thank God loudly Jesus for the wonderful things he created, particularly for the sea. At the age of six at school, Sardinia is deeply catholic, children had to pray the mother of Jesus. I remember that I refused to do it. All these small things convince me more and more that God in his mercy began his saving work in me since I was a child. I believed every single word in the Bible and in the Lord Jesus without a shadow of a doubt.

Sadly at the age of thirteen I thought that my worldly friends were happier than me. They had more freedom and could do things that I could not. I wanted to be like them. So I began to live a double life. I was good at home and in church, but I behaved badly with my friends. In those years the Lord was very good and hindered me from dangerous consequences. Of those days I remember particularly bed time. After a day spent in sin it was time to switch off the light and go to bed. I remember that in those moments I feared. I knew that God was not happy with me, that I was guilty and that if Jesus returned that night I would awake in hell. I used to pray hoping it would be sufficient.

Thankfully the Lord had pity of me. One day I was at home bored. I did not what to do. I took a book and begun to read. It talked about the second coming of Christ. It is not a great book but the Lord used it to warn me of my fearful condition. I knew that I was not ready. I prayed God to save me. I confessed my sins and asked to be saved. The saving work that God had begun in my childhood and that I tried to ignore and stop, restated.

I would like to say that from that moment my Christian life was perfect and wonderful but it will be a lie. Many times I have betrayed my Master and many times I fainted and failed. In many occasion I have offended my Saviour with my sins and backslidings. I left and forsook him time and time again. But even when I was unfaithful he was faithful. He never left me nor forsook me.

In God’s providence my family and I are now in Scotland. I am studying for the ministry in the Free Church Seminary. God in his grace is giving me the great privilege to be called to his service.

Richard Ross Divinity Student

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 19:13:24 +0100

Early Years

I was born and brought up in a small place called Kylestrome, 10 miles south of Scourie, on the west coast of Sutherland.
I attended the local Free Church in Scourie with my family, and considered that I would get to heaven for my church attendance. My mother was a Christian, but my father was not.
I was brought up to respect the bible as the word of God, and also to pray each night before bedtime. My primary education was locally, but my secondary was in Golspie, on the east coast of Sutherland.
My secondary school years were spent in rebellion against what I had been taught from the bible, and I did not continue to attend Church.

Conversion

Although I was not involved in any gross sins, I was very much in the world living for pleasure, which consisted in football, drinking and partying. At the time I felt my life was fulfilled, and I saw no need for God. I reckoned I was a good person, I had never done anyone any real harm, and thought that God would be alright with me the way I was.
The reality was that I was lost, without Christ, and I could not see it.

In my late teenage years I began to attend church again, really just to keep my mother happy. The preacher that summer was a divinity student, and he seemed to be preaching at me when I was at church. I began to realise that God wasn’t alright with me, and that I was a sinner. Yet when I got out of church I would just forget what I heard and just get on with living.
However, over a period of weeks I began to become concerned that if I died then I would be justly sent to Hell. Then one evening, while talking with my sister I asked her “What can I do to be saved”. She told me that I must believe on Jesus, she quoted Matthew 6:33- “Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness”, and told me to ask Jesus into my heart.
That evening, I prayed and asked Jesus to save me, and to come into my heart. I believe that I was saved, and became a Christian, that same evening.
The next morning I felt different, and my desires for the worldly activities were gone. Now I wanted to serve God with my life.

Christian experience

My experience of the Christian life I consider to be normal. I continue to be a sinner, but now I hate my sin. I continue to grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ and his Word, and God’s continual mercy, and goodness
After spending 16 years in industrial employment, I have become a divinity student, studying to be a minister of the gospel. Although I do not feel worthy to serve Christ, yet by his grace I am willing to.

What about you dear reader? Are you saved? Do you believe on Jesus Christ?
I would plead with you not to turn away, but to believe on Jesus Christ and repent of your sins.

Andrew Allan Divinity Student

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:31:05 +0000

I was brought up in a Christian home in the Easter Ross village of Balintore and attended worship at Balintore UF Church regularly. On occasions I would feel as if the minister was speaking personally to
me when he was preaching. I realised I was a sinner and that I needed a saviour but I would not come to Jesus Christ. I was “kick(ing) against the pricks.” Acts 26:14. I left home and got married in 1985 and remember thinking to myself that I would not need to attend worship now that I had left my parents’ home.

However, I was still aware that I was not right with God and this used to trouble me. But, even although I knew that to be right with God I must take Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, I would not. I was a Christ rejecter. To satisfy my own self-righteousness after I was married I did attend a number of Church of Scotland services just to say that I’d been to church.

My life changed dramatically in September 1988 after the sudden death of a young Balintore man in a motorcycle accident. This incident shook me because I knew that if I had been killed I would be lost forever in Hell for I was a Christ rejecter.

I attended the funeral of the man and resolved that I would return home and have an early night and put the whole incident behind me. This I could not do for I was tossing and turning in my bed and was extremely troubled knowing that if I died I would be lost. Yet I would not accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Things came to a pinnacle when on my bed I ‘heard’ a voice repeatingly saying to me ‘Now! Now! Now!’ This voice was not audible but simply “a still small voice.” 1 Kings 19:12. On hearing this voice I believed that I was on the brink of eternity. It was as if Heaven and Hell were before me and I jumped out of bed and asked the Lord Jesus to save me, to forgive me and have mercy upon me a sinner. By this time my wife Debbie woke up and wondered what had happened. I tried to explain to her my long struggle and experience, but because she was brought up as a Roman Catholic, she did not really comprehend what I was trying to tell her.

I did feel happy, realived and at peace following my calling upon Jesus, but I also felt extremely tired and exhausted. When I told my experience to Rev Patterson, minister at Balintore UF church, he said I felt this way because my struggle was over.

Following my conversion I had a desire to tell everybody about my Saviour, for it is a wonderful experience to be a Christian. To know your sins are forgiven and to be right with God brings a tremendous sense of peace, joy and fulfilment into your life – something that nothing in this world can give you.

I started to undertake one or two preaching engagements and to take part in open air preaching. One or two who heard me preach said that I should consider preaching full-time. After much prayer, thought and soul searching I began to train for the ministry when I entered the Free Church Seminary in September 2004. I’m enjoying my time in the Seminary and I do feel I’m benefiting from the lecturers and my fellow students. But it is extremely hard work.

Calum Iain Macleod, Divinity Student

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:42:19 +0000

Like many people in the North of Scotland, I had a formal connection with church from my youth. I was baptized when a few months old. I went to Sunday School as a young boy and went with family to church services regularly. It was not these external circumstances of church connection – great privileges though they are – that were the determining factors to which I trace my conversion to Christ. My experience has taught me that church attendance with its consequent Christian influence throughout the formative years of youth does not always account for or guarantee conversion to Christ.

When I started Secondary school my church connections were deliberately severed, and by the age of 14 I had made considerable progress on my determined way down a road that led to much sorrow and darkness. Like others I sought all the highs and extremes the world could give, and all the time thought I was getting there. Sin became easy, because my conscience had become hardened and numbed. For three more years – until I was 17 - I went further on this road thinking things could only get better. Education and career did not figure in my equation of life at that point – Me, and living for the present, were the only figures in my equation of life at that point – until God in his unsought mercy came into my life and changed it forever.

He took out of my life a beloved relative by death, that final and irreversible element of our mortal condition. This made me – a stubborn and rebellious teenager – think about things that had never until then crossed my mind with any weight –the reality and finality of death; God; and my need of Him. For reasons I couldn’t account for at the time, I started reading the ‘old black book’, the Bible, which my departed relative always read. Through it God became all the more real, as did the awareness of my undone standing before Him. I began to slowly but awfully realise something I knew little of until then – guilt; real weighty guilt. Reading the Bible gave no relief. I felt there was no hope for me in God – I was brought to feel utter helplessness, and my great need to be delivered from the weight of sin now weighing upon me. This brought me to cry to God, on day I remember clearly – to cry for mercy and deliverance. He heard my voice and took me from that fearful pit.

Through time, in prayer, reading the Bible and listening to Gospel preaching, God began to reveal himself to me as my God, reconciled through His Son Jesus Christ. The meaning and wonder of Christ and Him crucified – for me – flowed over my soul, and brought me to a wonderful assurance that I had been saved. I have found in Christ more than the world began to give. Knowing Him is life, He is life, He is now my life.

I am presently studying for the ministry at the Free Church Seminary, preparing to serve Christ through preaching Him and His unsearchable riches. Take this from me, and I dare say, life would hold very little for me. I trust I live with His calling in my heart.

I have found some words of a martyred missionary, Jim Elliot, to be so very true in the context of my own experience, which I pray will also become true for all who read this word of testimony.

“He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”