Abi
Abi is 16 and a member of the Youth at Kings Church. She lives with her parents and two younger sisters in Sale and is due to start college this year.
My parents are Christians, I made a decision to live for Jesus at 6 and was baptized at 9 so have been blessed in that I virtually always knew the hand of God on my life.
During years 10 & 11 at school, friends who had always known me started to ask loads of questions about what I believed, then people I didn’t even know started to talk to me about Jesus – I hardly initiated anything! God provided me with so many opportunities to witness to my friends, one of the biggest ways was them coming to me for advice or help. RE lessons gave me opportunities to give what I believe, and what the church believes about moral issues such as abortion, war, euthanasia, suicide, racism and sexism. There was a few times where I would be the only person with my hand up in the room having been asked the question ‘Who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage?’ Through all of this happening, people talked to me a lot about their situations and the challenges they faced, I suddenly realised how much God had saved me from and how much I’d relied on Him to do that. Because I’d given my life to Jesus as a child, my whole teenage life had been in his hands; I hadn’t turned away or rebelled – I love Jesus, and I love his church – At that point I began to serve wholeheartedly in the children’s ministry and wherever else I was needed.
Throughout years 7-11 I consistently got A’s and A*’s in all my school work and all my exams – I wanted to make sure I kept this standard up by getting only A’s and A*’s in my GCSE’s! Then about 6 weeks before my exams, God challenged me big time. There was loads of events coming up in the Church calendar (that would tie up my weekends – precious revision time!!), and I wanted to get more and more involved with Kings Kids and help out with these events. I knew I had to make a decision, was I going to lock myself up in my room with my books, and not come out until it was all over or was I going to serve the church wholeheartedly and have faith that God was totally in control of my exams. At the time, the message being spoken every week to the church was – “count the cost”, I knew what I needed to do. I committed myself to serving at the events every weekend, and worked out revision timetables around them. A lot of my friends, and schoolmates became really stressed and panicky but I was totally calm and every time their panic began to have an effect on me I prayed for peace and faithfully held on to what God had told me to do. My faith was built up – I was reassured that God was totally in control. Each time I served, God blessed me more and more, my ten minutes of revision was worth one hundred minutes, and many of the topics that I struggled to understand became clear. Each exam I sat, I knew I did my best and I knew Jesus was with me. That was a real challenge for me, my desire to get those A*’s had to be overcome with my love for Jesus and the church and it was a real exercise of faith, handing over this area of my life totally to Jesus! My results proved that God had been in control of my exams & I got all As and A*s!
