Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I was involved in a car accident in my first year of university. I was driving home from university one night, and a truck collected me and wrapped my car around a telegraph pole. The ambulance and the police arrived and they expected to drag out a dead body. They pulled me out and I […]

“I was a Chief Petty Officer on the HMAS Perth in 1982. We were patrolling in the Indian Ocean, during the Iran/Iraq war. But a few years before that, I’d become a Christian at a Billy Graham crusade. So I knew it was going to be really hard, being back at sea, as a Christian. […]

“When you Google ‘Benin’, the first thing you see is ‘Voodoo.’ It’s our traditional religion and our culture. It rules everything.” “When I was growing up, almost everyone was a Voodoo-Animist. But I was so scared of the Voodoo. They would make a whirling sound through the air. You could hear it from 10 kilometres […]

“As a physio, you treat people with injuries, and you see a lot of them, and you think you understand what it’s like to be injured, or in pain, but you don’t really. Not until you go through it yourself. And it’s not that you have to have been injured yourself, but it helps – […]

“Someone once said, ‘The older you get as a Christian, the fewer things you are certain about, but the more certain you are about them.’ That’s been true for me. I’m now in my 50s. We’re still caring for our significantly disabled son, who’s 22. Our other son is becoming independent, and our daughter died […]

“I normally ride my bike to work. It’s 70 kilometres one way, so I have lots of time to think and pray. It’s my time to de-stress. It’s when I feel free. I like the routine of it.” “But I’m working from home now, lecturing my university students, from our spare room. I like being […]

“It’s been a very difficult month. I live in London and I work for the local church. On Sunday, February 23, we had a large baptismal service. Lots of people were baptised that day, and all their friends and relatives came. Afterwards there was a lot of hugging and kissing. We didn’t know then that […]

“I’m not the sort of person who likes to find individual Bible verses to fit my own situations. I’m cautious like that. How do I know for sure what God had in mind? But there was one time, in 2009, [when] my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a lot of treatment, and […]

“I like to think I’m a joyful person. I walk down the street and I try and get eye contact with people. I try and smile at them, or strike up a conversation. I say hello. I think there’s a calling for each of us, as Christians, to be joyful. But if you asked me […]

“I’m a practical sort of person. I come from a farming background, so I’m good at fishing and hunting, and fixing things. I’ve always been fixing things – cars, houses, lawn mowers. It’s my way of helping people, although sometimes it feels small. But a few years ago, I went to a reunion on the […]

“I remember hearing about Jesus when I was four years old, and I’ve trusted in him ever since. It’s been nearly 50 years. And I’m also the kind of person who has always tried to be good. I’ve never done anything really bad. But I had an ‘aha’ moment recently. I was reading Luke 7. […]

“I have significant mental health issues. And I’ve always been very hard on myself. If anything didn’t go right, or the way I felt it should go, I would overreact emotionally. I would rage – at the thing that went wrong, or at myself, for letting it go wrong. Even my daughter said she felt […]

“In Australia, people don’t talk to people very much on the streets, not like in Cameroon. In Cameroon, people are always smiling and talking to people. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing. I came to Australia in 2011, and I try to know about people here. I try to listen to them and […]

“My daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 34 years old. She couldn’t care for herself, so she came to live with us, with her three young children. We took them in. It was really difficult. All of a sudden, our roles were changed. I had to bathe her and help her use […]

“Five years ago, I had a Damascus Road experience … except it was on a Mosman Road [in Sydney]. At the time, I’d been battling addiction and depression. No matter how long I stayed clean or sober, I inevitably fell back into old habits. I couldn’t stop. But that was when the Lord intervened. It […]

Angelina’s story (first published in February 2020) has been selected by Naomi Reed as a stand-out in her Faith Stories series so far. “I was a New Age Gypsy for ten years. It was after my husband left me. He took all of his belongings, and the car, and he left me a note, and […]