Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I work in academia and it can be highly competitive. This is my eighth year. For me, being excellent in science is part of my worship to God. But it can be difficult to achieve excellence.” “Success in science often means having significant impact and influence through a research profile, publications, grants, and other achievements. […]

“Psalm 91 has always been a favourite of mine – the whole chapter. And in 2004, I was asked to be a director of Prison Ministries. It was a big responsibility.” “As a director, you have to choose a team of 35 people and train them and journey with them for a whole year, co-ordinating […]

“My dad got leukaemia and he died when I was 13. We were very close. He used to pick me up from school and take me to after-school events. When he died, it was so hard. “I remember about a week or two after he died, my mum and I noticed an old black Bible […]

“I was at Bible College in 2002 and we were all asked to stand up and pray, to ask God what he wanted to reveal to us, about something we each needed to deal with.” “I stood there and I prayed, but my mind kept coming up with different things – perhaps God wanted me […]

“My favourite verse is in John 14:27. I tell it to myself every time I feel troubled. There are lots of troubles in life! Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do […]

“Both my grandparents on my father’s side were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and two thirds of my extended family died in concentration camps … so I always wanted to know why God allowed it. Did he look away? Did he not care about the Jews? Six million of them died!” “I decided that God […]

“As a teenager, I was often crippled with anxiety over exams. It was like I was cutting through a piece of timber with a bad saw … and the teeth of the saw were always getting dangerously close to the wrong side of the pencil line. I never felt like I could achieve what I […]

“2019 was a challenging year! My marriage broke down and work was stressful. I was ill for two months and then my father passed away. By October, I was really looking forward to a break. I planned to reconnect with old school friends and go hiking in the Blue Mountains (New South Wales). I love […]

“There were times, as an architect, when the combination of my workaholic tendencies and worrying about big projects nearly crushed me. I was buried in it.” “We occasionally had contractual disputes over a project … and I knew that I was being driven by fear – fear that I wasn’t doing a good enough job, […]

“I feel like a poor man, scratching for crumbs. But there are plenty of crumbs.” “At the moment, my wife is in Blacktown Hospital, having an operation to plug the hole in her heart. Three months ago, we were holidaying in Perth and she had a stroke. We’d been planning the holiday for ages, traveling […]

“I’ve found a new app. It’s an audio Bible, using women’s voices. It’s called ‘Courage for Life.’ I was listening to it this week and I was up to John 14 – ‘My Father’s house has many rooms… And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you […]

“I worked as an investment advisor for 27 years, to large pools of capital – hundreds of millions of dollars. We were dealing in billions. And I always wanted to do a good job, to help the recipients. If I did a bad job with the money, there were serious consequences for lots of people.” […]

“I was the pastoral care worker at our previous church, so my job was to visit people, especially people having a really hard time.” “One day, I went to see a beautiful, elderly woman. She had cancer and she was in her last days, at the hospice. I had seen her many times before, and […]

“I’ve always been a shy person. I find speaking difficult. And I never wanted to visit a prison. I was always fearful of the inmates. I didn’t know what I’d say to them, if I went there. So I avoided anything that might cause me to end up in a prison – or visiting one!” […]

“My mother was a Methodist. If ever I was having a problem as a child, she would say to me, ‘We have to talk to Jesus about that.’ I went to Sunday school and I was confirmed at age 14. But I was always a questioning person. I remember being told as a teenager, that […]

“I work as a dentist for the NHS in South London. It can be stressful at times. The patient orientated parts of the job are great, and I normally enjoy the clinical work, but my role is mixed. I also manage a team of about 40 people, and that can be difficult, especially now, in […]