Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I was born in Dublin, and raised as a Catholic, which meant that I knew God was real. Sadly, as a young person, that fact didn’t impact my life much at all. In my early thirties I was living in London in my own flat. I had a good job. But life was messy in […]

“I grew up in a little town called Woodenbong. There were five of us kids and I was the eldest. My mother was a Christian, and she sent us to Sunday school. But after school I drifted away from church. I got work as a laborer and later in banking, where I moved 84 times! […]

“I’ve just turned 60. Up until a year ago, I didn’t pay very much attention to my spiritual life. I was busy, working full-time as a primary school teacher and caring for my mum, who was in a nursing home with Parkinson’s Disease. As a child, I had grown up in a loving family with […]

“I’m in hospital at the moment, awaiting an operation for pancreatic cancer. But it’s an opportunity. I dwell on the Scriptures, and I talk to the nurses. Most of them know nothing about Jesus. They’re young, and they’re thinking about their career paths. They’re not thinking about the life hereafter at all, even though they […]

“As a young person I was into sports cars, sailing and going to the pub on Friday nights. It was pretty harmless, but it was also meaningless. I had no church background. When I was 15, a school friend was being confirmed at his church, and he asked me to come with him. I went […]

“I grew up with my mother and one half-brother. My mother never told me who my father was. She said, “You don’t need to know.” I thought to myself, If I don’t have an earthly father, how am I going to do this? We lived with my grandparents, who were both paralysed from strokes, so […]

“My Grandfather gave me a Bible for Christmas when I was 6 months old. He taught me the Lord’s Prayer and prayed with me. I also attended Sunday School until age four, and I remember it being an encouraging and safe experience where the Bible was taught and people were kind. Then my mother became […]

“My parents weren’t Christians. They sent us to Sunday school because they thought we’d get good morals. So all four children went. At age 8, my teacher was Rita. She used to draw amazing pictures with crayons. One day, she shared the story of the Good Shepherd. He went after the one lost sheep. He […]

*Click here to read parts one and two of Siddique’s story.* ‘In July 1998, I was living in Karachi, serving in the Pakistan Airforce. I was raised as a fanatical Muslim, in Lahore. But I had been reading the Bible and decided it was true. Jesus was the Son of God! I accepted Jesus as […]

*Click here to read part one of Siddique’s story.* “I grew up in a fanatical Muslim household in Lahore, Pakistan. My father was the mosque leader, and he trained me to be a Muslim leader. But in 1997 I met a Christian family for the first time. They welcomed me into their home. They offered […]

“I was born into a fanatical Muslim family in Lahore, Pakistan. My father was the mosque leader, and I was the youngest of six children. He taught me to read the Quran out loud at the mosque. His desire was to raise me as a good Muslim child and a good Muslim leader. At the […]

“I’m the youngest of seven children, ‘the spoilt brat’.  My siblings were all born before the war, and I was born after the war. My father was a POW in Burma and Changi, and for most of that time my mother didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. When he did come home, his […]

“I grew up in Launceston. When I was 17, I joined the Tasmanian police force. After training, they gave me a gun and a badge and said, go and do it. I really loved my job, and I did every aspect of policing over the next 20 years. I also met a lovely lady, Debbie, […]

“I was raised in typical Aussie Catholic fashion. I got to the age of 16, and was given a choice to keep going to church or to sleep in on a Sunday. It was a no-brainer for me. I slept in…for about a decade! When I was 22, my mum died. She was only 40. […]

“I grew up in Kiama, overlooking the beach. In some ways, it was easy to believe in God, surrounded by that majesty. My biological father abandoned the family when I was 2, and I was the youngest of 4, so things were often tense in our 2-bedroom home. But mum would take us to watch […]

Warning: This story refers to depression and briefly to suicidal thoughts. “When I was 16, my parents divorced. It was fairly ugly. Immediately afterwards, I looked after my younger siblings. Then, as my mum started to recover, I became severely depressed. I decided to fix the black hole in myself by aiming to be top […]