God, Jesus, Heaven & Hell

Christian Testimony of Rick Porritt

Rick 2004

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this (?) but it seems to me that a lot of people have come to know the Lord at the age of around 20. Maybe it’s just the ones I’ve met? But that is when it happened to me. I was just approaching my twentieth birthday, twenty years ago now, when someone came right up to my friends and unashamedly told them that he had given his life to Jesus. My friends at that time knew this particular young man and made the most of ribbing him and giving him a hard time. I just listened quietly in the background and when they had finished their taunts I asked him some questions of my own – “what about the starving millions? Why doesn’t God do something about it?” and I can’t quite remember what else. I don’t think his answers impressed me, nor anything particularly of the whole event, but all I know is, that at that moment in great simplicity I said within myself, “OK, I believe you, there is a God.”

I had not thought much about it before and I had no special intention of ‘going away to think about it’ at that time. However, the next I knew was, wherever I went, whatever I was doing, all that kept going through my mind was, ‘there really is a God’, ‘there really is someone called Jesus’, ‘there really is a heaven’ and ‘there really is a hell’!

My knowledge of the Bible was pretty much limited to what the cover looked like of a little Gideon’s Testament I had among my possessions (somehow!). My only previous use for this was to press a four-leaved clover inside of it and occasionally tuck it under my pillow at night, in some vain attempt at procuring some comfort from a state of paranoia about my health and death.

My concern for my state of health and fear of death did have some basis in reality. I had severely traumatised my own body by a lifestyle of drug taking and had on two previous occasions overdosed on amphetamine and once at an even younger age tried to completely asphyxiate myself with my head in a bag of solvent.

Mine is the case of the typical broken-home scenario. I’ll spare the details of the early years, suffice to say that by the time I was thirteen I was headlong into crime, girls, self-abuse and the care system, complete with D.C. (detention centre) - the short, sharp, shock treatment. By the time I was nineteen I wasn’t looking as though I was going to improve much.

So we come back to my little encounter above. A one off conversation with nothing especially much to impress, but during the two weeks that followed that brief encounter something was still progressing inside of me. In the course of that time that ‘voice’ (not audible but none-the-less very real) did not let up at any moment. It was saying everyday: ‘there really is a God’, ‘there really is someone called Jesus’, ‘there really is a heaven’ and ‘there really is a hell’! I somehow knew as if by instinct (or whether the young man had told me so I can’t remember) I must repent of all my sins, ask Jesus to forgive me and live a completely different life.

The idea of ‘giving up’ all my vices in life was almost too much to contemplate, but there was something much more powerful growing inside of me that I knew I couldn’t escape – the fear of Hell. I am not saying that the whole purpose of my Christian life now is simply to escape Hell, I am not saying that such a thought is a wonderful motive for giving your life to Christ, but the bottom line for me and my particular thought processes at that time, was this: it doesn’t matter how bland, boring, dull and difficult life will be, it will only be temporal – but after that comes the eternal! By comparison there was only one thing a self-seeking sinner could do – turn my life over to Jesus and be saved. Such was my reasoning and such was God’s method of reaching into the depths of me and making me repent of my sin.

The time had come, I knew what I must do, so, alone in my flat one night I decided that I was going to do it. One final thought struck me. It was late in the evening and I had a habit of making resolutions last thing at night about changing my lifestyle. Not for any moral reason, but simply for the sake of my health, which as I said I was somewhat paranoid about. I would make my plans to live a cleaner, healthier lifestyle at bedtime and in the morning would go my way in pursuit of my besetting sins. So that evening I said to myself, “If I really mean this, then I’ll mean it just as much in the morning.” So I did nothing that night and went to bed.

The sceptic would call it naivety, but naïve I certainly wasn’t. I awoke in the morning with a simple peace and my waking thoughts were, “I’m going to become a Christian today.” Various little thoughts and occurrences filled the morning. Eventually, I knelt down and I prayed. I asked Jesus to forgive me of all my sins and to come into my heart. He did.

That was the beginning for me. Needless to say, many are the lessons along the way. Jesus said that He is “The Door,” but He also said that He is “The way.” One of the most valuable lessons I had to learn as a young Christian, was that it doesn’t matter how radical and striking your conversion experience is, unless you continue to walk with God day by day then you are still powerless to live righteously before God. I was greatly helped by reading a book by the title of ‘Abide in Christ’. Of course, ultimately it is God Himself who sees to it that you and I will hear the right thing, read the right book, meet the right people at just the right time in order to teach us the things we need to know, as we are able to receive them. Jesus also said that He is “The Shepherd.” The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. God Himself has promised to guide us into all Truth. May He guide you along the paths that lead to everlasting life too.