Louise.
Hi, my name's Louise and I'm writing from Helen Tomblin's youth group, Reloaded, in Birmingham. I've been a christian for most of my life as my family are christians, but they don't attend church. I always wanted to, but didn't really know where to go or what to do about it etc., but I always used to pray. To me, God was always somebody that I could talk to, but I never really understood how that worked, or how it might affect my life. My best friends' dad is a vicar and she regularly went to church and youth club. One week while I was at her house about 4 years ago I went to youth group with her and it was good fun, and decided to go to church as well to see what the sunday morning youth club was like. Initially, I started to go back to church to see my friends, and to learn more as I had always wanted to know more about the god I believed in.
However, about 3 or 4 months after I first went to church, I experienced some really bad times with my family life and was finding life really hard so I began to talk to God more, and see him more as a friend who I could talk to when I needed to. At those times, I really felt as though God was becoming a bigger part of my life than I had experienced before and although I was finding things hard, there was a comfort in the form of prayer and talking to God, whenever I started to feel defeated. From then on I went to
church more often to learn more and became a regular at the youth group, and I still attend both church and youth group now.

Now I feel that because of getting confirmed, and because of learning more about God and christianity, I understand more about God, and who he is and this has started to change my life because of the decisions I now make. I stumble a lot and make mistakes that I know I shouldn't, but over the past few years I've learnt that we all make mistakes, but often dealing with them can determine who you are, as opposed to what you actually do. Since becoming a christain and attending church more regularly, my life hasn't
changed in a huge way, but I do feel as though I'm constantly learning more about my life and the "bigger picture".

One of the main things that helps me in my faith is the people that are around me who help me when I have problems, help me to keep faith, and keep me thinking of God, even when things get tough. Teenage life is full of places to stumble through christianity, but I think that if you have friends who understand your faith and who also believe in the same things as you do, then you're less likely to fall when you get to those circumstances as you have people to help you and guide you. One of the hardest things is putting the things we're taught into a context for today's soceities, and sticking up for your faith against your non-christian friends is often a struggle, but my best friends and my youth leaders are a constant help for me. I keep going with my christain faith even when things get really hard with the help from my friends, my family, and god, and I think that making the decision to become a christian is the best that I could have ever made.

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Margaret.
I’ve always been an Anglican, through good times and bad, baptised as a baby, confirmed as a teenager. When I was a child, my mother taught me how to pray, and I went to Sunday School, sometimes happily, sometimes reluctantly. As I grew up, I struggled with belief and doubt, but I became a church bell-ringer and took a decision that I would attend church regularly, and I realised I wanted to learn more.  I was very interested in conversations with my friend on the school bus. She was taking O’ level R.E. (for some reason I didn’t take R.E. at school) and explained the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels to me. I decided to study Theology at University, I found it difficult as studying doesn’t come easily to me, but the effort paid off as the New Testament, in particular, came alive to me. Theology nourished my faith then, and it still does. It was also when I was a student that I became convinced that God calls us to work for peace, justice, and the care of creation. I do what I can to put my faith into action in this way. Later in life, I became involved in a Buddhist group, who introduced me to meditation, which I have found very helpful in prayer.

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Sue.
On bright and hopeful days
What my faith means to me is that I am always learning. My faith is always new, in the Gospel story, in the Eucharist, in learning forgiveness, in serving others, in my prayers, in finding grace. My Christian faith was God's gift to me. My mother tells me that, it all started when I was very young, before I can remember, I asked to go to Sunday School. My family had previously not had any deep connection with the church. But it all started from my baptism and that going to Sunday school. The church, and our faith, has helped and shaped my family through happy and sad times; especially through the death of my sister from leukaemia, when she was 14.

On sad and dark days
My faith is the thing that supports me, and in my sharing with others in life's sadness, disappointments and especially in bereavement. My faith supports me in growing old and challenges me to face my mortality. In all of the big questions in life I can draw from the wisdom of two thousand years of Christian tradition.

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Terry.
I am a ‘cradle’ Christian; Sunday school; Confirmation aged 12; altar server. I never stopped going to church, even as a student. But if there was a transformation moment it was on a parish retreat in the mid 1970s. It was a silent retreat (they should come with a health warning!) so God got a word or two in edgeways. First, I was ‘shown’ all those people who had been doing what God had asked of them, quietly and without fuss, and who had unknowingly kept my feet on the path of faith towards that weekend. It was profoundly moving. Secondly, the retreat leader had a very simple message: God is always asking you to undertake a particular task, in a particular place, for a particular time, and s/he gives you the gifts you need to accomplish the task. My task was to lead a parish prayer group in extempore prayer. I discovered a gift I did not know I had in connecting with people’s concerns and finding the right words to express them. Since then I have tried to keep listening so that I know when I am being given a new ‘task’ I have also learned that the important thing is to let go of the old task when God calls you to start a new one.

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David.
I think that faith can be thought of as that vital piece of spiritual evidence that sustains you against a wall of doubt and a sea of fears. 

My faith story began in 1997 when my wife, Beverley, was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure. By 1999 her condition was pretty grim. She felt that the only way that she could regain her quality of life was to receive a live kidney donation. She turned to her brother and me. However, I felt God telling me that I would be the better donor.

I had fears and doubts. I felt myself going through a Gideon moment, I needed reassurance. 

The tissue typing tests that I underwent confirmed my belief that God wanted me to be the donor. My tissue type was a closer match than my brother-in-law’s.  What are the chances of that? 

However, I was still troubled by doubts and fears, but just as God answered Gideon’s cry for reassurance, He answered mine. The Thursday before the operation God put an end to my doubts and fears. A calm came over me and I received the much needed heart peace, the dew covered fleece that told me all would be well.

Suffice it to say both operations were a success. We still have to live in faith believing God will sustain us as we share a pair of kidneys between us.

Read the story of Gideon in Judges Chapter 6 to Chapter 8

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Some names have been changed.