My Testimony: How I Met Christ as My Savior

Growing Up Roman Catholic

The story—my story—of how I met Christ as my Savior and the difference that He has made in my life begins in Leeds, in the north of England, where I was born in the 1960s. I’ll be 60 years old this July.

I came into this world and was born into a loving Roman Catholic home. I was the only child in the family, and from infancy I was taken along to Mass in the Catholic Church. I went to a Roman Catholic school to begin with, although it was a long drive from where we lived. Eventually, my parents pulled me out simply because of the travel and put me into a local Protestant school, a Church of England school.

At the same time, in order to make up for any lack in my Catholic education, every Tuesday night I was taken to special instruction in the priest’s home for Catholics who were attending Protestant schools. There was a group of us there, and we were given instruction in Catholic doctrine and dogma.

Despite all this religious education, I was actually very ignorant of the Scriptures. I knew very little. There were certain verses, such as, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,” which were important in Catholic teaching. We knew Mary’s Magnificat and, of course, the Our Father. But generally speaking, there were massive gaps in my knowledge.

David and Goliath? I had never heard that story. There were many things that someone who grew up in a Christian home might have heard from infancy that I had simply never heard.

Religion Without Reality

There was a lot of religion and a lot of ritual. At Mass they would read three passages of Scripture: one from the Old Testament, one from the Gospels, and one from the Epistles. But the homily, or short sermon that the priest gave, rarely had anything to do with the Scriptures that had been read. So you really had no explanation of the Word of God and very little understanding of it.

For me, it was very much a ritual.

In fact, in our parish we had two priests. One of them was an older man, and it seemed to take him forever to say Mass. Then there was a younger man who would whip through the Mass much more quickly. We would look in the bulletin and always try to go to the quick Mass and get it out of the way!

It was almost as if you had done your bit, completed your ritual, and could then get on with life.

I would say that it had very little impact on the way I actually lived.

As I entered my teenage years, I began to feel that there was a lot of hypocrisy in my life. I remember thinking very distinctly, “Mike, you’re a hypocrite. You get dressed up, you go to this ritual, and then you go back on your merry way and hardly think about God at all.”

I remember talking to my father and saying, “This is hypocrisy. We’re just going through a ritual. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

My dad replied, “Look, here in my house you obey my rules. You’re going to Mass.”

So I continued going until I was 18 years old. In England, turning 18 was traditionally seen as being given “the key to the door”—you were becoming a man.

At that point I said, “Okay, I’m done. If that’s Christianity, I have no interest in pursuing it. I’m not going to Mass anymore. I’m finished.”

And I stopped attending.

Drinking, Partying, and an Empty Life

Another aspect of my upbringing then began to have a greater influence on me. Although ours was a religious home, my parents were social drinkers. Alcohol was often consumed at home and in the pubs and clubs we went to. I was taken along from childhood, and so very early in life I was exposed to alcohol and became accustomed to drinking.

By the age of 13, I was regularly drinking in bars with my father. I had a moustache even back then and had matured early, so I could get served in the bars.

Another thing happened during my teenage years. My mother began to go beyond social drinking. She would drink secretly at home, often from a coffee cup—but it wasn’t coffee she was drinking.

It wasn’t unusual for me to come home from school and find my mother very drunk, aggressive, and wanting to argue. I remember feeling very angry and frustrated.

You would think that seeing the impact alcohol had on her might have affected my own judgment, but sadly, it didn’t.

After leaving Catholicism at 18, I became more and more involved in the drinking scene, particularly on weekends. My weekends were often filled with drunkenness, partying, street fights, and all the negative things that went along with that lifestyle.

That became my life.

“There Has Got to Be More to Life Than This”

When I was 20 years old, I remember sitting at my desk at work one day. I had received my wages on Friday and had already spent them over the weekend on drinking, partying, and everything that went with it.

I remember thinking:

“There has got to be more to life than this.”

If this was supposed to be “the good life,” it wasn’t coming up with the goods. It was selling me short. It was deeply disappointing.

The party lifestyle did not satisfy me. It left me with empty pockets and an empty heart. I was bankrupt.

I began thinking, “There has got to be something more—something meaningful, something worth living for. And this isn’t it.”

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Go Out With Me

Around that time I changed jobs and began working in another office. There I met a girl at work. In fact, we worked across from one another in the same desk area.

I remember the first day I met her thinking, “I’m going to marry her. She is going to be my wife.”

So I began pursuing her.

I asked her for dates, and she was very consistent in her response. It was always a very definite “No!”

I don’t give up very easily, so I kept asking her, day after day, thinking, “I’ll wear her down. One of these days she’s going to say yes.”

But she didn’t.

Eventually I realized that the direct method wasn’t working very well, so I figured I needed to find some sort of bridge that would help me get a date with this girl.

She was Irish, and I knew that the part of Ireland she came from—the Republic of Ireland—was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic at that time. So I assumed she must be Catholic.

I asked her where she went to church, expecting her to say St. Patrick’s, St. Mary’s, or some other Catholic church. My plan was to suddenly rediscover my Catholicism as a bridge-building mechanism to get a date with her!

To my great surprise, she told me she attended an independent evangelical church called City Evangelical.

I had never even heard the word “evangelical” before.

So I asked, “What does that mean? What do you people believe?”

Her answer was simple:

“We believe the Bible is the Word of God, and everything we do is based on the Scriptures.”

I replied, “You can’t be serious! That’s a load of rubbish. Nobody believes the Bible!”

In my social world, I genuinely didn’t know a single person who took the Bible seriously or actually believed it.

Then she asked me a very wise and telling question:

“Have you ever read it?”

Of course, I hadn’t.

The priest did the readings. We didn’t read the Bible ourselves. We had a huge family Bible sitting on a shelf alongside statues of Mary, crucifixes, and other religious objects. It was almost another icon. It wasn’t something we actually read.

She said, “Well, before you dismiss it as a load of rubbish, don’t you think it would be a good idea to at least read it first?”

That was a very wise approach.

I Started Reading the Bible for the Wrong Reason

I thought, “Okay, I want to go out with this girl, and if reading the Bible is the way to do it, I’m going to read the Bible!”

I managed to find a Gideon Bible that we had been given at school, and I began with Genesis 1:1 because every book I had ever read started on page one.

I would read six chapters every night and write down questions to ask her at work the next day.

Part of my motive was that I wanted to go out with her, so this gave us something to talk about. But I also wanted to demonstrate how foolish she was for believing this Book.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”? I thought everybody knew we had evolved over billions of years!

Then there were questions like, “How could somebody live to be 969 years old?” and “Where did Cain get his wife?”

But something very interesting happened.

She had answers.

And the answers made sense.

They exposed my ignorance.

From a biblical perspective, she was doing exactly what the Word of God says: she was ready to give an answer for the hope that was within her, with meekness and fear.

It was intimidating because she knew what she believed, while I really didn’t.

Many of us believed in evolution simply because someone like David Attenborough said it on television—not because we had studied it deeply or had strong convictions about the evidence. Someone important believed it, so we assumed it must be true.

Being challenged on these things was very sobering.

“I Could Never Understand the Bible”

I continued through Genesis and then Exodus. Eventually I arrived at Leviticus.

As I began reading Leviticus, I became utterly confused.

I remember thinking, “I don’t even know what questions to ask anymore. This is so confusing.”

I became convinced that I could never understand the Bible, and I was ready to quit.

At that point she said, “Why don’t you begin reading the New Testament? Why not start with the Gospel of John?”

Again I thought, “Okay, I want to go out with this girl. If reading the Bible is the way to do it, I’ll read John’s Gospel.”

And so I began reading John.

The Verse That Changed Everything

Then I came to a verse that may be very familiar to many people, but it was the first time I remember ever reading it or even being aware that it existed:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
—John 3:16

I remember sitting there at 20 years of age, amazed by this powerful verse.

What struck me first were the words:

“God so loved the world.”

I thought, “If God loved the world, then I’m part of the world. That must mean He loves me.”

Then another thought came:

“How could He possibly love someone like me? I know what I’m like. How could He love me?”

Then I read that He “gave his only begotten Son.”

I was an only child and an only son. I knew that my parents would never willingly give me up for anyone.

And I thought, “God loved me enough to give His only begotten Son.”

I was overwhelmed by the thought of the love of God. It thrilled me that He could love someone like me.

But I still didn’t understand the rest of the verse.

Trying to Make Myself Good Enough

My Catholic thinking immediately kicked in.

I thought, “If God loves me that much, then I need to respond to His love by turning over a new leaf and becoming a good person.”

Instead of believing in Christ and Him alone, my works-religion mentality took over.

I thought, “I’ve got to do something.”

So I made a determined effort. I was going to stop smoking. I was going to stop cursing. I was going to stop drinking.

I was going to become a good person.

But I discovered that self-reformation was impossible.

In fact, the harder I tried, the worse I seemed to become.

I couldn’t even think straight, never mind live straight.

I was trying desperately to become a good person, but I couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t working.

Seeing Myself as a Sinner

At that point, this girl gave me a book by Josh McDowell. He was famous for his book Evidence That Demands a Verdict, but that wasn’t the book she gave me. She gave me Givers, Takers and Other Kinds of Lovers, a book about sex, courtship, marriage, and the Bible.

Remember, I was still continually asking her for dates! I wondered whether she thought, “Maybe if he reads this, it will finally put an end to it!”

I began reading the book, and one thing it did was lay out God’s standards for human relationships.

Suddenly I could see something very clearly.

The Bible says that through the law is the knowledge of sin. We often think particularly of the Ten Commandments, but God’s law shows us how sinful we really are.

As I saw God’s standards for human relationships, I could see that my life was the exact opposite.

God said, “This is how you should live.”

My life said, “This is how I have lived.”

I became deeply convicted.

I began reaching certain conclusions.

First, if the Bible was true—and through constantly reading it and having my questions answered, I was increasingly convinced that it was—then I was in a very difficult position.

If God was who the Bible revealed Him to be, absolutely holy, and my life was as sinful as I knew it to be, then God would be perfectly just to send a person like me to hell.

I knew I was a sinner.

I became terrified to go to sleep at night because I feared that if I died in my sleep, I would wake up in hell.

Yet I was also utterly frustrated because I knew I couldn’t change myself. I had already tried self-reformation.

It hadn’t worked.

Jesus Took My Place

I kept reading John’s Gospel and McDowell’s book, and then what we might call Gospel light began to dawn.

Something I read explained the rest of John 3:16 to me.

There was a Man who had lived the life I could never live.

He was perfect in every way.

Because He had never done anything wrong, He did not deserve punishment. Because He had never sinned, He did not deserve to die.

And yet He was punished.

He did die.

Why?

Because He died as a substitute in my place. He took the penalty that I deserved.

Suddenly, I understood.

June 16, 1981 — The Night I Trusted Christ

On June 16, 1981, I knelt down beside my bed, overwhelmed by the fact that Jesus loved me enough to die for me and take the penalty that I deserved on Calvary’s cross.

I remember kneeling there, thanking Jesus for dying for someone like me and asking Him to be my Savior.

That night, I know something happened.

The Bible puts it this way: I passed from death unto life. I became a new creature. I was born again.

At the time, I didn’t understand all the terminology that I understand now.

But I knew this:

When I put my head on the pillow that night, I slept like a baby.

I knew that if I died that night, I would go to Heaven and not hell—not because I was a good person, but because I had a great Savior who had died on Calvary to save me from my sin.

It was life-transforming.

I finally understood the second half of John 3:16.

I was a “whosoever.”

I had believed in Him.

And now I knew that I would not perish but had, as a present possession, everlasting life because:

“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”

“Something Happened to Me Last Night”

The next day I went to work and told this girl:

“Something happened to me last night.”

She didn’t believe a word of it!

She thought I was faking my conversion because she knew how desperately I wanted to go out with her. She thought I was pretending to be converted just to get a date.

She was totally unmoved by my newfound joy and testimony.

But something interesting happened.

Before long, other people at work began noticing a difference.

The cursing that I had tried unsuccessfully to stop—when almost every other word had been a curse word—disappeared.

Drinking had been such a major part of my life, but suddenly I lost my appetite for alcohol.

I remember going into a bar and ordering a pint of my favorite beer. I stood there and found myself unable even to lift it from the counter. I was deeply convicted:

“I don’t belong here anymore.”

I walked away.

By the grace of God, I have never been back to that lifestyle. That was in 1981.

Amazing changes had taken place.

Everybody at work noticed.

They started asking this girl:

“What have you done to him?”

In the language of the Bible, I was a new creature.

I was a different person.

And Yes, I Got the Girl!

Eventually she realized that this was real—that I genuinely had become a believer in Christ, had been born again, and was a new creature.

Eventually she said yes.

We were married in October 1982.

I’m talking, of course, about my wife, Ann Marie.

So yes, if you wanted to know the end of the story, I got the girl!

But I received infinitely more than that.

I came into a living relationship with a living, loving Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I can truly say that He changed my life.

It is no longer empty.

It is full—full of purpose, full of meaning, full of reality.

No longer merely hypocrisy and ritual, but reality.

Christ changed everything.

“How Many More Mike Atwoods Are Out There?”

One thing troubled me greatly.

I had grown up in a city of around three-quarters of a million people. I had lived for 20 years and, as far as I could remember, had never once heard John 3:16.

I began thinking:

“How many more Mike Atwoods are out there?”

How many people get up in the morning, eat their breakfast, go about their daily affairs, and have no conception that God loves them, that Christ died for them, and that if they would believe on Him, they would not perish but have everlasting life?

It really bothered me.

There was another man in the evangelical church I had started attending who had a similar story. He too had been saved out of a background of drinking and carousing.

We began talking about telling others about the Lord Jesus.

So we began preaching in the open air.

That is how we started.

We didn’t know very much. We were newly saved.

But I knew people were lost, and I knew how they could be saved.

So did he.

We would stand in shopping precincts and preach because we wanted other people to come into the glorious relationship with Christ that we were enjoying.

That is how I became involved in the Lord’s work very early on—seeking to tell others about the One who loved us and gave Himself for us, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Gospel and a Beseeching God

I want to go a step further and look at a passage of Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:19–21:

“To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

I want to title this very simple message:

The Gospel and a Beseeching God.

A God Who Pleads With Sinners

Notice the words of verse 20:

“As though God did beseech you by us.”

As an ambassador for the Lord Jesus, I am His representative. If you do not know the Lord Jesus, if you have never been reconciled to God, I plead with you to be reconciled to Him.

And I do it on His behalf.

God, as it were, is beseeching you through me.

Isn’t it amazing that this God—the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity—would condescend to plead with you and beseech you to be reconciled to Him?

But there is more.

Verse 20 says:

“We pray you in Christ’s stead.”

In Christ’s place!

It is as if Christ Himself were imploring you, Christ Himself pleading with you.

Think of the wonder of this: God the Father and God the Son, through His servant, pleading, beseeching, and imploring you to be reconciled to God.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

And there is still more.

We believe the Holy Spirit is the One who caused these words to be recorded. The Bible says:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The Spirit of God inspired these words, caused them to be written, preserved them, and made it possible for us to have them before us today.

So we see God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as it were, imploring and beseeching:

“Be ye reconciled to God.”

Have you ever responded to His pleading?

Have you ever taken that step, as I did in 1981, to receive this offer of full and free salvation?

What Does It Mean to Be Reconciled?

The word “reconcile” implies that something is not right.

Something is out of balance.

Things are not as they ought to be.

We use the word in accounting. You may think you have one amount in your bank account while the bank statement shows something different. The two figures do not reconcile. Something is wrong, and an adjustment is needed.

We also use the word in relationships.

Two people were once on good terms, but now they no longer speak to one another. We might say, “I wish they would be reconciled.”

Here the word is used concerning our relationship with God—our Maker, Creator, and Judge.

Something is not right between us and Him.

Something has spoiled the relationship.

Sin Broke Our Relationship With God

This takes us back to the Garden of Eden.

In Genesis we read that God and Adam enjoyed a wonderful relationship. God would come and walk with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day.

Everything was harmonious.

There was a happy, delightful relationship.

But one day God was there as usual, and Adam did not show up.

In fact, Adam was hiding.

What had happened?

God had not changed.

Adam had changed.

Adam had rebelled against his Maker by disobeying the one command God had given concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Sin was the spoiler.

Sin broke the relationship.

Since then, Adam’s descendants have been alienated from God because of sin, cut off from fellowship with Him.

God was not the One who rebelled.

We did.

Yet God has gone to incredible lengths to restore that precious relationship so that once again men and women can walk with God and enjoy fellowship with Him.

He wants that relationship.

Why do you think He pleads, implores, and beseeches you to be reconciled to Him?

Christ Is the Only Way of Reconciliation

Verse 19 says:

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”

Christ is the key.

God, through Christ, has made reconciliation possible for a world estranged from Him.

How can we, who have been estranged through sin, be reconciled to God?

There is only one answer:

Through the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the only One who can deal with the problem that caused the breakdown in the first place.

And that problem is sin.

The Wonderful Truth of Imputation

Verse 21 gives us one of the most wonderful truths in all of Scripture:

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

Think again about our accounting illustration.

Spiritually, our account was bankrupt and deeply in debt because of our sin.

Our account read:

Guilty.

Trespass.

Sin.

Failure.

But Christ’s account was completely different.

He “knew no sin.”

He was positively righteous.

And then comes the wonder of the Gospel.

He pays our debt in full.

But He does more than simply cancel the debt.

His righteousness is put to our account.

There has never been a more amazing offer made to the human race.

When we look at the Lord Jesus hanging upon the cross, it is as though God took our sin and placed it upon His sinless Son and punished Him as the guilty One.

Then His righteousness is placed to the account of those who trust Him.

This is the amazing message of salvation.

This is reconciliation.

Be Reconciled to God

God is pleading with you:

“Be ye reconciled to God.”

He wants that relationship restored.

He wants you to get things right before it is too late.

You do not need to spend eternity estranged from God.

You can stop running.

You can stop hiding from God as Adam did.

You can admit, as I had to admit:

“I am a hell-deserving sinner. God would be just to send me to hell. I am a sinner. I am spiritually bankrupt.”

Then recognize that the Lord Jesus—the One who knew no sin—hung upon the cross because He loved you, bearing the punishment that you deserved so that you could be eternally forgiven.

The Gospel ABCs

The Gospel is simple enough for a child to understand. We could describe it using the ABCs.

A — Admit

Admit that you are a sinner deserving God’s judgment.

This may be the hardest part.

We naturally say:

“I’m not as bad as the person down the road.”

“I’m not as bad as him over at number 49!”

We compare ourselves with others.

But until we agree with God about our sin, we have not reached the starting point.

Admit:

“I am a sinner. I deserve punishment. I am guilty. Things are not right between me and God. I need to be reconciled to Him.”

B — Believe

Believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died upon Calvary’s cross because of the sin question.

Believe that He paid the penalty for your sin.

Believe that He died in your place and in your stead, taking upon Himself what you rightly deserved.

Believe that He died, was buried, and on the third day rose again victorious.

C — Call

Call upon the name of the Lord.

The Bible says:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

God has done everything necessary for your salvation.

Acknowledge that you are a sinner.

Believe that His Son died for you.

Call upon Him.

Today Is the Day of Salvation

All those years ago, in 1981, I responded to the Savior’s pleading.

I trusted Christ as my Savior.

He transformed my life.

I cannot thank Him enough for what He has done for a wretch like me.

And what He has done for me, He is more than willing and able to do for you.

“For God so loved the world…”

That means He loves you.

“…that he gave his only begotten Son…”

The Lord Jesus Christ.

“…that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

If you have never done that, I urge you, I plead with you, I beseech you in Christ’s stead:

Be reconciled to God.

Second Corinthians 6:2 says:

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

You are not guaranteed your next breath. Human life is fragile.

You may not receive another opportunity like this.

Today can be the day when you become a new creature in Christ by trusting in Him.

You can simply come before Him:

“Lord, I am a sinner. I deserve judgment. Lord, save me.”

He has promised:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If there is anything I can do to help you understand this, I am more than willing, because I know this changes everything—both for time and for eternity.

Thank you for listening to my story.

The good news is:

It can be your story too.