On what was probably the coldest day so far this year, I gave my testimony and was baptised at Grange beach earlier today. Many thanks to everyone who came, and all my family and friends who have supported and prayed for me over the years.
If you missed it, here is the transcript of my speech, complete with excessive punctuation and incorrect grammar, used in an effort to slow down my talking, and make it flow better for reading aloud.
If you missed it, here is the transcript of my speech, complete with excessive punctuation and incorrect grammar, used in an effort to slow down my talking, and make it flow better for reading aloud.
Hi everyone,
my name is Rohan, and today I would like to share with you some of what God has
done in my life, and why I’ve chosen to be baptised. Along with several of our
awesome youth kids; Jacinta, Tim & Kirstie, we have made the decision of
taking a public step of commitment and faith in God by being baptised today; although
they’re doing it a tad earlier than I am.
I’ve been
coming to Grange since before I was born, brought up in strong, loving
Christian family home with my parents, and two brothers. While I’d thought of
myself as being a Christian since I was 6 or 7 years old, I didn’t fully
understand who God was, or what being a Christian really meant.
This changed
to a more serious faith at a Franklin Graham outreach event I attended when I
was 13 years old. There wasn’t anything earth-shattering being said compared to
what I’d heard for years at church, but God really spoke to me at that point,
and I felt a strong push to go up the front, and declare my faith in Jesus as
my saviour.
After
struggling a with bullying and social exclusion in primary school, knowing that
Jesus would always love and accept me, even if most people didn’t, was a great
reassurance. Now, I’d like to be able to
say that my life since then has been amazing, happy and easy. However, after a
couple of years of a regular life as a teenage boy, eating ten Weet-bix for
breakfast, without much to challenge my faith in God’s goodness, I stumbled
onto a rocky, difficult path of chronic illness, that has tested my faith to
the breaking point time and time again, over the course of many years.
As some of
you may be aware, I’ve struggled with some very debilitating and serious health
problems for a long time. It all started in January 2000, with a chronic food
poisoning infection in my digestive system which has prevented me from living a
full life, being able study and work like everyone else my age. To give a very brief
outline, this infection has caused the muscles in my stomach to become
paralysed, and completely unable to digest any food or water.
So as of today,
I’ve been unable to eat even a mouthful of food or drink for the past 1,221
days, or 3 years and 4 months if you don’t have a calculator on you. Instead, I
receive liquid nutrition for 13 hours a day, pumped by a machine through a feeding
tube, which was surgically inserted into my intestinal tract, just below the
stomach in November 2010, and is essentially what keeps me alive.
At times, these symptoms have been so severe
as to render me hospitalised, then bedridden, and completely unable to function
for nearly a year at a time; namely during 2002, 2006 and 2010. Overall, there
hasn’t been a single day since I was 15 years old where I’ve felt well and
healthy, which has caused enormous struggles with my faith, healing, the
effectiveness of prayer, and the concept of God’s kindness and mercy.
How can
suffering through so many years of debilitating illness be his great plan for
my life? What kind of God just sits back and watches people suffering, when he
could so easily heal them? It’s hard singing praise songs in church, when
you’re feeling too sick to stand up and take part, and difficult to align God’s
goodness, with being simply too ill to even go to church in the first place,
month after month.
Perhaps one
of the reasons I haven’t chosen to be baptized until now, is that while I’ve
been a Christian for a long time, for much of the past 14 years, when I have
prayed, cried out and begged God to heal my body, my prayers seemed to go
unanswered, with no response, or even a feeling of God’s presence; just the
torturous physical suffering, while feeling terribly alone and abandoned.
And
while baptism is a declaration of commitment, not warm fuzzy feelings, I feel
that 5 years ago, I would have had to come up with a testimony that would be forced,
and just something that I thought was what a testimony “should” sound like. But
as I’ll explain, I think that now is the right time for me.
So clearly, I’ve
had a very tough journey for the second half of my life. However, in the midst
of all that suffering, there have been numerous examples of God stepping in as
an answer to prayer, showing his love and care, and reassuring me that I’m not
battling through this alone.
On March 16th,
2012, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer; six weeks before I married my
lovely wife Sally, and the day between her birthday and bridal shower;
incredibly poor timing at best. Later that afternoon, we were also told that
the house Sally had been renting, which we planned to move into following the
wedding, had to be vacated a few weeks afterward. Obviously, the cancer
diagnosis was some shocking news, and for a couple of days afterward, I was
freaked out, tense, shaky and upset about what was going to happen to me. But
after visiting a friend’s house with Sally, at first discussing, and then
praying about the cancer and upcoming surgery with them and Sally, the feelings
of terror and dread melted away.
This might
sound a bit weird, but despite having already gone through so much with my
stomach problems- only to have this dumped on top of it- the times surrounding
my cancer diagnosis, surgery and recovery were accompanied by the strongest
sense of God’s presence and comfort I’d ever felt in my life. This feeling was
amazing, as well as surprising, considering how much I felt God had abandoned
me in my times of need with my stomach problems, and that it would still be a
while before we knew whether the cancer had spread, or if I would need further
treatment.
For the
first time, I finally experienced the emotions and calmness described in
Philippians Chapter 4, Verse 7; “And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Now, it’s
not like my heart rate wasn’t a little elevated while lying in the hospital bed,
waiting to go into surgery, particularly considering they were hacking through
a fairly sensitive area to remove the tumour. But by praying, denouncing Satan
and any power he tried to hold over me, and running praise songs through my
head, I was at peace with what was about to happen to me, feeling safe in the
knowledge that God had his hand over me, and that everything would be ok.
Not only was
the strong sense of ‘peace beyond all understanding’ present, but God’s practical
and material blessings were also abundant during this time. While trying to
sort out living arrangements, it came up in conversation with my parents that a
house owned by extended family had been empty for several years, and made the
suggestion that couldn’t we live there for a year or so, until the property was
sold?
In a
humbling display of generosity from family, friends and strangers, hordes of
people descended on the messy and overgrown house and jungle-like yards, putting
in lots of hard work to transform it into a suitable home, where we could live
rent-free for some time. This was an amazing blessing, with my health too poor
to work much at all, allowing Sally to study full-time at TAFE and Bible
College, as well as work 25 hours a week.
And just in
case we hadn’t noticed this blatant display of God’s provision, he made sure of
it with the house literally being a 30 second walk away from Sally’s work
across the road. In addition, an internet car enthusiast community, which I’ve
been a part of for many years, banded together after hearing about my health
problems. A group of people, many of
whom I've never met in person, threw $6000 in a hat as a wedding gift for us ,
and helped to clean up the house inside and out; the abundance of God’s
blessings was even clearer. The only thing missing was God plonking a flashing
neon sign on the front lawn, quoting the first part of Isaiah 41:10; ‘Fear not,
for I am with you’.
On our
wedding day in April 2012, we had to contend with a fairly significant number
of problems compared to most newlyweds our age. Such as me having a feeding tube plugged into
the left side of my intestinal tract. A bag of antibiotics, liquid feed
bottles, and enough medications to tranquilize a small herd of elephants.
Recent surgery to remove a cancerous tumour, with a gaping wound that needed
frequent dressing changes, and uncertainty about our ability to have kids
following that. Unable to eat or drink, lugging around a feed machine instead. Very little income besides a disability
pension and occasional photography work.
But God had blessed me with an
incredibly generous, loving and understanding wife in Sally who was OK with all
that! Well, apart from the wound dressing changes anyway, which I did myself. Apparently,
it’s not considered ‘romantic’ to spend half an hour with a dressing kit,
cleaning out a gory wound on your husband’s torso, while lying on your bed in
the honeymoon suite.
Life has
still continued to be very difficult since then, with almost permanent nausea
and fatigue at various levels, and some days where the stress, frustration and
anger at my dysfunctional body boils over, and I break down in tears. But
again, when I settle down and think about it, God has quietly provided moments
of mercy when needed in recent times, of which I’d like to give just one
example.
While
spending 2 months in hospital at the end of 2010, a skeletal 50kg and clinging
on to life, the idea of going on an overseas holiday, or even a plane to
another city, was far beyond something I would have comprehended as being possible,
being barely able to muster the energy to sit up in bed. But, a couple of years
later, not only was I able to spend three amazing weeks touring New Zealand,
but was at the point where I even went skydiving and bungy jumping!
Another more
recent example of God’s timely intervention was during a weekend trip on Peter
and Vikki Hart’s houseboat a couple of months ago, with our small group. After
mistakenly trying to get to Blanchetown via Murray Bridge, which while being a
lovely drive, is NOT the fastest way to get there, I had already been feeling
pretty awful the few days previous, with severe nausea and fatigue putting a
dampener on things, that I would otherwise enjoy doing.
The first
half an hour was rather unpleasant; my already high nausea levels exacerbated
by the gentle rocking motion of the boat, as we putted down the river. While
everyone else was sitting around on the front deck, chatting and laughing while
tucking into a plate of cheese and crackers, I was pacing inside the kitchen
area, trying to breathe slowly and settle the nausea, without much success; calculating
and dreading the remaining hours of the weekend that I would have to spend
feeling like this.
Noticing my distress, Sally brought Vikki over to pray for
me. In a frustrated and angry mood, I was not expecting anything to happen,
like so many other times when people have prayed for healing for me. But over
the next few minutes, after the heartfelt request to God for healing, the
nausea gradually dissipated until it was at a low enough level where I could actually
enjoy the weekend, rather than being forced to endure it. Not only that, but I
was able to jump on a jet-ski, and went knee-boarding behind a speedboat,
albeit in a somewhat uncoordinated fashion for the most part.
So while my
body is still stricken with illness, preventing me from living a ‘normal’ life,
which can at times be frustrating, scary, upsetting and depressing, God has
still blessed me many times in the midst of all my times of trouble. These
blessings are not full physical healings, and certainly not a complete return
to good health. But, these ‘small mercies’ have allowed me to experience hope,
joy, love, peace, and fulfilment in what can be very trying circumstances; keeping
my hope, and faith in God, and helping me to appreciate what I do have. So
whatever the future may hold, with this public declaration of faith and
commitment, I trust that God will guide my amazing wife Sally and I in making
the most of our lives, working for his glory.
You will
more than likely have experienced some incredibly difficult circumstances in
your own lives, be it through illness, family difficulties, death, or loss. But
I would like to leave you with this thought. If you sit down and really think
about it- and maybe even write out a list of them- what are some of the many
blessings God has shown you in your life, or in the lives of others? Does it
change the way you feel about His mercy and grace?
It doesn’t
mean your life will be easy; or that God will fix all your problems for good. Two
weeks ago, I had to leave the church service after about 20 minutes, because simply
standing, then even just sitting up, was more than I could physically tolerate.
I almost fainted while trying to drive home, swapping seats with Sally halfway
there, before spending several hours curled up in the foetal position on our
couch. Writing this testimony made me feel so sick; I couldn’t even look at my
first draft for a week.
But, God is always there, carrying you through your
troubles, even if it doesn’t feel like it at times. And if you haven’t made a
commitment to follow Jesus, I hope that my story has helped give you some
understanding of what he is capable of doing in your life, no matter how trying
the circumstances, if you will just open your hearts and minds to him. And, for
those of you still awake at this point, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you
down at the beach!
