Growing in God - becoming a Christian and growing in faith

I became a Christian in January 2002, but I think I knew it was coming for some time. My dad's terminal illness was a massive turning point for me, raising questions like: What is life for? What is fair? How come God can do that? Christian friends were a constant strength during these testing times and after working through my questions it seemed like the time to give my life to Christ. I felt so relieved; life was immediately lighter as I discovered that I had been doing things back to front by trying to sort out my life before seeking God.

Sport had been my life as far back as I remember and for 17 years Judo had been massive. I was lucky enough to experience competition at a high level and represent my country. But unfortunately I had to retire due to injury. This challenged me to think about why God gave me the gift of sport and then took it away. But I am coming to realise that he takes away so that he can bless me in other ways and open other doors that I haven't even seen yet!

I work for the British Sports Trust, an organisation which aims to help people discover their potential; sport is a great means to do this. My role is to teach PE teachers, sports development officers, coaches etc in training, volunteers and young people about leadership, using sport as a medium. These leadership skills are transferable into many walks of life and this training is key for people in voluntary organisations and churches.

One of the awards the British Sports Trust runs is the Community Sports Leadership Award (CSLA) and over the last few years this course has been run at Sports Plus Camps. The CSLA course is about relating aspects of leadership to young people and it is great to be able to use Jesus as the role model. It is exciting to see the faces of the CSLA students as they see Jesus as a leader and are able to move closer to understanding more about him.

I still have pitfalls and struggles, but I am glad of those in a strange sort of way as I realise that when life becomes too comfortable then I stop growing and I don't want to stop growing.

Pav

More information
Further details on British Sports Trust is available at www.bst.org.uk

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