In the year 2013, I was sitting in my room in Dunedin, on my bed, when someone sent me an email with a link to a Joseph Prince video.

In it, he shares about something called “Grace”, a concept I hadn’t really heard about before, although I had even been attending a church with the name ‘grace’ in it.

It was a lovely church, a sort of an ‘anchor in the storm’, but still I had never heard of this “Grace” message that I was hearing on this video.

It was like a light-bulb experience, where something switched on inside of me, and suddenly I was awakened to something that I couldn’t quite grasp or fully understand, but yet it made sense.

In those days I didn’t really tell anyone about this video that I had watched, except for maybe one or two. I largely kept it to myself. I remember crying, and not even knowing why, when I first listened to the video, because the words made sense and gave me such a sense of hope, that I really am loved, outside of what I do or don’t do, I really am loved.

So I remember these words touching my heart so deeply, and feeling this sense of hope and confidence, I reached out to another friend, hoping they too would receive the hope in this “Grace” message, but they shut it down completely. They basically said it was heresy and they warned me to stay away from such teachers.

Ironically, the person I had sent it to, didn’t even watch the video, so when I gently asked them to watch it, and after they had, they said it was actually quite good. There are no hard feelings, then or now, but what they spoke quietly planted some seeds of doubt in my mind, which made me backtrack and return to the comfortable familiar message I was used to.

 

I never dated anyone until my late twenties, when I was 28. I had met this friend through a mutual church connection, through helping out with the kid’s church, and from there we got to know each other. In those days there wasn’t a lot going on by way of work, so I was able to help out a lot with his sweet son.

We had both been under that same teaching of religious works-based duty, and we were tired of it. Slowly coming out of that sphere, this friend had started listening to his Joseph Prince videos again, and so we both started listening.

I don’t remember the exact moment when it all started to make sense, as it was more like a series of moments, however, I do remember one moment in particular.

I was standing at the kitchen bench, while a Joseph Prince message was playing in the background, when suddenly it was like this dawning moment, all around me and within me, as though a thin curtain was slowly being drawn up, and I could now peek through under the veil to see something of such clarity I could not have seen before.

It was an awakening moment, for sure.

I remember from that point on, things starting to happen more rapidly, as though clarity was coming in waves, and with each wave, I could see higher and further than I ever could before. It was exciting. It was the message that I had long given up hope on, but here it was, loud and clear and more wonderful, more exciting, than I had ever dreamed could be possible.

 

 

No Other Name

 

 

Jesus