Finding the Creator
I was born in South Wales during World War II. I had a happy and stable upbringing.
My parents and I attended a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church. Going to chapel was part of our weekly routine, as was dressing in our ‘Sunday best’! I believed in the existence of God, feared him, but did not know him.
With increasing work demands, my parents left off attending church, and didn’t worry if I didn’t attend either. When television entered our home, I found drama more exciting than church attendance. Turning down a university place, I proceeded to train as an actress.
I loved all the training and embarked on a career in the theatre. After about two years, I began to be bothered about my lifestyle and my conscience began to disturb me.
I returned to London from my travels. I felt I still appreciated good acting, but I didn’t enjoy ‘life’ in the theatre. I saw that morals and integrity were brushed aside in the people around me — and that bothered me.
I started reading books on other religions, but becoming ‘a dot in the universe’ didn’t satisfy me. Eventually, I felt I must get a Bible and read it. The only copy I could lay my hands on was a copy of the New Testament from a local library. So I read it right through.
When I came to Romans 1:25, ‘They worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator’, I knew that had been me, and I decided to leave the theatre.
Searching
Then I started looking around London for a church that could explain the Bible to me. I eventually found a preacher in Westminster Chapel, near Buckingham Palace. When I heard him, I thought, ‘This man knows what he is talking about’.
I decided I would go to hear him twice every Sunday, and every Friday night to find out what sort of life God required of me. I moved into a missionary home in London and got a job in the Scripture Union bookshop, so I could meet Christians and read lots of books.
I was very much aware that I was a sinner and had broken God’s holy laws and I hated the consequences of my sin. I needed the Saviour, who had died in my place on the cross to make me right with God and have his peace.
From time to time, I had contact with an actor I’d met at the London Drama Centre where we’d studied. He was still working in the theatre, but he agreed to come to church with me. I started to pray for his conversion, so that he would know the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour and follow Christ.
After four years, he was changed. He left the theatre and we got married. He went to study at a Bible college and then he became a pastor and itinerant speaker, in the UK and USA.
We have served the Lord for over 34 years now, and 24 of those years have been spent at the Granary Evangelical Church in Rainham. Christ said, ‘I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly’ (John 10:10). That has been absolutely true in our case.
Elaine Harper
