http://www.wildoxgib.com/2007/09/17/my-story.htm
I have always been a seeker. I once read a book by Francois Fenelon called “The Seeking Heart“. That is what I feel that I have always had. Ever since an early age I was always seeking, craving for fulfillment in external activities and driven to succeed by a need to feel worthy. My...
more »http://www.wildoxgib.com/2007/09/17/my-story.htm
I have always been a seeker. I once read a book by Francois Fenelon called “The Seeking Heart“. That is what I feel that I have always had. Ever since an early age I was always seeking, craving for fulfillment in external activities and driven to succeed by a need to feel worthy. My emptiness was not rooted in the way I was brought up. Few people in the world can ever hope to have had such a loving and caring environment as the one I was brought up in. My pain was not due to lack of love, I had plenty of love to give away. There was always a sense of emptiness, a predisposition to feel depressed with myself, an indefinable void that I believe every person really has and that is the need to find his or her creator.
A series of accomplishments alleviated the pain somewhat, wild partying helped me to forget it at times, and my upbeat outward socializing character helped mask me externally from enquiries as to my condition in the world, but at the end of the day, at night, by myself the void and the vacuum was always there staring me in the face.
I decided to pursue studies in Business Management from Gibraltar, and that I did so after three years distance learning I earned my degree in Business Management through The Open University. At the same time, a mountain of self-help books did not give me the answers that I was looking for.
During the Christmas period of 1993 my brother-in-law Paul was visiting home and presented the gospel to Annabelle and myself. I listened to him but carried on with my thing. However, in the days that ensued a haunting pursued me – it was a deep conviction that there must be more to life than this. Could there be a God that so cared tom have a relationship with me that even when I chose to rebel against Him He was sending His own Son to die on a Cross as my substitute? It was settled - I gave my life to the Lord and Annabelle followed shortly after. The void was finally being filled. Mine was no miraculous event. No sudden flashes of light. Mine was an awakening, a dawning of contentment and purpose in life that continues to grow to the present day.
In 1996 I married Annabelle and we now have two beautiful boys Aaron and Eli. I was by now teaching and preaching the Gospel and found myself being set in the ministry in 1998, and served as part of a pastoral team in a church in La Linea, Spain right up to 2002 when I felt a leading to plant a church back in my home town of Gibraltar.
Living Waters Tabernacle was born in 2003, and I continue to serve as its bi-vocational pastor, and am continually being wrecked by God’s Father Heart. It has been a very interesting journey. Every day I am being wooed by this Lord who has love to give away! And give away He has! His love has captivated me and turned me from empty religion to meaningful friendship, from the striving of an anxious heart to the rest of a weaned soul, from the pressure of performance to the victory of grace. I can never go back to the emptiness of before; I refuse to serve God from the bitterness of religious striving; Father has me now, and it is well with me – More Lord! Onward and upward!
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