Short Testimony by Peter Stanway
Next thing I knew I had started to cry (wee boys from Glasgow don’t cry!). These tears were coming from somewhere deep, deep inside of me and the more I cried the more I started to feel clean inside. All I remember after this was standing up at the altar and the pastor asking, ‘What can I do for you?’ My mind said, “everything” but my tongue wouldn’t work. I struggled and struggled until finally that one word came out.
It was as if I had given Jesus back the key to open my closed heart. I fell down, I thought I had fainted. As I became conscious of my surroundings I realised that I no longer felt sick and shaky. The anxiety and paranoia had gone and I felt good. I could focus clearly on everything around me and it didn’t change into a hideous hallucination. I started to rise up to my feet and I felt power fill my body. Although I didn’t know what was happening at that moment I was soon to discover that I had been filled with the Holy Spirit, God’s ‘power from on high’.
From that moment on my life completely turned around. I attended that little church as often as I could and God began to teach me from scriptures. ‘…if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation, the old things have passed away and all things are made new’! This is what had happened to me.
I was soon to learn that Jesus had never left me during all those years when I had been running from Him. His love for me had never diminished and He never had nor ever would condemn me as a failure. As my new life in Christ Jesus developed and grew, I now find myself working among folk who were still the same as I used to be in Glasgow and, eventually, all over the world.
I pioneered and pastored a Church among ‘my ain folk’ in Scotland for eight years during which time (the year 2000) I became an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God. In 2005 the Lord released me into an apostolic ministry and I now I go on missions all around the world.
In 1997 we formed a charity, The Way Christian Ministries. We now minister, by many means, to many thousands of people every day. Our aim is to; ‘make disciples out of Christians’ in fulfilment of the Great Commission.
I write a free weekly teaching called the Gist that is received, copied and used by around 70,000 people around the world. We have a Christian training course called Training for Life that is used globally, online and residentially, in our International Training for Life Centres including Scotland.