Once upon a time there was a beautiful Northern Irish girl called Gemma. She decided to travel all the way to Wales to study at Swansea University.
Along the way during her uni years she struggled to find a church and her faith was slowly pushed to the side lines of life, until it wasn’t a part of who Gemma was anymore.
However, after Gemma’s year abroad she came back into fourth year and met a girl at a uni ambassadors meeting who randomly invited her to church. Gemma thought to herself, ‘hey why not!’ and decided to go along. When she turned up, she immediately felt at home, she felt peace for the first time in years, she felt loved, she felt known.
A few days later, Gemma re-dedicated her life to God. She committed herself to prayer and reading her bible every single day. She became a member of that local church getting stuck in and serving immediately. 6 months later and Gemma is flying in her faith.
Gemma has become a wild evangelist, inviting everyone she meets to church. A few weeks ago she hosted a missional student lunch after a church meeting in her home. This was so all the students could pile over after church and meet her non-Christian housemates and course mates. She had just under 50 squashed into her little uni house, with over half of those being uni friends.
The following week 12 of those Non-Christian friends came to church with Gemma. That evening, 4 returned for the healing café, 2 of which got significantly healed.
Who knows where the rest of Gemma’s exciting journey of faith will take her….
The part I love about this story is not just Gemma finding God again, or bringing her friends to church, or even her friends getting healed. It’s the random girl who met her on that random day and had the confidence to invite her to church. She didn’t know Gemma, she hadn’t been friends with her for years. She just plucked up the courage and asked a simple question. Could you be that random person? Could you be that friend who just asks. We don’t know someone’s history, or what they’re going through, who knows, your simple question ‘would you like to come to church with me?’, could be what they were hoping for. Don’t discount people. Don’t say somebody’s no for them.
