MY STORY...Chris Baines [FROM RUGBY AND ALCOHOL TO JESUS]

I grew up in a Christian family with both my parents preaching in local churches. This meant attending church on a Sunday morning was a compulsory part of the week but I always remember it as being more of a chore than anything. Numerous Sundays I would find myself going to the kids group just to avoid listening to a sermon.

Sport at school became a big part of my life and is still one of my favourite hobbies. And how happy I was to find out rugby training at Truro rugby club was on a Sunday and better still on at the same time as church and so I started rugby instead of church. I didn’t know it at the time but this was the beginning of a walk down a wide path which would later lead to a lot of mistakes. The rugby culture by the age of 16 had become very alcohol orientated and the easy option was to follow the crowd. Alcohol even from that age became a very big weight to drag because no longer could I hang out with my mates and have a good time if it didn’t involve alcohol and drinking games. However in school I did have one Christian friend Meriel who is now attending church regularly.  We did have the odd conversation about God but I wasn’t going to church still because for the meantime drinking and having a girlfriend and my friendship seemed to be all that would bring me “happiness”. Looking back I know that God was using that friendship with Meriel to bring us both back home to him. Then a year at Truro School passed with continued drinking and sin. Meriel also decided to go to Truro school and so the conversations and friendship continued to grow.   During that year I had agreed to go to this thing called Soul Survivor because she had previously been and invited me to go so went along with thought why not.
  
I then received a phone call from an old school friend who I had never associated with church inviting me to come to oasis church and play saxophone in the band. I remember feeling so unworthy and guilty so I said no and delayed it for a month or so then in conversation with Meriel we decided to pay a visit to it. “It wasn’t like church, this place was cool, played good worship music and these people were funny”. I remember coming away thinking “wow that’s not how I had expected church to be” Over the next couple of weeks building up to soul survivor I began feeling guilty about all the sin in my life and I remember on the last night at soul survivor sitting down with the music playing these words: “and I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross”. This point I believe I was given my salvation as I realised that Jesus died for me on that cross so that I could be forgiven and have everlasting life in heaven. I even cried which for me is weird because I don’t think I’d really cried that much before that. Anyhow this really fired me up and I began reading the bible and started attending church every week. My attitude and heart towards church had totally changed from ten years ago where I was getting dragged to church. I had been given a passion for Jesus and Church became the highlight of my week. The teaching was so relevant to the way I was living and the way I needed to be living which in turn led to a lot of the things I had struggled with being wiped away. I then also achieved good grades at A level to get into at Camborne School of Mines in Falmouth. This was a miracle in itself and I know was an answer to a lot of prayer.
  
I moved into Uni halls where I found out two of my flatmates were Christians which was a blessing. University was a complete lifestyle shock for me though and I found it very easy to say yes to drinks and going out as it seemed to be that you’d only make friends by doing that. This slowly grew until one night where I had had too much to drink and in my drunken state I knocked on one of my Christian flat mates doors asking for help and she cared for me. This was on a day it snowed and she later told me that she was stuck at a friend’s house in St Austell and wasn’t going to come back to the flat but she just felt God tell her she had to get back. It’s amazing again to look back at how God’s plan has been worked out in your life. I know that he had put her there for me. I felt so guilty the next day that I met up with my Pastor to talk about it and he simply said which road do you want to go down? This was such a simple message that I feel God had given him to speak to me because it is one that has stuck with me. This overwhelming conviction suddenly had moved my life back on to the narrow path of righteousness.
  
After this fall know that God welcomed me back into his arms and from here on my life has been transformed.  Worship was a key part of my salvation and was how I originally connected to God and as I have become more spiritually mature I have learnt to do this through prayer and also scripture but whenever I’m going through a bad time God will always use worship to speak to me and bring me back to him.
  
I have recently been baptised to symbolise being made dead to sin and alive in Christ. I have found a lot of stuff that’s gone on in my past has always been holding me back and this act in gaining a new life in Christ has brought me a cleanliness from sin and my past that I never thought I could experience.
  
One key lesson that I’ve have learnt through my salvation is that happiness is not found in things of this world such as alcohol and money etc but it is only found through a relationship with God through Christ Jesus his son.