How God Saved Me

Read in the Bible, Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 7, verses 24 – 27.. 

This may sound cheesy, but I was born in a Welsh valley town called Caerphilly but when I was only months old the family moved to the seaside village of Pembrey in South West Wales. From as early as I can remember, as well as going to school, I and my older sister and younger brother went with my parents to the local Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in the village. We were also sent to their Sunday School every Sunday. We would learn the many Bible stories and have to learn scripture verses every week and get stickers when we could recite them correctly. I kept going , probably out of respect for my parents, even into my late teens. I can remember when I was 18/19 years old taking part in an inter-chapel quiz. Here we had to study/learn a large portion of scripture and answer questions on that passage – after it was finished I was off into town to meet wit my friends/girlfriend at our ‘local’. 

On leaving school I completed a university apprenticeship scheme with BP and when qualified I had to leave home to take up a post with them in their refinery in Grangemouth, Scotland. Now I was free from having to go to chapel to please my parents. I arrived in Falkirk at my new bed sit home on a Sunday and in the evening decided to walk up to the town centre to see what was there. As I turned into a shopping precinct there was a Salvation Army band playing. The tune they were playing was a well-known Welsh hymn tune. When I heard it, I was struck by a wave of emotion and had to turn around and go back to my room. You may say that this was being homesick but looking back now I believe it was God reminding me that He was real and I should live to please Him not just my parents. I quickly shrugged that experience off and settled into life in Scotland. I had two great passions at that time. They were playing rugby and motor rallying, the latter to national and international level. Not just playing/competing but the colourful/lively social life that went along with them, and the normal round of socialising with friends. There was definitely no time at all for ‘going to church’. 

A year or so went by and life was enjoyable, work was going well. I was put on as a supervisor on a plant commissioning team and while on there my elderly grandmother was taken ill. I couldn’t take time off to go back to Wales to see her and a few weeks later she died. I did manage to get some time off to go down for her funeral. (My grandmother had lived with us and she was the ‘normal’ disciplinarian – she had a bamboo cane which she would rap my brother and I if we misbehaved, and we used to get her a new one every year – how dumb was that. Every year a ‘rag and bone man’ would come to school to collect old woollen clothes etc. and in return for handing some over you could get a goldfish and either a fishing net or cane. Every year either I or my brother would pick the cane and hand it over to my grandmother.) I did not consider myself an emotional man but as the service progressed, I suddenly started to weep – not out loud but inside, I was really shaken. I believe it was God giving me another prod – reminding me that life is not endless and death is a reality we will all face. 

On returning to Scotland life got back to ‘normal’ with the round of work, socialising and now only rallying – I counted my limbs too precious an asset for rallying to risk injuring them playing rugby. Things got better, as I was asked if I wanted to join a team commissioning a new refinery in Germany. Now this would not only have been a great experience workwise but also I had heard of the lively city nightlife that was to be found there – something I anticipated with relish. But there was one potential damper on this plan. I had a medical problem, not by any means a serious one just a big nuisance, but it required an operation to fix it. I found out that as it wasn’t serious the waiting list meant that it would almost certainly be a year or so before I was called. So, I planned to go to Germany – however not long after that I received a letter from the hospital to say there had been cancellations and they could fit me in the following week. After some thought I opted to have the operation – there would probably be other commissioning opportunities in the future. 

Hospital wasn’t too bad, lots of visitors and staff were very friendly. Then the evening after my operation the student nurse on night shift on the ward attracted my attention, her name was Mary. I had had many girlfriends but here was something about her that was ‘different’ which intrigued me. 

Over remainder of my stay in hospital we had quite a lot of contact and eventually I asked her out. She considered the offer but said she couldn’t accept. Not being used to being rejected I asked why. “I’m a Christian” she replied. Well that wasn’t a good reason as far as I was concerned – after all I considered myself to be a Christian – hadn’t I gone to ‘church’, I believed in God, I had read the Bible! I persisted and after leaving hospital we did meet and she explained that to become a Christian you had to believe that Christ died for your sins and through faith in Him you could have your sins forgiven and be assured of a place in heaven. This was news to me, even so I still considered myself a Christian. Over many meetings, often with her friends , we would discuss, even argue, about what being a Christian meant. I brought up many of the arguments people raise on the subject, even the one which says, “If I need to be saved I can come at the last minute of my life and accept Christ as Saviour”. The response was “True, but if you were in a rally and the car left road and you were killed you wouldn’t know it was going to be your ‘last minute’! This made me think – a little. I was asked if I would go to a Gospel Meeting – I agreed to go, what could possibly happen!! 

I was taken to one of the many assemblies in the area. I had never heard a message like it before. The preacher spoke on the Cross and as I listened to him tell of the sufferings of the Saviour, I felt humbled and small. To think that He endured that for ME. In fact I felt so small that if someone had asked me “What did you think of the message?” I would probably have punched them!! I still resisted but agreed to go to another gospel meeting the following week. The message built on the previous one, emphasising the fact that Christ died for OUR sins according to the scriptures and the choice we have to make between accepting or rejecting Christ as Saviour and Lord. Later that week on Wednesday 7th February I realised that everything I had heard applied to me and I accepted Christ as my Saviour. From that point on, even though I didn’t realise it, my life changed. Many years later I was told by a dear believer, who also worked at the refinery, that my departmental colleagues noticed a change in me. They joked with him that I would be ‘banging the big drum with him soon – “He’s stopped swearing (I did have a foul mouth up till then), he’s stopped talking about the pubs/clubs he gone to and the girls he met” etc. My close friends couldn’t fully understand what had happened even though I told them. After a few months I realised that I had to be baptised which I was and joined the fellowship that met at Albert Hall, Grangemouth. Later that year I married Mary and she has been my constant companion, support and of course wife over these 50+ years, and mother to our fabulous 4 children as we have lived in 5 homes in 4 towns. She truly has been a ‘help meet’ for me. 

Through these many years I can confirm that, although I have failed the Lord many, many times He has always been faithful and guided my life to keep me close to Him. I’ll give 2 examples of His guidance, both to decisions work related. I had been a Section Head of one of the big plant complexes at the refinery, also kept being given extra responsibilities in other areas. In addition I had to mentor a number of ‘high flying’ graduates in operational matters during their time at site. I suppose in a fit of unrest I got fed up with this and applied for a promotion down to Head office in London – which I was successful in getting. The move went well so I thought it must be the Lord’s will. The role was quite an exciting one being a sort of ‘Troubleshooter’ for site problems, incident investigation etc. 

One of the projects that I was asked to fulfil was to go back to Grangemouth to support a big plant recommissioning project – one I had been responsible for before. On my first trip back home after a month away I had a phone call to advise me to talk to my wife as I was to be asked on my return to move back up the work at the refinery again full time as assistant Operations Superintendent – which this time after much prayer, we thought was the right thing to do. So, after only 8 months we were back in Grangemouth and were blessed for it in many ways. The second one is almost the reverse experience. Five years later, now as Operations Superintendent, the refinery experienced, in quick succession, two disasters which resulted in the deaths of three people as well as total shutdown of the site and investigations by various departments within BP, the Health and Safety Executive and the legal system which demanded a lot of my time. 

The next few weeks were extremely pressured with usually 18 hour working days. Throughout this period I had a sense of peace. During this time everybody involved was interviewed by the company doctor to see if we were coping mentally. I was offered, along with everybody else, sleeping pills if I needed them as most people did, but I told him that I had other help in that people were praying for me and I had a peace in knowing that whatever happened God would help me through the trouble. After about 6 weeks things returned to a less pressured state and I had to focus on getting the remainder of the site back on stream. Then a few months later I had a phone call ‘out of the blue’ from London asking me to move down to take up a promotion to head up the group I had been in previously, although now it was much bigger. I felt that I couldn’t leave Grangemouth so soon after the disasters, with so much still to do there, but we prayed about it and I discussed it with my management who were very supportive but I couldn’t get any confirmation as to what I should do. 

Then, returning from a conference in America I had just checked in for my flight and was walking across the airport hall at Miami when coming in the opposite direction was the man whose position I was being asked to take over. We almost bumped into each other and his first words were something like “When are you coming down to take over – I’m desperate to retire so make your mind up soon”. He was on his way to an assignment in Venezuela. I believed that I had just been shown what I should do, there on the other side of the world. So, we moved back down, this time to live in Northampton where we have been for the last 32 years. God has been faithful through good and not so good times – through redundancies, seeing me through running my own company doing what I had done before but most importantly opening up a door to serve him as never before over the last 22 years, using a gift I have – so I’m told – visiting primary schools in the county taking assemblies and RE lessons. 

You could say that those points in my life like the first night in Falkirk, my Grandmother funeral experience, my spell in hospital – meeting my wife, my first move to London, my recall to Grangemouth and my experiences there, my return to London after that ‘chance’ meeting at Miami were all coincidences – but there are no coincidences with God. I believe I was being ‘guided’ as to what I should be doing so that I would come to salvation through faith Christ and find what He had for me to do. 

I had been like the second man in our Bible reading at the start, I had heard what God had to say but didn’t obey Him, but thankfully I had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and was now like the first man. What a gracious God I have to have been so patient with me. Please don’t delay as I did. God says “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 2 Corinthians 6 v 2.

Wyn Williams