My absolute favourite part of the Bible is Corinthians 13, the whole chapter. It just sums up what the Christian faith is about. I came across it 40 years ago and it’s grown and grown in my heart over the years. I lost a grandchild 20 years ago. It...

When I was 21, I was in the middle of my midwifery training when I became ill. I had blood blisters on my tongue. I only had to touch myself and I bled. I was covered in bruises. The doctors got it under control with cortisone tablets. But I was work...

I have struggled with things like self-harm since I was 17. Recently, I’ve been struggling with negative thoughts and feelings again. One of the triggers was work-related stress. It was one of those things where I had to keep coming to church to he...

I was reading economics at Durham university. The career path was most likely management consultancy. But I also played a lot of hockey and got chatting to a friend in the pub. I told him that I prayed sometimes. He invited me to church and it was th...

'I go to the Scriptures every day. There’s a bit where Jesus stands up and says he’s come to bind up the brokenhearted and set the captives free. I base my life on that: meeting people’s needs and helping people. My husband and I have been...

I’m a medical researcher. I grew up in Xinjing Province in China. I didn’t have much information about Christianity or the Bible. No-one believed around us. It was only when I came to this country that I had contact with Christianity. I lived in ...

I have the words from Ephesians 2.10 hanging on a plaque in my bedroom. I see it every morning when I wake up. It says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for you to do.” This rea...

About 12 years ago we went to New Wine. We sang loads of songs that I didn’t know. My church was very traditional. But one said, “You are my shield, my shelter, my strong tower, my very present help in times of need”. I thought that was extraor...

In June 2018 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and went through six months of intensive chemo. It was quite a shock. It was really difficult. There was a verse from Philippians: “Do not be anxious about anything, but, in every situation, by...

In John 10.10, Jesus talks about why he came. He says that he came to give us "life, life in all its fullness". That’s very, very important to me. I was not brought up as a Christian. My parents were anti, if anything. It wasn’t until I...

My favourite verse in the Bible is actually the shortest one: “Jesus wept”. What I love about that is that God is moved by people’s suffering and his heart is responsive over something that he has seen. We all go through tough times and to know...

I had a brain tumour removed in 2010. It was benign, but in a risky place. I’m a doctor myself, so I know what it’s all about. When they diagnosed me I said, “There is no way you are cutting my head open”. So, they put the surgery on hold. Th...

The book of Job always comes back to me: it’s the immensity of it, the horrors that he suffers and just when it seems there is no hope, there is restoration. I studied medicine. For me, those were the years when I came closest to suffering. That’...

My go-to verse at the moment is Haggai 1.8, which talks about building up the house of the Lord in the mountains. We are trying to build up the house of God in Meribel in the French Alps, where we’ve had a ski chalet business for the last 18 years....

When I was 20, and a student nurse in London, I attended a Bible study class, where I heard that scripture was inspired by God. The verse was 2 Timothy 3.16-17, ‘All scripture is God-breathed and it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and ...

The passage that I go back to again and again is Luke 2.8-20, the story of the shepherds. When I was a child, everyone wanted to be an angel or Mary in the school play. But I was Herod, because I was a good reader and could say ‘diligently’! I ca...

My Dad has just been diagnosed with a rare form of Parkinson's. It’s hereditary, so I don’t know what that means for my health. I'm going to get myself tested. It’s frightening. I was all over the shop when I found out. Galatians 6:9 ...

Post-university, the Bible was really helpful. I had no idea what I was going to do. I felt like I was being called into youth work. I did a New Wine discipleship year and then a year with a church, and I still found I wanted to go into youth work, b...

As a comedian, I sometimes wonder if I look for irony or it looks for me. Those ‘God-incidences’ (I wish that was a less clunky word) crop up so often, at times life sounds stranger than fiction. On that wretched day at the start of this crisis -...

I’m an estimator in a ceramic tiling firm. I’ve been a tiler for years. It’s all pretty new, working from my kitchen table. The first week was great. The rest hasn’t been. It’s our firm’s twentieth anniversary this year. We were planning ...