Bernadette Pragnell

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). I was born in Brisbane into a Hindu family. I grew up not really knowing our God, but karma demands that I pray to a god for good things to happen. By the time I got to my third year of university I was exhausted, depressed and dying. My atheism became an insatiable, self-destructive darkness; a spiritual isolation that consumed me. I looked healthy, but I was really a terrified kid with no discernment of up from down or good from evil. In 2019, I reached out to a friend who I knew was a Christian. I felt different. I didn’t understand it, but I really wanted to go to church. When I did, I felt a tsunami gathering strength at the very edge of my heart and at the very precipice of my nihilism. A wave of something new washed over my soul. I sat in church and for the first time I thought… “what would it mean if all this Christian stuff was true?” That’s all God needed. He was the tsunami coming for me. I heard the Gospel for the first time and it changed my life. On that Sunday morning, I saw the world and my heart in a way I had never seen it before. I realised Jesus provided me with a simple answer to all my unanswered questions. He offered me forgiveness without asking anything except but faith in him. I began to realise there was nothing I could do to fill the dark and ravenous emptiness that had almost completely consumed me. It had already been done for me. God did not negate my pain, instead he used my pain and brought me salvation through it. After becoming Christian, my life wasn’t all easy sailing, but none of the hardships I’ve faced have anything on one simple word that believing in Jesus has given me: joy. Now, my life is dedicated to Jesus. I believe that my many sins are forgiven, that I am saved by grace through my faith in Jesus Christ, my saviour, and I finally know God.  God made him who had no sin, become my sin. I love Him. I live for Him. And now I can say with a smile, not a frown, I would die for Him.

He left His Father’s throne above, so free, so infinite His grace, Emptied Himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race; ‘Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God, it found out me! (Charles Wesley, And can it be?) I cannot identify specifically when I became a Christian. Rather, God in His mercy brought me into contact with Christians over many years. They told me about Jesus and the gospel. Unlike CS Lewis (my favourite author) I was not a reluctant convert, just a very slow one. In childhood there was RE at school. My non-believing parents sent me to Sunday school at a local church for a few years so I could make up my own mind. In secondary school at an Anglican boys’ school we heard the bible read and sang great hymns (I memorised And can it be) at chapel and assembly several times a week. Out of this came a conviction that I should go to church, but I didn’t know where or how. Just then a leaflet appeared in the letterbox about a new congregation starting up near home. What a coincidence! At sixteen I started going to church and reading the bible. By then I knew some facts: Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God the Father, who became a man and was crucified for the sins of the whole world, and anyone who believes in Him has eternal life. (I wasn’t too sure about that Resurrection business, however, but maybe that was optional.) I also knew I was a sinner (that was made clear to us at school). But it made little difference to how I lived.  Things became clearer when a faithful friend took me along to the Christian Union at Melbourne Uni. The staff workers laid it out: Jesus lived the perfect life that I should live (but can’t) and died the death that I deserve (so I don’t have to). I began to feel grateful to God for what he had done for me (And can it be began to make more sense). In our CU cell group we read Holiness by J C Ryle. I very slowly began to understand that, while I could never earn God’s favour (and didn’t need to), the way I live matters to God. I’m still learning to put that into practice decades later. Thirteen years ago, our church in Hobart got a new minister, who preached often and with obvious joy about the Resurrection. I already believed that Jesus rose from the dead, but I began to see (and feel) more clearly that Jesus is not only my Saviour, but the glorious, beautiful, awesome Lord of the Universe. I still have so much to learn. But knowing Jesus gives me hope in a bewildering world and gratitude for His mercy, kindness and patience (Lord I believe, help my unbelief). The Spirit keeps patiently pushing me along the way to becoming more like Him.