Being brought up in a Christian home, where weekly church, Sunday school, Christian children's holidays and daily Bible reading notes were all encouraged, I am deeply grateful for the wealth of quality teaching I received from an early age.

My spiritual journey from the age of about 18, however, when I was first confronted (and confused) by the Charismatic movement, has consisted more of carving up, honing down and chucking out what I received unquestioningly with my mother's milk. While being mindful of babes and bathwater, I needed to embrace the truth for myself and not just inherit a set of values and life principles, coloured by my middle class, white, western, wealthy culture. This has been painful at times, illuminating at others, and even now, at 40-something ..., I'm often gob smacked by the sudden dawning of light on an area of my life I had thought was 'sorted'.

Weird, really. While the Christian faith is 'New Every Morning' - its depths are revealed continuously as I go through life - it is also solid to the core and can stand any amount of scrutiny and examination I care to indulge in. Each year I'm more convinced that our Lord's way is the Truth, and what's the point of looking elsewhere when, like Peter, I know that He has the words of eternal life (John 6:v68).

In my work as a complementary therapist, I come face to face with some pretty wacky stuff, as you can imagine. People are desperately searching for life, love, forgiveness and, yes, that illusive Truth. All these things we are promised as part of our abundant life as Christians. Wow! It's the subject of much mirth in my Home Group that I don't have a problem with guilt . . . but it's true . . . I know that I'm accepted and forgiven, and on that foundation I can build my whole life. Huge areas of our society just have no idea what that real security is like.

I don't want the above to seem as if I'm blowing my own trumpet, that I've got all the answers, that I am in any way better than the next person, be they Knutsford Methodist Church or New Ager. Oh no! But, I do believe if you have found the One who is before all things, and in whom all things hold together (Col 1:v12), and if you know yourself to be forgiven and loved by the Almighty - well ...

"Jump up and down and shout about it a bit!"
... that's what I say.