David Allsopp
David
Allsopp
David lives in Heath & Reach with his wife Sally. He loves music and works for an International children’s charity based in Milton Keynes.
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Painfully I realized what I had missed all these years. What I needed above everything was a real, living, unbreakable relationship with Jesus.
It’s not what you know,
it’s who you know…
I was brought up in a small Christian sect called the Christadelphians. I was taught to study the Bible deeply because this was how I could be a good Christian and God would be pleased with me. We put a high price on acquiring knowledge. So, I learned that being a good Christian was knowing all I could about God, Jesus and the Bible. In our little community, folk that had stellar Bible knowledge were the elite.
Over many years, this path to enlightenment was my guiding light until one day it was brutally put to the test.
In January 2002, aged 39, I visited my doctor to check a swelling which was later diagnosed as cancer. Everything happened quickly. The specialist organised an operation and within 14 days I was in hospital awaiting surgery.
In the stillness of my hospital room, I felt achingly lonely and reached for the small Bible I had brought with me. In the dark and quietness of that evening I thumbed through various passages, but all I had here for comfort was knowledge; but it was dry, fruitless knowledge.
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I learned to trust him not only with my life but with my death because he has promised he will never, ever leave me.”
I lay back on the bed and my heart searched for an answer. Painfully I realised what I had missed all these years. What I needed above everything was a real, living, unbreakable relationship with Jesus. It was He that the Bible constantly spoke of, and it was Jesus who I reached out to and found in that small hospital room. Knowing that He was alive and had conquered death was my comfort as I went into surgery and during the following days.
Since that day I have experienced many ups and some awful downs, yet Jesus has been with me through them. I learned to trust Him not only with my life but with my death because He has promised He will never, ever leave me. Knowledge of the Bible is never enough. Our Saviour, Jesus, calls us to have a loving, personal relationship with Him.