Jeremy Marshall
1. How did you become a Christian?
I was brought up in the most Christian environment you could imagine. And, like all of us, by nature I was a rebel who disliked it and thought it boring and irrelevant. Then one day from nothing I felt my heart ‘strangely warmed’ and realised that it was true: that Jesus was alive and I could know Him, that I must abandon my rebellion and come home.
2. What lessons have you learnt since that you would want to pass on to a younger Christian version of yourself?
That God is trustworthy. For nine years I’ve been living with cancer, the last six years of which incurable. I’ve been in intensive medical treatment and I’ve had so many things afflict me I lose track. Yet God is trustworthy and we can trust our lives into His care. One day when we meet Him we will smile ruefully and say: ‘Yes Lord, you did all things well’.
3. How would you describe your prayer life?
I must be honest. I struggle with prayer. I’m very ashamed at how bad it is, though having cancer helps!
4. Which two or three Christian books apart from the Bible have most influenced your faith?
Anything by J.C. Ryle. He writes with such freshness, directness and power. I love sending thousands of his books (and others) to the majority world via Christian Books Worldwide, a wonderful charity I love to support.
5. Who or what have been your biggest Christian influences?
Without doubt, my father John. He took us Bible smuggling behind the Iron Curtain, teaching us that ‘faith without risk is no faith at all’. He allowed us to argue endlessly and provoke him, teaching us that we believe Christianity not because ‘I say so’ but because it’s true. He taught me about helping churches and pastors however we can and I love to follow in his steps. For example (which he would have been very amused by), by buying Kingdom Bank with some friends and using it to finance church growth and plants. What would my Dad say to us today? I remember him saying this: ‘For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him’. When we need support (which I do every day) we may be encouraged that the eyes of the Lord are on us to help us.
6. What are the main challenges you believe Christians face today?
That we feel our friends and family and colleagues are hostile to the Christian message. They are, in my experience, in fact far far more open than we realise. I’m overwhelmed by the number who are wide open. Start, I suggest, by asking them questions. Here are my three questions I love asking my friends: ‘How about you – do you have any particular beliefs?’; ‘Did you ever look at the Bible?’; ‘Would you like to have a chat with me about the Bible?’. I love using The Word 121 which is simply John’s Gospel with notes.
7. What encourages and what discourages you?
It’s encouraging that so many people are willing to chat with me, and many about the Bible. When they do they love it. They are gripped by the stories. ‘What happens to Lazarus?’ they ask. ‘Does he comes back?’. Let’s have confidence in the attraction and addictive power of the Gospels. There is tremendous supernatural transformative power in God’s word, we merely need to make it available to our friends in an accessible form.
Discouraging? The reverse. That we give up sowing the good seed, that we are distracted by many other things and neglect to reach out to friends.
8. What makes you laugh?
Watching Watford FC (I think it’s called laughing in the face of adversity!)
9. What would you want to say to the wider evangelical world?
I’d love to say hundreds of things! Here is one. We need to do something to support churches in deprived areas. We have vast ‘desert’ areas with very little gospel work. The need is urgent. I’d absolutely love it if every sizeable evangelical church in a more prosperous area found a church in a tough area and partnered with them, encouraged them, helped them, financed them. I’ve found when I’ve done that I’ve been so blessed by their example and faith. Our church has recently partnered for example with Oldham Bethel, a church full of refugees and asylum seekers.
10. Apart from Jesus, which Biblical person do you most look forward to meeting in glory and why?
I’d love to chat to the apostle John. I’d love to hear more of his stories about the Lord that didn’t make the cut from his Gospel word limit ‘as I suppose the whole world wouldn’t hold them’.
