DAVID ADAMS reads two testimonial accounts of the redemptive power of God in our lives – whether it being walking with us through tragedy or freeing us from addiction…
Lois Thompson
Hope in Cancer, Death and Grief: One More Hurdle to Jump
Ark House Press, Mona Vale, NSW, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0992572679
The revised, second edition of a book first written several years ago, Hope in Cancer, Death and Grief tells Queenslander Lois Thompson’s remarkable story of God’s faithfulness through devastating times of grief and personal challenge. Thompson, a social worker and Pentecostal pastor based in south-east Queensland, writes about the journey her family has gone through after her 19-year-old son John was killed in a car crash in 2002 and following the subsequent death of her beloved husband Pat from bowel cancer in 2011. She talks about how she has twice confronted her own mortality after being diagnosed with breast cancer, first in 2006 and then again in 2016, as well as that of her daughter Penny, also diagnosed with cancer, and other key “hurdles” her family has had to leap. The book isn’t written chronologically but rather as a series of reflections looked at through the lens of the “race” each Christian is running. It was St Paul who frequently referred to the idea of Christians “running a race” in his New Testament letters and Thompson adopts that approach in looking back at her own life and journey as well as that of her family (it may seem disconcerting at first, but persevere). This a sad, yet uplifting – and in some ways defiant – read which directly confronts some of the key questions we might have when faced with such things as the sudden loss of a child or a cancer diagnosis. We see within these pages a glimpse some of the wrestles Thompson has had – why doesn’t God heal everyone – in coming to a place where she can trust God in each circumstance. An encouragement for those who are facing hurdles that they don’t think they can leap.
Mark Johnston
Marked By Mercy
Ark House Press, Mona Vale, NSW, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0648045120
Mark Johnston’s life has not been an easy one. Having grown up in a highly disfunctional and nomadic family situation and abandoned by his father, Johnston suffered both physical and sexual abuse as a child and was introduced to drugs and alcohol at an early age. Violence became, in his words, “like a ‘sport’ I played” and sport – in particular, boxing – the only thing that excited him outside of drugs (at least for a time). From about the age of 15, Johnston says his life revolved around drugs – whatever he could take to escape the reality of his life – and by the time he was 18, he reports that he been admitted to hospital and put in seven drug-induced comas. The change in his life came when a couple of guys in a gym told him about Jesus and asked whether he wanted to meet him. Johnston said he’d “give it a go” and what happened next was a “complete surprise”. “I felt like someone had taken a blindfold off my eyes,” he recounts. “I walked into this gym having no belief in God at all, and I walked out praising God for the first time in my life.” It marked the start of a change of Johnston’s life which came with highs and lows and eventually, in 2011, saw him enter a Christian rehabiliation discipleship program and then becoming a staff member. Johnston these days regularly shares his testimony in churches, prisons and schools. Marked by Mercy is a raw account of God’s redemptive power in Johnston’s life and the lessons and skills he’s learned through it, particularly when it comes to dealing with addiction.
