Dan Pfeffer || external faith 

Last Sunday ashgrove welcomed seven new members. One of these was Dan Pfeffer, who was baptised at ashgrove a few weeks earlier. Check out his testimony below...

I was born a missionary kid. Church life and practice has always been the norm and all I have known. In this church, all you have to do is count the number of Pfeffers to realise how ingrained Christian values are into the life of my family and our interactions. As with so many others who have grown up in the church however, in my Christian life this was the perfect environment for passivity and complacency towards my faith and my reasons for believing.

Church was merely the norm.

To me although I had the knowledge and understanding behind what we do here on a Sunday and practices such as communion or baptism, the personal connection as to why I did it or should do it, was lacking. Although I had been brought up in a supportive, Christian home, my faith was not yet my own. Baptism was just something that everyone did when they hit a certain age. I knew why we practiced communion but lacked the personal conviction for why I did and should.

I had accepted my faith, but not personally sought it.

Throughout high school, there was a constant inward divide between my habitual spiritual complacency and the life God called me to live. Study was a perfect excuse to put off seeking God and to push my faith into a box which remained firmly shut during my daily life and interactions with others. I faced purposelessness and confusion towards my life's future, putting off a meaningful relationship with God until I was old enough and qualified enough to be useful.
I went to beach mission for the first time this past year and found it an amazing time of spiritual growth. The team's dependence upon God and complete desire to do His work had a powerful effect upon me. Playing a part, however small, in God's work and having to seek Him as the sole purpose for my actions were huge eye-openers to my inaction, and  led to personal questioning of why I believed and how I practiced my faith. Since then I have sought to and continue to seek to answer these questions. 

While there is no one time that I can point to as when I came to Christ, in the lead up to, during, and now following beach mission, God has shown me my personal need for him;

my personal debt which has been paid.

I praise God that he has shielded my life from hardship and suffering and that he has been persistent in putting up with me in my failures. His constant shielding and protection, has saved me from my own sinful nature and has guarded me from worldly influence and pressure. He has transferred me from my previous state of meaningless belief to today where I seek complete ownership of and responsibility for his call on my life.

I am a very private person and I constantly internalise my feelings and struggles. But even in the past month I have come to the realisation that 

my faith is one thing that I don't want to remain internal

My relationship with Christ and his presence in my life as my Lord, saviour and purpose is something I want known. So my baptism is the externalisation of these facts as I seek to obey God's will daily and for my future.