My Testimony – Pastor Bill Morris PDF Print E-mail
    I was born in Scotland.  When I was five years old my family migrated to Australia.  My parents provided a good home.  While I had no religious teaching at home, we had some at school.  When I was eleven years of age, a mainstream denominational minister taught our class about Creation.  I quizzed him about it as we had just been taught evolution at school.  I asked how Creation could be true since evolution was apparently a fact.  He told me I could believe in both as God “had created evolution”.  Rather than produce faith, this statement reinforced my agnosticism as I saw that only one could possibly be true and chose evolution as best fitting the facts as I understood them.

On finishing Year 12 at 17 years old I became part of “the wrong crowd”.  We rode motorbikes and partied a lot.  We were a large group of misfits and this gave us a strong sense of identity and “an extended family”.  Life had no real direction except to a party or pub.  I took whatever path came before me without considering where the path went.  

I continued to flounder through my early twenties not really happy, settled or stable and not aware that I was heading for a series of personal disasters.   The first was that I became seriously ill at age 24 and it started me thinking about life and death.  I started to read a modern Bible translation, Good News for Modern Man but I didn’t understand it.  

The next set of problems led me to a state of despair.  But God knew.  He sent Pastor Stan Lister to knock in my door in June 1981 with an invitation to Sunday School for my children.  Three “coincidences” happened on that day.  First, I should have been at work but I went home early, on the spur of the moment.  Second, Pastor Lister wasn’t supposed to be door knocking that day.  He filled in for Pastor Eugene Baran as Eugene had been unable to door knock that day.  Third, I was thinking about taking my children to Sunday School when Pastor Lister knocked on the door!  

I forgot all about the invitation until about two weeks later when I had exhausted all avenues known to me for help in my predicament.  I called Pastor Baran and he agreed to speak with me.  He heard my tale of woe without passing judgment and asked if I’d ever asked God’s forgiveness.  I replied that I’d asked many times.  He said that you only had to ask once, led me through the “sinner’s prayer” and I asked God to forgive me and come into my life.  It was as if the heavens opened and a light shone down on me at that moment.  I felt a Presence and a Power as if a light had been turned on in a dark room.  A load was lifted from me.  Pastor Baran told me that I was now a Christian.   I said surely I already was a Christian since I believed in God.  He replied that to become a Christian one must be “born again”.  Something definite happened that day.  I immediately saw that the Bible is the Word of God.  This led me to reject the false theory of evolution, which I now see does not fit the evidence.

I was baptized by full immersion in water in the titles Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in accordance with Matthew 28:19 because I saw that it said this in the Bible.  I began to study the Bible as if my life depended on it (as it does).  Then, due to circumstances beyond my control, I moved to another church.  However, I just couldn’t reconcile their teachings with the whole teachings of the Bible.  Besides, during this time I was constantly “the target” of members of three Pentecostal churches.  I eventually understood the early church baptised in the Name of Jesus, as so clearly recorded in the Book of Acts.  I submitted myself to this baptism on 21 May 1985 and was promptly disfellowshipped by the pastor of the church I had been attending.  

Again, due to circumstances beyond my control, I changed churches and began attending Calvary Chapel, United Pentecostal Church in Canberra, in February 1986.  I was still not a happy man.  I had been struggling with a lot of different things.  I had personal problems and spiritual problems.  I just couldn’t work out what this baptism of the Holy Ghost was about.  I’d sometimes seen people receive the Holy Ghost but often they didn’t stay long in church.  Then on 3 March 1987 I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost with much joy.

It had been the preaching of Pastor Roscoe Seay, who was acting pastor for several weeks in the absence of Pastor John Downs.  Pastor Seay preached about the anointing of Aaron by his brother Moses with the blood of a lamb. He said, anointing someone for service to God by sprinkling sheep’s blood on them seems ridiculous in human terms.  The penny dropped.  You can’t work out the Holy Ghost by human logic.  I made an appointment to see Pastor Seay on the following Tuesday night.  When I visited him he told me I wasn’t leaving until I received the Holy Ghost.  He was right.  After much prayer I felt the presence of the God of the Universe fill my body as I spoke in other tongues.  I knew that this was really God.  John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire.  I felt that fire fill me from top to bottom.  The promise is unto...all that are afar off (Acts 2:39).

I would not trade my walk with Jesus for “all the tea in China”.  No matter how hard the winds of life blow, He is my refuge in the time of trouble, my shelter in the time of storm.  I am accepted by Him although I could never find that place of acceptance with the majority of people.  I have a peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7), not the peace that the world gives but the peace of God.  

I wouldn’t say my walk with the Lord has been without “stumbling” but I have always kept my eye on Him and He saw fit to be gracious to me, despite my shortcomings.  If someone had told me years ago I would be not just a Christian but the Pastor of a church I would have told them they were foolish.  But God had other plans and has blessed me with this role in His Body, the Church, to His praise and glory!  Anyway, it’s not about how good I am but about how good and merciful He is!

1Co 1:25  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.