‘I heard a song I remembered from my youth’
Posted:Sarah Sedgwick had grown up in a Christian home but had drifted away from the faith.
One evening I returned from work and took the dog for a walk. I had a small radio but I didn’t like the music I was listening to. I got bored with it. And I pressed re-tune on my radio. And all of a sudden, this Christian song that I remembered from my youth came on. I was actually quite mesmerised by it.
At the end of the song, the announcer said, “Okay, now we’re going to have Joyce Meyer”, (I know who she is now, but had no idea at the time). And I was about to turn off. But immediately she started talking, I like the style which kind of hooked me in.
I listened and heard about a God who loves people. At the end, I think it was probably only about 10-12 minutes, because they split the teaching down, they said, “Come back tomorrow to hear some more”. Unbeknown to me, I had found Premier Christian Radio, I had no idea there was even a Christian radio station. And so the next day I got home, I grabbed my radio, and I started listening in to the end of that particular teaching, but then on until the end of the day.
Now to put this into context, I’m now 48 years old. So I’ve been 30 years away from Jesus. I was hearing about God and how he wanted a relationship with me. And so I started to talk to him as I was walking the dog. I wouldn’t have said it was praying. But I was having conversations with him. And after probably three months, I started feeling him saying, “I want you to go to church.”
My immediate reaction was like, “No, I’m not going to church, I’m gay! And I’m not going to be welcomed. It’s not a place for me.” I’ll carry on having these conversations with God, I’ll carry on listening to the radio, but that’s not going to happen. But you know, God’s really persistent, and probably more stubborn than me. So in the end, I thought, okay, you know, I’ll go to church.
But where do you start? I hadn’t been to church since I was a child. So I was looking on the Internet and looking at a church, which looked quite nice and modern from the website pictures, and was fairly close to my home. I had no idea about denominations or what I should be looking for.
So I spoke to my partner, and I said to her, “I’m thinking of going to church.” She’s an atheist. So she said, “if you want to go church, that’s fine by me, but don’t expect me to come with you.” And I said, “O, that’s fine. I’ll go on my own.” And so it was in August 2014, I walked down the road and plucked up the courage to walk in the door. And believe me, it took a lot of courage to walk in there. But God’s timing is always perfect. And unbeknown to me, this was August, and it was the Sunday at the end of the holiday club that they’d had that week. And so there were lots of people in their parents, grandparents, who probably normally wouldn’t be there. So I didn’t stand out. I was able to sit towards the back. And it was a bit chaotic, as the sort of services are. But I was able to listen. And I was able to sneak out quickly at the end without anybody challenging me or my worst fear, confronting me. And I remember walking home, thinking, I really enjoyed it. I’m not sure I got anything spiritual from it. It was a typical holiday Bible club service. But there was a lovely atmosphere. And I’d enjoyed the singing, I’d enjoy watching the children. And I think deep down it evokes something in me, from my childhood. And that started me on this kind of journey of going to church every Sunday, continuing to listen to premier Christian radio, and starting to develop these feelings that this was something that I wanted to really pursue.
One Sunday the preacher challenged to surrender every part of my life to God, including my lesbian relationship. It was the hardest conversation I have ever had as I told her that I was a Christian and we couldn’t be together.
Later, and wonderfully, she would also make her own commitment to Christ during an Alpha course.
God has led me on and into founding a charity, Transformed Ministries in 2019 which looks to support churches looking to help people with same sex attraction, or people who are same sex attracted and wanting to know how to develop a relationship with God.
This was taken from a conversation with Simon Guiilebaud. For the full interview go to