Adrian On BBC’s Songs Of Praise – Finding God In Turmoil

If you stop believing in God, it doesn’t take away the pain, it just takes away the hope

I was interviewed by Laura Wright in our lovely Highwoods Country Park for BBC Songs of Praise which is now available on BBC iPlayer and anywhere else you can view this long running religious program.

The episode is entitled Colchester’s Christian Heritage as most of it was filled in the UK’s oldest or newest city depending on how you look at it. Once the capital city of England during Roman times, Colchester spent a long time being known as a town before being one of the last cities named by Queen Elizabeth before she died.

The short segment where I was interviewed can be seen below, on Facebook, or YouTube.

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I am so pleased to have been able to be filmed sitting on my Invader mobility scooter (and what a beast it is!). I hope it encourages some people who struggle to walk far to try out a mobility scooter for themselves. Too many of us spend years close to being housebound rather than take the assistance these tools offer. Most shopping centres in the UK will offer free scooter hire, and some parks, including the one we filmed in have scooters available (see the Colchester BOMA page).

I spoke about the turmoil I have gone through over the last six years since being diagnosed with blood cancer and how moving to Colchester became part of my healing process.

I was honest enough to admit that like most people when significant suffering came to my life I started to question my faith at a profound level. Who hasn’t at least asked the question why does God allow such things to happen? Some conclude that there cannot be a God as a result of such struggles. Ultimately, however, if you stop believing in God, it doesn’t take away the pain, it just takes away the hope.

The interview closes as I discuss a playlist of hope filled songs that I created around the time I was having chemotherapy. I didn’t include triumphalist songs, but I did go for those that remind us of the true Christian hope that comes to us through the resurrection of Jesus that our suffering will not seem long and hard in the light of eternity.

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.

This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.

Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies. So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you.

But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke.” We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you. All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory.

That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits aree being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

(2 Corinthians 4:7-18, NLT)