A CAUSE TO FIGHT FOR - The Jesus Army

double
many
blow..
blessings
When tragedy strikes a Christian couple
– twice – how can they go on believing in
the goodness of God?
GORDON AND JENNY Martin lost both their children
to a rare disease before they were three. Yet, though
neither would say they had special qualities to weather
such storms, their story emerges as a remarkable testimony
to the comforting power of God.
Gordon as a student in the 60s, had found himself asking
what life was all about when his parents separated.
An encounter with some Christians on the streets of
Worthing proved life-changing.
“As I chatted with one of them a voice in my head suddenly
said ‘I want you’.” Gordon found faith and became
part of a group of young Christians. It was here that he
met Jenny and they married in 1976 and moved to
Horsham.
“I’d trained to be an occupational therapist” says Jenny.
“But my sheltered childhood totally unprepared me
for the realities of work in a psychiatric hospital.” Jenny
had had a breakdown which left her prone to depression.
In 1979, an old friend of Gordon’s, Roger, came to visit.
He told Gordon he’d found “this little group of Christians
– the Jesus Fellowship – living together in a Christian
community near Coventry”.
“We went to see for ourselves” says Gordon. “I lapped
it up and Jenny loved it from the start, too. But Roger’s
challenge to ‘come and join’ scared me. There was too
much to lose – the home we were just setting up, my job.
I decided we weren’t ready yet.”
By their second visit, their first baby was on the way; in
1980 Stevie was born.
“We thought we had a normal, healthy little boy
– perhaps a bit slow developing but nothing obviously
wrong,” explains Jenny. “In1982, just days before I was
due to give birth to our second child, I woke in the night,
hearing Stevie make a sobbing sound. He was having a
massive, prolonged series of fits. A few hours later, while
Stevie was in hospital with doctors trying to puzzle out
what was the matter, I went into labour and our daughter
Rachel was born.”
Earlier that year, Jenny had read Power in Praise by
Merlin Carothers, a Christian book which recommended
praising God in all circumstances.
“It grabbed me that people were praising God for awful
things and how He transformed the people and those
awful things in the process. We made an agreement to
learn to praise God for every trial.”
That discipline rescued them now. As Gordon sat
in hospital with Stevie, he felt able to give him to God.
Back home, Jenny wrote a prayer: “God – it’s all in Your
hands.” That prayer was their anchor over the next three
months, as Stevie’s condition deteriorated.
“Stevie was a gentle, sensitive, little boy,” says Gordon.
“We hoped the whole while for his healing. When we
prayed for him he’d repeat ‘Jesus is Lord’ after us. At
some stage in his illness, I realised Stevie could no longer
see. His condition worsened and in January 1983 he died.
The post-mortem revealed Alpers Syndrome. We were
told it was so rare only eight cases were recorded and
it wasn’t likely to affect other children we might have
14 Jesus Life
www.jesus.org.uk