Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Margaret Cornell about the death of her son, experiencing healing and some of her other encounters with Jesus.

Margaret Cornell

In a small village in Cambridgeshire, Margaret Cornell had a dramatic conversion in 1970, which led to her heart and her home being opened to 65 people in 45 years. Led by God, Margaret and her husband Tony then moved from three to six and then 10 bedrooms to accommodate a growing family. During their early Christian life their son was killed in a road accident, which, far from crushing their faith, made them stronger than ever and the result was a small revival in their Anglican church. Eventually, in 1982 they made room in their hearts for many more people, when, side by side they pioneered and pastored a lively and successful charismatic church for 25 years. Margaret Cornell has written about her and her husband's journey in a new book called 'A Life Shared' and Jonathan Bellamy spoke with her to find out more.

Jon: Let's start with that dramatic conversion in 1970, share with us what happened.

Margaret: I became rather desperate. I realised that my life was supposed to be a Christian one, but actually it wasn't a Christian one. I read in the Bible that people are supposed to have love, joy and peace when they're Christians and I didn't have it. I'd been a church goer for practically all my life and it just didn't seem to have worked. Then one day when I was very angry with my children, my father-in-law said, "The trouble with you Christians is, you go to church half your life, but it doesn't make a bit of difference to the way you behave."

I was most upset and really cross. My husband had gone upstairs. He was a teacher and he was doing some GCE marking at the time. I went upstairs and said, "Will you please ask your father never to speak to me like that again?" And he said, "Why what did he say?" Well, when I told him what he said, he just looked at me kindly, with big eyes and he said, "Well it's true isn't it?" I lost all presence of mind at that moment and I hit him over the head with my shoe.

I was just so appalled. I just could not believe that I could do such a terrible thing to someone I loved. At that moment I said to God, "Look, I don't know whether Christianity's true or not. If it's not true I shall give up going to church and go and visit old ladies or something and do something useful. But if it is true I need you to show me."

I thought, what can I do? I was pregnant with our third child at that time and I thought, right, every night I'll go to my bedroom and I will read the Bible and I will pray. I didn't know quite what to do, so I had the prayer book and I'd got a book of prayers out of the library. I would pray to the best of my ability and it all seemed a bit dry and dead. I would pick the Bible up and I would read a bit and I'd shut it with a sigh and I would think: "Oh dear, oh dear".

However, one night when I was kneeling at the bottom of my bed, Jesus came into the room. I can't tell you whether it was a vision or whether it was real, but this light flooded across my bedroom and in that light I saw Jesus. You know people say, "How do you know it was Jesus? Well I'll tell you. If you see him you'll know him! And so, at that very moment I realised who he was and that it was true that he was the Son of God. I knew that everything was true in the Bible and I just said, "Jesus, I just want to give you my whole life, I just lay it down before you. I don't want to live my own life anymore. I want to live your life. I want you to live through me." And that was the moment that the vision ended, but I knew I was different on the inside.

Jon: What difference did that encounter make to you?

Margaret: Wow! Well, I felt absolutely wonderful. God had that moment shown me how sinful I was, but it wasn't condemning, it was a sense of being forgiven and almost made whole in that very moment when I invited him into my heart. I thought, "Oh, I do hope this hasn't gone away. It's such a lovely feeling." Well, when I woke up in the morning it had not gone away and it's never gone away and that's many years ago now. I've just been so grateful for the presence of God and the reality of God and his life being lived through me. I've been so grateful for it.

Jon: Now for all of us who go on that journey of faith, there's always a journey of learning to get to know him, learning how to trust him, trusting his character and his nature and trusting his provision, those kinds of things. Tell us a little bit of your journey, because I know you shared in your book a little bit on the issue of money.

Margaret: We didn't have a lot of money. My husband was a teacher and they were pretty poorly paid in those days. We had big needs, the more we tried to do for the Lord, like moving from a 3-bedroomed to 6-bedroomed to 10-bedroomed house. Obviously it cost money and so we learned how to pray and believe that God would meet our needs.

This came home sharply to me when we moved to our 6-bedroomed house, because we really couldn't afford to live there. We'd extended our faith to get a bigger mortgage and really we had so little money to live on it was a bit difficult. So I said to the Lord, "While we live in this house I won't buy any clothes for myself. I'll buy tights because they are disposable things, but I'm going to trust you to supply every item of clothing that I need." I can tell you that in the years that we lived in that house I had marvellous provision and God gave me stuff that I could never have afforded to buy myself. It was an amazing experience.

My first thing was a pair of shoes. My shoes had fallen to pieces and I thought, "I could go and buy a pair of shoes" and then I thought, "No I can't, I've made this covenant with God that I've told him I not going to, so I've got to stick with that." So I said, "Father, you know I need a pair of shoes." Anyway, I went to the shoe shop and looked in the window and I saw this pair of shoes. I said, "Jesus I'd like a pair of shoes just like that." They were a little pair of black patent shoes with bows across the front. Anyway, I didn't think any more about it. But about a week later a lady knocked on the door, who lived just around the corner from me. I didn't know her very well at all. She came to our church, but she'd been new there. She said, "Can I come in?" She's quite a timid lady and I said, "Course you can." And she said, "Well, I hope you won't be offended, but I've got something that my daughter thought you might like." And I thought, "That's lovely." And she said, "Here it is." Well when I opened the bag and it was a pair of black patent shoes with bows across the front I said to her, "Sit down and let me tell you the story." And she was really blessed because she'd been used by God and I was blessed because I got a pair of shoes.

Jon: Why do you think Jesus answers prayers like that? Because at one level someone could say, "It didn't really matter what type of shoes you had as long as you had shoes." Why do you think Jesus cares about those kinds of details?

Margaret: I think it's his Father's love. I think when we come to him we need to come to him in full assurance of faith, with a sincere heart and that's what I did. It says in the scripture, 'Even the very hairs of our head are numbered'. Well that's not gonna prove much to me, but I know that when I pray in secret and God rewards me openly with an exact answer, which has happened so many times, it's not a disprovable thing. It's happened so many times that I know, that I know, that I know that he loves me and I love him. It's a covenant you see, isn't it that we have with God. He's made a covenant with us through Jesus Christ. When Jesus died on the cross, he shed his blood and blood is just the formation of the covenant.

Jon: Now you had another experience of seeing Jesus when you were in a hospital once, didn't you? Tell us about that.