 Sunlight sparkles when filtered trees or shrubs The light of God is so bright all else pales into insignificance SEARCHING FOR LIGHT Paul Duff Testimony ‘What made you become a Christian?’ Before I left school, I had been following the Interdenominational School Fellowship led by an old man. He led the group even though retired from teaching. I attended the group because what the he said made sense. I only knew there was a dark spirit world. It never occurred to me there was a world of light, love, liberty and freedom. I thought, how do you find that light?  Bright sunlight is blinding. Bright light is healing.The brighht light of God exposes sin but it also heals from sin when we believe and are born again. A WAY OUT The week-end I tried to kill myself I’d just come from visiting a friend. His family were all Christians. For the first time in my eighteen years I’d been in a Christian environment. I’d spent two days with the family. They weren’t the perfect family but when they had problems they solved them in a way I’d never seen before. The problems were talked over with love and no anger, no screaming or stinging sarcasm. I thought, God I now know this can be done, that it is real and I need to do this. That was my motivation for becoming a Christian:  God never leaves us even in the midst of our darkness. He always shine a light in on us. BROKEN ‘I had an older brother,’ Paul begins his story. ’and when I was seven years old, he was invited to a birthday party. I was the kid in the corner because my brother had to baby-sit me. The teenagers, just to have a bit of fun got out the Ouija board. My life was impacted by that ‘bit of fun’ over the next few years with a lot of demonic activity. I became aware of a spirit world, it seemed a black world – evil – because of that night. I recognized this spirit world and thought it all bad, hateful. I was now ten years old and already a broken personality. My family life was highly dysfunctional my parents told me there was no such thing as love. I grew into an angry, swearing, hateful person who would steal his grandmother’s socks. Nobody wanted to know me.  Jesus is the the light of the world. It takes many lights to see by but the light of Jesus the light of one and is sufficient for the darkened hearts A LESSON IN GRACE The teacher, Mr Nankarrow, turned around and saw half the class watching me. ‘Paul, bring that to me,’ he said. I took it to him, showed him the cartoon. ‘Where are the notes?’ ‘I didn’t do them, they were too boring.’ ‘Paul, you know what is going to happen?’ Remember this is 1968 and caning is still practiced. ‘Yes. You’re going to send me to the office and I’m going to get the cane. You’re going to send a note home to Mum.’ ‘No. I’ve tried that so many times and it hasn’t worked. No! I’m going to do something different.’ ‘O-K. ‘ I wondered what that different was going to be and felt very wary. Mr. Nankarrow had my full attention now. ‘What we are going to do, Paul, is you are going to go back to your desk and write up the notes and whatever time is left over I will give you a stick of chalk and you can show the class how you draw cartoons.’ ‘Really, Sir?’ Absolutely.’ I raced back to my desk and scribbled down the worst written notes in the world. The boy next to me said, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Be quiet, I’m busy,’ I said. I hurried back to Mr Nankarrow with the notes and five minutes to spare. He couldn’t read them but he kept his word. ‘Books down, Paul is going to show us how he draws cartoons.’ He passed me a stick of chalk.  Light dispels darkness. The pure light of God creates no shadows. NEW BEGINNINGS I then ran my first workshop in the Banksia Park Primary School. It would be the first of many thousands. As I demonstrated to the class, God spoke to me. There was no doubt in my mind, he spoke to me. It was a life changing moment. ‘Paul,’ the Lord said, ‘nobody who knows you has any hope for you. But I have a hope for you, I have a plan for you, I have a future. If you come with me, I will stay with you and it will involve a lot of cartooning. Today, you’ve learnt the power of Grace, you didn’t deserve it over the justice you did deserve. Paul, I’m all about grace not about what you deserve, but what I want to give you.’ This was the first time God spoke to me, there would be others. Of course, I ignored God for eight or nine years until a failed suicide attempt. This was the defining moment. I was outside of the Piccadilly Theatre, North Adelaide, on a bus. At eighteen years of age I had reached rock-bottom and there was nowhere to go except to God. ‘Lord, I can’t do this anymore. My life is dark with all sorts of horrible things which started when I was seven. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t even kill myself. I don’t know what to do.’ ‘Paul,’ the Lord was quick to reply, ‘I’m here for you. Just remember, I never left you, you left me. If we do this, I don’t do trial runs. It’s all or nothing from today. Let’s do this.’ ‘You can have it all,’ I said. ‘I am nothing, I have nothing to give. You can have all of that’. For many years of my life, I’d caught that bus and as corny as it sounds, for the first time in my life, I noticed the trees were green, the birds were singing and the sky was blue. I was eighteen years old but had never noticed the colours before. I had no idea what had happened to me. I’d had no teaching, or training, no Bible before. I went back to do the same old things with the same people in the same old places. There was a difference though, I didn’t fit in. I felt like a turnip in a fruit salad. It just wasn’t the same anymore. My life changed instantly. All the demonic activity just fled and the darkness immediately lifted. I had been born again on that bus and the year was 1976.  The moon rises and wanes but God is perpetual, he never changes. THE GOOD LIFE
God had come into my life and changed me completely. I was freaked out. Just prior to the experience on the bus, I had been investigating with my drawing all kinds of dark, weird areas. God removed all that from me. The Lord spoke again, ‘Paul, I don’t want you to do anymore drawing until I say so. When you draw again you will do it for me.’ Eighteen month later, when I was praying, God spoke, ‘Paul I want you to start drawing for me.’ ‘OK,’ I said, ‘what will that look like?’ I had no idea what the world of light looked like. I’d only drawn the dark under-world. Next day I received a phone call from a guy, ‘Paul, I hear you can draw. I’m designing a gospel tract to be used in Estonia. I need such and such a design on the cover Could you do that for me?’ It’s now fifty years later and God has been true to his word. I haven’t always been true to his word but he has been true, faithful and loyal to me. I’ve drawn a mighty lot of cartoons in that time just as he said I would.
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