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It was a few years into my show-business career when I first sensed a sort of incompleteness. I don’t know how else to put it. It was as though there was something more to life despite the fact that I had so much going for me. Certainly as much fame, fortune and popularity as any one person could handle. The girls screamed, hits came regularly, accountants were employed to cope with the income, but despite all that, it didn’t add up to satisfaction. When I went home and took off the public ‘mask,’ which I guess we all wear some of the time, I still had to live with the real me. And, although I don’t suppose I was any worse—or any better, come to that—than the next person, I knew that success, fans and money were no compensation for being restless deep within me.
It was a few years later before I really understood the reason for this restlessness and literally for years I kept up a barrage of questions and argument. Looking back, I’m grateful that there were those around me who could not only answer, but who were able to put God’s love into practice. Actions always speak louder than words, and somehow I saw in their lives what was patiently and repeatedly explained to me. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)
I knew my life wasn’t right and I wanted to change. I accepted that Jesus’ death was somehow the key to it all and, what’s more, I believed that Jesus wasn’t a dusty character from history. Dead people might still have an influence, but they don’t change lives. And I had little intellectual problem in believing that Jesus was, in some strange miraculous way, still alive.
I started that commitment, and I discovered later a new lifestyle, when I lay on my bed one night in the mid-sixties and prayed very simply that Jesus would come into the life of Cliff Richard and save it and rule over it. I’d gone as far as I could with questions and answers and theories and arguments. Now the things I believed with my head had to extend to my heart and my life. Jesus’ words in the last book of the Bible—Revelation 3:20—focused it for me. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock,’ says Jesus, ‘if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him.’
After my prayer there were no dramas, no flashing lights or booming voices—just a quiet sense of peace and a hint of excitement. Now, years later, the peace is deeper and the excitement is greater.
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