Personal Testimony from Roger Keech

The story of my life is entirely miraculous from then till now. As such, I will have to leave out many things, but what I include is just as miraculous.

One evening I left work determined to commit suicide, but God had arranged for a man to be there who would make this impossible.

As I walked home crying my eyes out, God literally appeared to me in the guise of the Good Shepherd and began to show me that if I had been successful, I would not have been with Him as I thought, since I knew about Him in my head but had no personal relationship with Him. However, He told me that I would get to work the next morning and would be summoned by the area manager.

The area manager told me I was to be transferred to a shop much closer to home, and that I should go there to meet him that same afternoon. The new place of work for me meant my bus would get me to work thirty minutes before the day's trading started, but the manager would let me in as he normally got to the shop by 8am.

We would talk about many things until the time for the shop to open. One of the things he told me is that I could have a close relationship with Jesus before I died. Though I had been in Anglican schools and Sunday school since I was five years old, nobody ever told me this. Even then my response was minimal.

An aunt came to stay with us over Christmas and offered to help my mother prepare the festive dinner, to which my mother suggested that my aunt and I go to the mid-morning church service and let her get on with the festive lunch. Neither my aunt nor I wanted to go to church, but you did not argue with my mother, so we both went.

During the service there was no evangelistic sermon, no nativity play, but at the end of the service I knew I could do nothing less than fall on my knees and totally surrender to Jesus. After which I was filled with such joy I could not describe it — this lasted every second of six weeks. As soon as I surrendered to God, I thought He said, "I have called you to handle My word." Since everything was against me doing that, I thought I had heard wrong, since I could hardly put five words together in public that made any sense.

Later, over time, through what God did, this almost totally illiterate person has now reached 186 different countries with a training course, the type of which the best-known evangelistic organisations would have charged you for, but I have sent out free of charge. This is entirely the work of God; I cannot take any credit for it myself but give God all the glory.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties: my mother got bowel cancer and I had to care for her at home until six weeks before she died. After which I had a nervous breakdown and was fired from my job. That left me with a mortgage to pay with almost no prospect of ever getting another job. Most people would have thought this a total disaster, but looking at it from another angle, I had wanted for decades to work full time for the Lord — now my opportunity had arrived.

A few days later I thought I heard the Lord say that I should go to San Francisco and take a training manual with me, and He would show me who to give it to. I was given no description of the place where I would meet this person; I did not know the gender, the age of the person I should give it to, or anything else. I had booked a hotel for four nights.

The Sunday came round and I still knew nothing of who I should give the training manual to, and I had to go home the next day. I looked through the list of places of worship but nothing seemed to stand out, so I took a pin, closed my eyes, and stuck the pin in the list at what I thought was random. It happened to be a Greek Pentecostal church which even the taxi driver had difficulty finding.

I was convinced I had blown it and was in the wrong place. During the service a young man said a beautiful prayer and the Lord said, "That is the one." So after the service I congratulated him on his prayer and handed him the envelope. He then asked me what was in it. When I told him, he said that many in the church there had been telling him that he should go for training as a missionary, but he thought he should wait. He told me that when I handed him the training manual he felt that this was what he was waiting for.

When I arrived back home in England there was a cheque for 500 pounds on the doormat from someone who had no idea whatever that I had been to San Francisco. I sold my apartment in England and bought a home outright in Scotland. With me, it could only have been God who brought these things about, and I give all the praise and glory unto Him.