Philippe Roig

I grew up in the Assembly of God of Marseille-Sébastopol. I came to church, led by my parents, but without any real desire to change. The Word was preached before me, and I did not hear it.

At the age of 12 or 13, I withdrew into myself. I spent long moments hidden between the wall and the door of my room. In that place, it seemed to me that I was fine. It was my world. I spent nights of anguish and tears. Forced to see that I was getting nowhere in all I did, I slid down a dark slope. The adversary, who prowls like a roaring lion, sought to destroy me. But glory to God! My Saviour kept me from all these things and so many others.

After years of an up-and-down spiritual life — converted, baptised, but not born again — the weight of my life as a sinner crushed me. One day, kneeling in my room, feeling the misery of my being and the deep desire for my life to change, I cried out to Jesus. Not with my lips only, as I had done before that day. It was my heart that cried out!

My prayer that day was the confession of my sins, which the Holy Spirit brought to light before my eyes. Nothing in me was spared. The God who had kept me until then, without my paying attention to Him, revealed Himself and changed my life. He placed in me the assurance of the forgiveness of my sins, and His peace filled me.

I had found the reason to live in Jesus Christ.

Since 2006, with my wife Angélique, we serve the Master in the Vitrolles Assembly, alongside the pastoral couple Charles and Jacqueline Russo. And since that time, there is within me a fire that never goes out: the love of the Word of God, the meditation and teaching of Scripture.

How many children of God today live what I have lived! Seated in our assemblies, faithful in appearance, but starving without knowing it. It is not religion that saved me. It is a Person, revealed in a Book. And this Book, I want to make you want to open it, to read it, to meditate on it.

— Philippe Roig