How should I present myself in such a way that you may know if it is worth it for you to befriend www.savoiretcroire.ca? if what I say is relevant, worthwhile, trustworthy?
we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:13, ESV)
I’m not too sure… Should I say I was encouraged to make known the essays and the master’s degree thesis that constitute an important basis of this site? Perhaps so, but that is not the most important to me.
When I decide to spend a large amount of time reading an author who deals with issues as important and intimate as faith in Christ and its implications in our lives, I want to know that this person does not lie to me; not only that I am not being lied to, but also that the life of that person is moving along the same way as his words are.
On the other hand, I want to make it clear that I am not talking from the perspective of an expert for any of the themes discussed on this site. My stance is always that of a person involved in life-long training journey. This dimension of my writings is sometimes made explicit within my texts, but remains implicitly true everywhere.
In a nutshell, having been a Military Police in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1969 to 1977, I enrolled part time in a certificate of theology at the séminaire Baptiste évangélique du Québec (SEMBEQ), while being a full-time staff (although only getting paid as a volunteers would sometimes be) in a local church from 1977 to 1980. I later completed a bachelor degree in thelogoy from 1980 to 1984 at London Baptist Bible College and Seminary, now known as Heritage College and Seminary.
While I was undergoing theological and practical training for the pastoral ministry at SEMBEQ and Heritage serving within Churches of AÉBÉQ and The Fellowship, I was wondering when the day would come where the personal maturity stemming from a life of obedience to the Scriptures would enable me to successfully go through the worst moments that were sometimes present in personal areas of my life.
Disheartened with regard to this hope, I ended-up choosing, in 1986, to reorient my career outside of the Christian ministry. This eventually led me to become managing consultant and Technical Writer in the field of Information Technology. This story is brushed-up in the foreword of my Master’s degree thesis Récit et interprétation d’un parcours éducatif à la Téluq : sens et attitude épistémique, préconditions pour l’accompagnement en formation à distance (pdf, 192 pages). It is indeed the story at the heart of my motivation for researching and writing such a personally rooted thesis.
I do believe that what I was so desperately hoping for has now been granted me. There were in fact two major turning points in my life: my conversion to Christ, in 1977, after God’s patient dealings with me through the years; then, in 2008, happened what cannot fairly be described apart from an answer from God to my prayers of the 1980s, when I asked Him to work powerfully in me, granting me the basic spiritual and human maturity which sometimes seemed to be totally out of my reach.
This account of my faith journey and its interpretation are now available on this Web site, under the title : Dieu et moi – Essai autobiographique (pdf, 87 p.).
This web site is for me a means of celebrating publicly what God did through the years and continues to do in my life to this day. It is my way of giving a testimony of His outworking on my behalf and on the behalf of those I love. This I am now doing as one who understands a little better than I used to in days past that it is for persons that are totally human, in their most somber nights as well as in their most glorious days, for whom Jesus died on the cross, opening for us all the access-way to the Father.
You wish to get involved and discuss about life-related subject matters, feel free to join our trilingual Community of dialog about the Christian Faith (French, English, Spanish).
Daniel Garneau, B Th, B Com, MA
May 11, 2016