John Baldock is a thinker; a Christian teacher with a pastoral heart. Theologically trained at Birmingham Bible Institute, John has some 50 years experience of communicating Bible truth. His motivation is to help people to understand the foundations for faith in God - the 'why' as much as the 'what'.

John is married to Jean; they live in Worcester, UK, and have two children and five grandchildren.

John has been connected with Churches of many hues, encompassing Anglican, Christian Brethren and independent Charismatic among others. He is currently part of the leadership team of Hope Church, Worcester.

John's working life has taken him into various sectors including retail and youth training. He went on to follow a career in business computing, initially at the University of Cambridge and, for the last twenty years, as a Project Manager within a leading multinational IT services company.

www.askedquestions.org

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Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, John.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Worcester in the UK.

Oh, wonderful.

Well, tell me, how did you come to meet Jesus?

I was 17 going on 18.

I was leading the Christian Union in my college I was studying at at the time.

And through doing that, I heard the gospel and I realized that what I'd been living was a religious existence rather than an existence on God's terms.

And I weighed it all up, was told various things that God had loved me, had a purpose for my life.

And obviously, I learned about salvation.

And I learned about Jesus being Lord of my life.

And I decided that that was what I wanted.

I wanted to be wanted to be a Christian.

And so I asked to be forgiven through what Jesus did on the cross.

And I asked Jesus to be my Lord.

What was life like before that?

I didn't understand where other people in my Christian union were coming from.

They wanted to pray and I wanted to do things.

So it was I was used to going to church, Church of England church, so very regimented.

But I quite enjoyed it.

You know, I thought I was a Christian, but I learned that I was not.

I needed to repent and be forgiven and to make Jesus Lord in my life.

I've had some practice in listening because of the many conversations I've had the opportunity to do with the podcast.

I know that one of the things in preparing for this that you enjoy, it would seem is having good questions, great questions being asked.

Diving deeper into that, that talent that you have that capacity you have, which I consider to be listening.

If you agree right with the capacity you have to listen, where do you think that came from?

Yeah, I have a pastoral heart.

I love to hear people's questions.

But I also love to hear where people are coming from and try and help them to see God's perspective on whatever it is that's going on in their lives.

I'm intrigued.

What is the most difficult question you've had asked of you?

I don't have a lot of questions asked of me.

I pose the questions myself.

I write books and I write a blog.

The whole lot is based on questions.

My first book was prompted by someone at church saying to me, when I talked to his elderly father who had questions.

This man was struggling to answer some of the questions his father was asking.

And so I arranged to meet with this chap.

I just had a brilliant time.

First thing he asked me was, how do you get into this?

And I thought, that's good.

An opportunity to start with my testimony.

That's got to be good.

But then he asked me all sorts of questions.

I'm not going to say any of them were difficult because I don't struggle with people asking me questions.

But I had a lovely journey to go to this guy's house.

I had a lovely journey on the way back.

It was in January and it was a bright day.

Normally it might not have been.

And I just was saying to the Lord, Lord, I wish more people would tap me on the shoulder and say, John, please, would you talk to me?

Would you hear my questions and help me to understand?

But the outcome of that was that eventually I felt God was saying, no, reach more people by writing a book and pose the questions and answer them.

And some of them were questions that this man had asked me or around the same topics that he was asking about.

But I came up with 70 questions in the end.

I distilled it all down to 70 questions that are the things that people are likely to ask who are not Christians.

So, I mean, the most difficult one in there, which I posed myself is why do bad things happen?

And the answer is not simple, but there's an answer.

And that's in my book, my first book, which is the only one that's published so far.

For those listening, let's tell them the name of the book.

Yeah.

And of course, we have a link in there.

The book is called The Viewing, an outside in view of essential Christianity.

And The Viewing is based on if you view a house that you're thinking of buying or renting, you get the opportunity to go and see and look at everything else, whatever you want to ask.

But without any commitments, it's an open invitation to look.

Why do you think it was so important in all that God possessed and did after creating the earth and creating man that he would have conversations after giving him the instruction, of telling, of seeing after the garden, but that in the cool of the day, it seems as though there was this thing that they did, right, where they had conversations.

Why do you think that was important?

Because man has been made to have relationship with God.

That's how we've been designed.

That's our purpose at the end of the day is to have fellowship with God.

And so in those days before sin came into the world, men could have that relationship with God.

And it's only natural.

It's a beautiful picture of walking in the cool of the day with God and chatting, having fellowship.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation, you'd have heard the evolution of John from a young man to the book writer to the person who is so present in a conversation.

What's a message you'd leave for future you listening to this?

Is keep going.

God is faithful.

And he can be trusted, he can be trusted in the difficult times as well as the times when everything seems to be tickety-boo.

Good.

And I think that, I mean, I'm of an age where thinkers start to become problematic.

And I accept that and I trust God in the midst of it.

This has been a great honor.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Well, I'd like to share my blog, really, because that's something I've been writing for the last 12 months.

I put off doing it for a long time because I don't know really, but I did.

And I felt just over 12 months ago, I should start writing it.

And it's become the thing at the moment.

I'm not doing much other writing.

But the blog is something I write to each week and I now record as well.

It's designed to encourage faith and faithfulness.

So it's written to Christians.

It's askedquestions.org.

That's the website.

And on there, you will find the blog.

Hey, John, this has been a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on what is inspired by 12