When God says yes…then no

Have you ever seen a dream die? Been so absolutely sure that something was right – that God himself was behind it – only to see it fail? That’s what happened to Martin Saunders, and it took his faith to the edge

It was May 2019, and I was in the quaint seaside town of Swanage in the South of England. My family had gone to the beach for the day and I was sitting in a coffee shop with a particularly unwelcome to-do list of work in front of me. The main item: to pull the plug on the project which I, and many of the team at Youthscape, had been working on for the last year – a Christian festival for young people that I’d titled ‘Satellites’ (a name pretty much no one else was on board with).

Having developed an exciting concept for an event to help teenagers connect with the Christian faith, I’d failed on three significant counts. We had no venue capable of holding the event; we couldn’t hire anyone with the skills to make it happen; and, most crucially of all, we had no money to pay for it. Satellites was finished, before it had even left the starting blocks.