Premier Lifeline’s annual Healing Conference recently took place in Westminster. Hosted in partnership with Methodist Central Hall, the event brought people together to reflect on faith, healing and spiritual renewal under the theme ‘Abundant Life’, inspired by John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Keynote speaker Dr Ben Pugh, author and theology lecturer at Cliff College, spoke candidly about his personal spiritual journey and his growing understanding of what it means to live “in Christ”.
Reflecting on his upbringing in the Cotswolds during the 1980s, Pugh described a comfortable but spiritually empty childhood.
It was during his time at art college that his life began to change, thanks to a fellow student who was a Pentecostal Christian.
“As soon as we started talking about Jesus, he was there,” he told the audience. “I had never met Christ before, but he was there, revealing himself personally to me.”
Pugh described experiencing the presence of Christ while praying alone in his student accommodation, calling it “a light that seemed to brighten the gloom around us”.
After becoming a Christian and attending King’s Church in Aldershot, Pugh said he initially believed he had received “the whole package” as he had been converted and was “filled with the Spirit”. Yet over time he became increasingly drawn to the Apostle Paul’s repeated references to believers being “in Christ”. He admitted he struggled to fully understand passages such as Romans 6, which speaks of dying and rising with Christ.
A deeper revelation came in March 2024 when he began to grasp the idea of union with Christ, a spiritual connection he believes lies at the heart of abundant life.
“It is in that union with Christ that more is found,” he explained. “Life more abundantly flows through us out of the union.”
A major theme of Pugh’s teaching has been surrender and the idea that true spiritual life is discovered not through self-fulfilment or striving, but through yielding oneself completely to God.
“You have to come to the end of yourself,” he said. “It’s by surrendering your life that you find it.”
Drawing from John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” Pugh described the incarnation as God entering fully into human weakness and suffering. He emphasised that Christ experienced hunger, exhaustion, pain and ultimately death in order to lift humanity into union with God.
“He has entered into your frailty, your sorrows and your humanity,” he said. “He has gone to the depths of human experience with a view to raising us to the heights of his throne.”
In a later session titled “He Died, I Died,” Pugh explored Galatians 2:19-20 and spoke about the struggle Christians often face between spiritual desire and human weakness. He described the Christian life not as self-annihilation or self-actualisation, but “self-surrender”.
“People are not lost in Christ,” he said. “They are found in Christ.”
Pugh also stressed the importance of spiritual disciplines, saying theology alone cannot transform a person unless it leads to active faith and daily practices such as prayer.
“The union with God is sustained by praying without ceasing,” he said. “When we ask God for things, we place ourselves in the shared space where we need Him.”
Also speaking at the conference was Jonathan Clark, director of Premier Lifeline, a confidential helpline offering spiritual support from a Christian perspective. Clark highlighted the charity’s long-standing involvement with the conference and its commitment to supporting people in emotional and spiritual crisis.
Clark revealed that the organisation, which relies heavily on volunteers, has handled 1.85 million calls since launching in 1995.
The conference concluded with a message on grace, faith and the belief that an abundant life is found not through personal effort alone, but through a deeper relationship with Christ.
