PRESS RELEASE

Transformation is foundational to our faith as followers of Christ. Indeed the very meaning and purpose of our lives is to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. But that can seem an impossible goal to achieve when we look at the messiness of our own lives.

So what does it really mean to live a transformed life?

Kate’s own dramatic story of being healed from cancer showed her that God uses the circumstances of our lives as well as the Bible and the Holy Spirit to transform us. In her new book Sea Changed: A Companion Guide - Living a Transformed Life Kate shares some of her personal testimony alongside biblical teaching to help encourage us all to reflect more closely God’s nature. Questions are included for reflection in each chapter so that we can pause, study, and apply the lessons learnt to grow more like him.

The original book, the bestselling memoir Sea Changed, was written largely while Kate was in hospital being treated for advanced cancer and told the story of Kate’s own unconventional faith journey of transformation and healing. During those darkest days, God gave her a passage from Psalm 118:17: ‘I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord’ that transformed her life. “I knew that if God did heal me, my life must change; that I must dedicate the life restored to me to sharing the gospel – that I must ‘declare the works of the Lord’.”

This promise from God came dramatically to fruition as Kate was doing interviews for her book Sea Changed back in 2017. “I was interviewed by Leon Schoeman on TBN UK’s flagship interview show TBN Meets. As our interview came to a close he turned to me and said, ‘I think that God is doing something amazing through you and I think we need to help you with your ministry. How would you like a TV show?’”

The result is Living a Transformed Life , a twelve episode series featuring testimony, teaching and inspiring guest interviews, airing on TBNUK in July, and the companion book which will be launched at the same time.

Kate’s prayer is that this twelve-session practical guide and TV series will encourage us all to live a life transformed by God. So join with her on an adventure of faith!

Kate is available for interviews – please contact us for more details.

New title info can be found here , book image here and a sample chapter here.

Sea Changed: A Companion Guide – Living a Transformed Life by Kate Nicholas is published on 2nd July by Authentic Media, 9781780789965, £7.99, PB.

Living a Transformed Life premieres on TBNUK on July 8th on Freeview channel 65 and Sky 582

Authentic Media
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www.authenticmedia.co.uk

Kate Nicholas is an author, broadcaster and speaker with more than thirty years’ experience in national journalism and global communications. She now runs a management and communications consultancy and preaches at the Amazing Grace church of St Peter and St Paul in Olney, Bucks.

Y ou have written Living a Transformed Life as a companion guide to your book Sea Changed. Why did you decide to do this?
Living a Transformed Life is a companion guide to my best-selling memoir Sea Changed which tells the story of my own unconventional journey of transformation and healing from advanced cancer.

This new book is about one of the great mysteries of faith – God’s transformation; the extraordinary promise that as Christians we are to be transformed into the very image of Jesus Christ in this life and beyond. The idea for this companion guide grew out of a TV interview with the UK’s largest Christian television channel TBN UK about Sea Changed and my own experience of God’s transformation.

Four years ago, when I was diagnosed with advanced inoperable cancer, a friend of mine have me a butterfly brooch as a symbol of the fact that God would use even this circumstance of my life to transform me, and that when I emerged I would be something different – like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. And when I miraculously survived, I realised that God can use even the greatest challenges of our lives to bring us along on this journey of transformation.

I initially wrote Sea Changed as a legacy for my children, I wanted them to know how God has shaped my life and lovingly guided me even as I faced potentially leaving them. But I realized that I now needed to take the lessons I had learnt, and use them to help others to embrace the concept of their lives as a journey of transformation – and this is what I have sought to do through this book and a new TV series Living a Transformed Life on TBN UK.

What, in your opinion, is the hardest part of the transformation journey to live fully with God?
Undoubtedly the hardest part of the journey is letting go of control. We are created by a God who loves change and expects us to live a life of constant transformation. As Jesus told his disciples, ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:3); but, if we are honest with ourselves, most of us don’t deal well with change. It is extraordinary how, given a choice, many of us will choose the familiarity of painful and damaging relationships and situations, rather than risk stepping out into the unknown. Instead of opening ourselves up to potential change, we prefer to hold on to our illusions.

However, God’s transformation cannot be achieved without a willingness to let go of our old selves, our old way of life and, in particular, our sense of self-reliance and the illusion of control. We have to be willing to change the habits of a lifetime, which have been shaped by a world which encourages and celebrates our sense of self-reliance and independence.

It seems that whenever we encounter God, he forces us to let go of the illusion that we have control over our lives – a process that often leaves us feeling threatened and vulnerable. But to grasp his promise of life in all its fullness, we must be willing to change and to give up old habits and attitudes, if we are going to allow God to transform us into all he wants us to be.

We need to be willing to embrace the gift of God’s transformation, opening ourselves up and allowing our minds to be renewed into the mind of God – no matter how dramatic a change that might involve.

What was the most memorable part of your transformation journey? How do you feel about it now?
For most of my life I have been a bone fide control freak - but when I was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself in a situation which was completely out of my control. There was absolutely nothing I could do to change it. I was in a place where all I could do was trust in my God that he would do what was best for me. It was as if God was saying to me, ‘Let go, you are holding on too tightly, trust me, let me take the helm,’ and it was only then that he was able to do something wonderful and transformative.

Of course I wish I hadn’t had cancer; and I would have done anything to spare my family the pain they went through, but I can’t wish away everything that came with it. The experience of coming so close to God at that time was incandescent. I was able to experience – and still experience – a peace that passes all understanding, and to find a place of stillness and even joy that previous eluded me.
God works through all the circumstances of our lives, but it is sometimes the hurdles and challenges of our lives that seem to fast track that process.

You wrote most of Sea Changed in hospitals, and said it felt as if you were guided by the spirit to write it. Do you now view writing as spiritual practice, and how did you feel when you were writing Sea Changed: A Companion Guide ?
I still don’t know how I managed to write Sea Changed ; most of it was written in hospital beds, as I was going through treatments and recovering from surgery. I was desperately ill but it was if the words just flowed out of me. Thankfully I didn’t write this companion guide in such extreme circumstances, but I still undoubtedly feel that I have been guided by the Spirit.

Since the publication of Sea Changed , I have been privileged to travel all over the country talking to churches, faith and cancer groups, and the media. And the idea for this companion guide really emerged out of these conversations, and the amazing offer from TBN UK to film a TV series about the lessons that I had learned during my own journey of transformation. And once again when I started to write, the key themes, ideas and even words just seemed to emerge. It was as if it took on a life of its own.

During my darkest hour, I was repeatedly given a passage from Psalm 118: 17 ‘I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,’ (KJV) and I believe that reflecting on, and writing about, how God has worked in my life and can work in the lives of others, has saved my life.

Where is God calling you to make changes in your life right now?
I have now been free of cancer for three years, praise the Lord, but like others who have been diagnosed with advanced cancer, I will never be completely discharged. Whatever I may believe about my healing, the doctors continue to monitor me and, like others, I am having to learn to live with this sword of Damocles hanging over my head, trusting God day by day. I have also taken Psalm 118: 17 as my mission in life, and vowed that I will declare the works of God.

When I first recovered, I knew that God didn’t want me to go back to business as usual but that he was doing a new thing, so what did I do? I went back to work full time! There were very good reasons; my colleagues had been truly wonderful to me while I was ill and I needed a safe space to grow strong again. God was very patient and gave me a year to recuperate but then forced me to step out of my comfort zone. It actually took a management reshuffle to finally get me to step out in faith and to dedicate myself to ‘declaring the works of God’ as a preacher, author and broadcaster. Today I am so grateful that I took that step, but I definitely needed that little push.

As a wise friend of mine once said, ‘You have to let go of the side of the swimming pool if you are going to learn how to swim.’ It is just that God sometimes has to prise our fingers off the side of the pool.

Where do you feel closest to God?
I always find the experience of being alone in nature transformative. I was brought up in a more innocent era when children were turned out of the house like puppies in the morning and not expected to return until dinner time. I was something of a loner as a child and would spend many hours in solitude wandering the fields and woodlands – but never truly felt alone. As a child, I struggled to articulate what I was experiencing, but I can see now that what I felt was a sense of the ‘numinous’ – the awesome presence of God.

I have also felt this sense of God’s presence high up on mountain peaks in places like Snowdon and the Lake District. Throughout the Bible we hear how Moses, Elijah and others were called to meet God on the mountain tops, and even today, on mountain peaks with only sky above us, we are often filled with awe and wonder. In fact, even those who wouldn’t count themselves as religious, sometimes find themselves experiencing an exaltation that is hard to define as they look down on the world from a different perspective.

There is something profoundly transformative about experiencing the beauty and wonder of God’s creation and, as we recognize the handiwork of the divine, we can almost feel our souls expanding.

These are the moments when, whether we can articulate it or not, we feel closer to God. This moment might come on a literal mountaintop or it might be somewhere else in nature – looking out over the ocean to the horizon, for example, or in the silence and emptiness of the desert.

But our mountaintop doesn’t necessarily have to be a place; it can be an experience that takes us away from the busyness and pressures of daily life, when we are able to see things more clearly and experience God more nearly. For some of us, it may be a piece of music that makes our soul soar, or we may find that, caught up in a wave of worship, we finally feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

Do you have any daily reminders or thoughts that help you to focus on Christ and how close he is?
I try to begin each day taking some time out – even if it is just 15 minutes - by reading and reflecting on scripture, thanking God for his blessings and praising him. There is something profoundly transformative about praise. Isaiah tells us to put on ‘a garment of praise’ (Isa. 61:3). Praising God is so important because it focuses our attention not on our own situation, but on the vast awesomeness and boundless love of God, and when we do this we open the door to God’s transformative power. Even when our circumstances are not all that we would wish for, if we really praise God, if we focus on all that he is, as revealed to us in Christ, he will gift us with his peace and even his joy.

What advice would you give someone looking to transform their life, but unsure of where to start?
A transformed life begins with surrender and learning to trust in God. Not all of us are type-A personalities with control-freak tendencies, but nearly all of us have aspects of our lives that we feel we need to keep control of, and are reluctant to hand over to God. So it is important to ask yourself, what are you holding on to too tightly in your life? Where might you need to ‘let go and let God’? And what does trust look like for you?

In Proverbs 3:5, we are told to, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.’ Rather we are to, like Peter, keep our eye on Christ and to step out in faith. Trust is not passive and it isn’t safe, it requires us to put our money where our mouth is and for our behaviour to reflect our belief. Trust requires us to be willing to step out in faith into the unknown, to take the risk of believing in that which we cannot yet see, putting our faith into action – and when we do so, the action of trusting is truly transformative.

Who did you write this book for?
I wrote this book for anyone who may be struggling to understand God’s plan for their life, or to find Christ in the midst of adversity ̶ even when facing our own mortality.

Transformation is not easy or uneventful. Jesus made clear to us that, if we truly follow him, our lives will not be easy. John chapters 13 – 17 record Jesus’s great last teaching to his disciples before his crucifixion. As they gathered for the Last Supper, Jesus predicted his own betrayal and told them that, ‘In this world you will have trouble.’ But he also told them to ‘Take heart! I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33).

We may not face the persecution of the early Christians but none of us are destined to come through life completely unscathed. Our journey will take us to the mountaintops and through the valleys of the shadow of death – but it is only by embarking on this journey that we will ever truly understand the meaning of life.

For some of us that journey begins in childhood, but many of us only consciously embark on this process of transformation later in life. But whenever we decide to open ourselves up to God, he can begin the work of change within, using the circumstances of our lives to gradually transform us into his own likeness, until finally, one day, we will stand before him in the perfect image of Christ.

Sea Changed is a riveting read. A beautifully-written personal odyssey of our times. It is full of rich images of Kate Nicholas's eclectic life . An honest and moving account which takes her from an eccentric upbringing in rural England to the corporate offices of London before she leaves it all for a global search to fill the void she feels. What she finally finds is a heart-felt faith which opens her up to the world's marginalized as well as courage to face her own battle with cancer.
Tim Costello, World Vision Australia s Chief Advocate, Baptist minister, leading media commentator and author

Kate's journey from bohemian childhood through the joys and sorrows of family life, from first-world glamour to witnessing the world' s most wretched poverty and from the top of her professional game to life-threatening cancer illuminates a faith revealed by life's everyday experiences. Kate's inspiring story calls us to find an extraordinary God in the gritty challenges of our ordinary human existence. This is an essential read for anyone looking to spot the divine at work in their world.
George Pitcher, journalist, author, cultural commentator and Anglican priest

Read this book! You'll be drawn in to an incredible story of adventure, spiritual discovery, and hope. Kate Nicholas's amazing journey is one of a kind, but in it we see the joys and pains that we all face as well as the faith that carries us through.
Rob Moll, editor-at-large, Christianity Today; and author

A beautifully written, haunting memoir…so much more than an autobiography.
Michele Guinness, writer, journalist

Original Press Release