Like many people in the world, I grew up with no faith and no knowledge of God. I walked with no regard for God who created me and I was comfortable with the things of this world. I regarded the things of the Bible as foolishness and vain imaginations of people desperate for something to comfort them. I am sure that I would have remained in this state of ignorance without God’s intervention.
God opened my eyes to spiritual realities during my last year in Finland before I moved to the UK to study economics. It was at this time that I found myself asking questions that I had never asked before. Providently God brought into my life a Christian classmate who spoke of the things of the Lord to me. I was curious about the things that she shared with me, but I could not just take her word for it.
As I started reading the Bible, I read about things that I had never heard before. I thought maybe these words are true, yet I struggled to accept that this really is so. I remember asking God for supernatural signs to prove that He exists. He never gave me one, but instead He gave me faith to believe what I was reading. This Word – the inspired Scriptures, truly is God’s Word and Truth. In it we hear the very voice of God. As I was reading the Scriptures I saw that this God of the Bible, the God who created Heaven and Earth, is totally different from the distant deity that I had imagined. He is majestic, merciful and patient. He is full of love and perfect in its manifestation. His love is pure and hates evil. God is holy and perfect.
The one thing that I never imagined nor understood prior to reading God’s revelation of Himself is that He is holy. A man called Isaiah after having an encounter with God said “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of Hosts.”. I also read of a man called Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus Christ, and he said to Jesus “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. I discovered that God is holy – He is pure, righteous and good. He is other than us, and in Him there is no darkness at all. I asked myself; if God is like this, if in Him is no sin at all, and I am nothing like Him, then how can I be right with Him?
I started to examine myself and I was forced to admit that I was conformed to the likeness of this world. I realised that I spoke like the world, I dressed like the world, I thought like the world and I acted like the world. I was a slave to everything that God hates. I was forced to see that I do not meet God’s standard of goodness and I wanted to flee from Him. And it is then when I started to fear Him. And can I tell you that I was filled with terror. I was certain that if I died now I would be in Hell. It was now that the Gospel was of interest to me.
It was this fear that drew me to Christ. Jesus is the eternal Son of God who manifests His great love to us by condescending Himself in His incarnation and enters this world. He lived a life of perfect obedience and bled on the Cross to save sinners. He is the way to know God, the perfect manifestation of the God of eternity, very God of very God, perfect in love, power and purity. God, by His Spirit, ensured me that if I turn away from my sins and look unto Christ, my sins are forgiven.
And where did I find Christ? I found Christ on the Cross. It was on the Cross where Jesus died to satisfy God’s wrath towards sin and unites us to God. On the Cross, God established perfect justice in the salvation of His people and manifests His love for us. Christ also reveals Himself as a Friend and a Shepherd to those who follow Him. I marvelled at these things. But as I started to grasp these things, Satan tried everything he could to keep me in Hell. So often he made me doubt the mercy and love of God. So often he reminded me of my sins and made me doubt my faith.
But by the grace of God, I pressed on towards the Celestial City. God spoke special comfort to me in the book of Isaiah where He says: “I bruised reed He will not break and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out”. This is the greatest promise of God revealed to mankind on the Cross; anyone who believes in Him will be saved. And I believed, I cried out to Him and He has received me.
After these things I grew in my conviction that I must turn away from my old ways and live in ways that honour God. Overtime I began to really consider my ways and to depart from many ways that the world and sad to say much of the church today considers acceptable. I left the ways that God calls worldliness and vanity and I continue to do so today. Now I wanted to be holy, because God is holy. It was clear to me that allegiance to God means separation from this world and its ways. Christianity that costs you nothing is not the message of Jesus. As I grew in my understanding of the Scriptures I also grew in my desire to live a life of obedience to God. I started to go to the Scriptures to examine my ways and choices – seeking out His will for all things.
I can testify that over these last couple of years, God has been good to me. I cannot tell you that it has been an easy road and I wish I could tell you that my life has been filled with peace and joy since God saved me. But God has been faithful to me and has not forsaken me and will never forsake me. The more I see of God the more I come to face my shortcomings. There is still much pride and idolatry in me, my affections towards God are often weak and I am prone to exalt myself. But I can say this: that I hate that sin in me and I will praise God for His forgiveness all the more.
Try God.
Also Read:
- Men in the Bible: A Man of Considerable Goodwill
- The Myth of Omnipresence (1): The 5 Places God Always Is
- Overwhelmed
- Great Truths Adults Learned
- I Passed a Professional Exam and Got a Job After 10 Years
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