From unbeliever to believer!

From the moment I began to learn, I had many questions deep inside about the meaning of life. Because I was brought up in line with communist principles, in a communist family, I got no answers to those questions – questions about spiritual matters. Whenever there was any conversation about church or faith in our house, it was usually to mock them. They told me those were just empty stories, pure fantasy, and they shouldn’t be of any interest to me until I got old – and maybe not even then. I was taught not to believe in God or in any church teachings, and to reject all those things. That was the belief system I grew up in, and that was what shaped me.

But somewhere deep inside me, embers burned that kept my interest in God alive. I found out that my sister and I had been secretly christened in Kosovo, where my mother’s parents lived, when I was five months old. This discovery confused me, but I took it to mean that every home and every person was committed to their own set of traditions and beliefs. One time I saw that my aunt had a Bible. I asked her to lend it to me so I could read from it. At the time I didn’t realise that it was God’s Word. I thought it was just another book – one of countless out there. I leafed through it for a bit, read a few things, and realised that I just couldn’t understand most of what was written in there.My aunt tried to explain some things to me, but she didn’t understand very much either. The fact that I could not understand what the Bible was about awakened my interest in finding out what was so special about this book. I was especially fascinated by the story of the seed and the soil told by Jesus Christ.

God gave me another special opportunity when I was fifteen. A Christian concert was organised in Titel, my home town, in the local cinema . I had arranged with my friend to go and check it out. But he pulled out. I decided to go anyway and see what people who believe in God got up to, what songs they sang. I went in the hall and as quickly as I could went to the darkest spot, practically hid from everyone, and watched what was going on from there. It seems like yesterday, I remember it so clearly, there was a small choir comprised of believers, and one man with a guitar, Mirko Mravik, who told the story of how he came to God and gave his life to Him. After that he started singing a song that I will never forget. Through the words of the song he asked a question: “Do you have the strength to take just one more step?”, the step of faith towards God. I saw that this step was one I hadn’t taken! I hadn’t been taught, I hadn’t believed, I hadn’t known that I could come to God and meet Him personally – I knew none of this. After that followed a prayer, where everyone had the opportunity to pray before God, to call on the name of God. That was when, in the darkest part of the cinema hall, I prayed to God for the first time, and felt that he was there and that he was listening.

When I was seventeen, God gave me the opportunity to learn the truth about the story of the seed and the soil that Jesus had told. I could not have guessed that God would speak His Word to me clearly and directly that evening, so that I could see just how far I really was from Him. That evening I was at a youth meeting in the church, when the preacher, Daniel Adamek, told everybody there, in the light of the passage from God’s Word about the sower , to look inside their hearts and see where they stood before God. That evening I realised I could not come to God because my heart had not received the Word of God, my soil had not received the seed. I went home, avoiding prayer in church, and knelt by my bed and invited the Lord Jesus to come to me, to come into my heart, to come into my life. I asked him to forgive my sins. I confessed all the sins I could think of, and believed that he would forgive them. That day the Lord Jesus took a huge burden from me. I believe he took away my sin right then. I felt a great freedom, and God was present in a special way for the first time there in my room. The atmosphere in the room was wonderful! I felt the desire to leave this world and go to be where God was. It was wonderful, indescribable! It was a cold, 18th November, 1997.

Several days had gone by since this experience of mine with God. My friends, neighbours of mine I had grown up with and who knew me very well, were sitting on benches in the street. I approached one of them – he was five years older than me – and as I did so he said, “There’s something weird going on with you”. I thought they were just making a joke at my expense, so I didn’t say anything. Then the others chimed in too – they were also puzzled at the change in my behaviour. I dismissed their comments, thinking that they were teasing me, making fun of me. The older neighbour tried again to tell me that there really was something different about me. I thought about how to convince him otherwise and assure him everything was fine with me. I hadn’t even opened my mouth to speak when a thought, a Word flashed into my mind like a flash of lightning:“You asked Me to come into your life, and I did”. The Lord Jesus clearly spoke this Word. Realising this, I simply said everything was fine and that they were right. I went home joyful because I had received proof of my new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. I really had been changed, and I hadn’t even realised it!

After that I realised that I had truly experienced God, the Lord Jesus Christ, that I had truly become a believer and that I had received new life, that I was born again. I started to see everything from God’s perspective, to ask myself how God viewed many different things, to see how God’s Word was truth and always truth. I received great peace in my heart, and continual joy at having experienced this, and that I was living that which God had intended for every person!