From emptiness to deep peace and love
By David Dahl, Aalborg Hi, my name is David. I grew up in a healthy, Danish family. As a child, faith in Jesus was part of our everyday life, and we went to church every Sunday. On a personal level, faith in Jesus became real to me at the age of nine, when I had the privilege of experiencing Jesus for the first time. It happened at a meeting in the church, where the preacher invited us to receive Jesus. I responded, and some other Christians prayed for me – and then it happened! I experienced the wonderful presence of God in my whole body, and broke down, completely overwhelmed. It was like I was in Heaven. Peace, joy and love surrounded me. After about an hour, I opened my eyes again, and thought: Wow, God is real and so amazing! Life continued, and as time went by, I forgot about this experience more and more. When I was 10 years old, my world totally collapsed when my parents were divorced. There was a big crisis in our home, and I was so angry at my mom and my stepdad when my mother was unfaithful to my dad! My woundedness and inner chaos started showing, as I started behaving very badly in school and made some bad friends. Crime became part of my everyday life, and it became so bad that I ended up in an institution for problematic children. In this institution I felt totally alone and abandoned, and I started to fill the empty space on the inside with lies and material things – such as the newest and coolest clothes, hair style and sun tan. It meant everything to me how I looked, so I also started to go to fitness. Because I had always been very skinny and hated the way I looked, I did all sorts of things to be able to gain weight, and this later developed into an abuse of anabolic steroids. Parties with lots of alcohol and women became part of every weekend. I struggled, perhaps unknowingly, to be seen, loved and accepted. Later, it developed into harder drugs and almost every day-drinking. But nothing was able to satisfy me. Bitterness towards those that had hurt me in life was a reality, and I wasn’t able to forgive, especially not my mom and stepdad. When I was 19 years old, I visited my dad at a Christian summer camp in the city of Kolding. I wasn’t thinking about anything that had to do with God, but just to meet women and being seen. But one night I went to a meeting where God met me in a personal way again. I experienced how God’s amazing presence came over me again, and I broke down. After that I started looking into the whole thing with Jesus, and found my old, dusty Bible and read about Jesus. Jesus showed me my sin, and my journey back home to God began. One year later, also after receiving a powerful dream from God, I finally decided to choose Him 100%. So, I repented from all my sin and received the salvation in the finished work of Christ on the cross and His resurrection. I was baptized in water and received the Holy Spirit. The emptiness on the inside was replaced with God’s amazing love and acceptance, and I experienced how God showed me who He had created me to be. I know that Jesus is real, and that what He says is true! If you need freedom, forgiveness and healing, feel free to get in touch. (Jesus) gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present, evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Letter to the Galatians 1:4-5; NKJV). Home |
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