The truth made me free
It is sung in a certain song that life without Jesus is void. I testify that it is true. My life was just like that before I came to know Jesus.
It happened many years ago that I believed, which means I repented, and I was born again. This happened in a living room of an ordinary house, and I did not have any emotions. Not that I should have to since believing and living by faith, in general, cannot be founded on emotions but on the Bible, the word of God. The emotions of a man are quite varying, having many ups and downs, but the word of God remains unchanged forever.
A newborn child of God requires careful caretaking and correct parenting, just as a natural child requires caretaking and parents who parent the child correctly.
After I believed, I was baptized, and I joined a particular group of people who called themselves Christians. However, they did not obey the teachings of the Bible as the Lord requires from His disciples. Those people were kind to me, but they were not able to help me forward on the way of the Lord and to parent me correctly as a newborn child of God. Thus, I did not have anyone who would have told me how to live this new life and what it truly means to believe.
At that time, there was sin in my life, and it made me a slave of sin. Sometimes I suffered pain when I did something I did not want to do, but I could not break free since the truth was missing from my life, the truth which makes me free. Jesus preached that "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32).
Many years passed, and the new life was about to die completely. However, I did not want to give up, and I remember I wrote about it to someone I knew. The Lord, who, according to the Bible, knows hearts saw my longing and led me to a meeting of the Tampereen Paikallisseurakunta.
The church strove at that time and still strives to do everything according to the Bible in all areas of life, whether people like it or not. It is the correct way since, as it was stated above, Jesus Himself preaches that the truth will make a man free. Now I had found the truth, and it made me free. Now I am free and an active member of the church, as I already have been for many years.
In addition to true freedom, I have also understood what living by faith really is. I have seen that it is a way guided by the Bible. A way on which one has to walk forward until heaven. I have begun to walk forward on it, and I desire to walk on it until the end of faith, which is heaven.
While walking on this way, the Lord has brought clarity in my life, in both the natural and spiritual senses. The Bible declares that the Lord is not the author of confusion. As He Himself is not the God of confusion but the God of clarity, His influence on a man's life is clarity.
Surely there are many people who have experienced the same in a way or another. Perhaps you are currently in a similar situation: you have once believed, repented, and been born again, but today your life is not what it should be, and you are not on the way you should be. Perhaps you long for something other than just "spiritual amusements". The good news for you is that the Lord can and is willing also to lead you on the way that is the right and straight way which leads eventually to eternal life.
Miika Koskela
March, 2017
