My testimony

2 October, 2023

With God, it’s never too late – but always too early to give up.
I want to tell you about the most amazing thing that can happen to a person. I will try to briefly share my story.

Today I am a high school teacher and have the privilege of working at a Christian school, and in addition to my teaching profession, I am the author of two books.
And here´s my story.

For as long as I can remember, I have been aware of God’s existence. I have no idea how, or who told me about God: I just believed. I knew. That even though I felt abandoned by my earthly parents, God is my father in heaven, he has all power and I can pray to him at any time; for he always hears me and he protects me. I sort of sensed his presence. The awareness of God made me feel safe.

From a human aspect, I was deprived of a safe environment as a child, and my earliest memory is from the orphanage where I spent some time before I had to move to a foster home, where I then spent my upbringing.

At the age of seven, something happened that had a life-changing impact on my life.
I was sitting on the floor in my room playing with some toys, when all of a sudden God’s presence was there. I didn´t see or hear anything, was not afraid – it was as if I recognized God – but now he came very close. Someone has wondered how I could know for sure what it was I was experiencing.

The answer is, that when you meet Jesus, you know that it is Jesus you meet. The intense pure love, certainty and peace overshadowed everything else. The presence of God’s love was total, a holiness that made me so completely and utterly safe; nothing on this earth can even compare to it. This total peace and certainty caused all the question marks in my interior to be smoothed out into exclamation points, a strong and somehow self-evident certainty within me that I had found my way home – home to him who had created me, wanted me and who loves me.

A revelation that “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life” filled my heart, and I can’t remember that as a seven-year-old I knew that particular Bible passage. Although I learned to read as early as first grade, I don’t think I was that familiar with the Bible at this point. Yet those very words echoed within me even after God’s presence had left my room.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. I knew it was true, and that I would cling to Jesus for the rest of my life.

A strong longing for God was born within me after this experience, and I started reading the Bible as a 7-year-old to get to know Jesus.

I had never felt loved, except for the time when Jesus came into my room. Before that, I didn’t even know what I was missing out on, because I had no love to relate to. During my upbringing I didn’t think much about it, just as I wrote, the awareness of God in my life was what made me feel safe.

But when I became a teenager, my early childhood caught up with me, the wounds of my mother’s betrayal came to the surface. Inside me was only emptiness and meaninglessness. My previously high grades plummeted and I had difficulty seeing any meaning in life.
My strong encounter with God during my childhood kept my longing for God alive, and at the age of eighteen I took the step to become an “active Christian”, I decided to join a congregation.

And from now on everything would be just fine. But the wounds and abandonment inside me remained, and caused many mistakes and wrong decisions – even though all I really wanted was to walk with Jesus fully.

In my forties, both my children were teenagers and I myself had been a widow since my daughter was one year old and my son was three. At this time in my life something completely new occurred. For several years I had felt spiritually frustrated. When I looked in the rearview mirror of life, I felt that what I wanted to do most of all, wasn´t a reality. But the fire inside my heart, my calling, was still there. And that fire would not go out, even though I myself felt that I had failed and didn’t deserve to live in my calling anymore.

At a certain point I realized that something drastic had to happen – within me. On the surface, I was active in a congregation, my children were saved and attended a Christian school. I worked as a working-life coach, and was pretty good at my profession as well. However, I was still not whole on the inside, which still negatively affected my life and choices.
After a week of fasting and praying for my future, the turning point finally came.

God lifted me up and let me see my life from a new perspective – the consequences of my past choices and mistakes. This was necessary for me, as I needed to have a clear understanding of where I was, in order for God to take me where he wanted me to be.

Remember this. If you really want change in your life, if you want God to do great things – don’t be afraid of the truth about yourself. It can hurt, it hurt me to see myself in a clear light – but the truth is the foundation, “square one” if you want to be able to move on, and into a wonderful life with Jesus.

The second thing that happened was that God lifted off my guilt and shame, and gave me a wonderful revelation that I am fully forgiven and that He gave me a brand new fresh start in life, together with Jesus. The prerequisite for this was that I forgave, both others and myself, and let go of the past. Gratitude for what Jesus has done for us, is a cornerstone of our faith.
I began to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit more clearly, He urged me to go to a Bible school and follow Jesus wholeheartedly.

As I became more responsive to God, Jesus led me into a process, which became a kind of private training camp with the Holy Spirit as my coach. Five wonderful years now followed, when God spoke and I reached out to what God said in obedience – and God kept his promises. My children joined in this process, and today they have learned to discern God’s hand in their lives and they both walk with God.

During these years, we got to see God’s interventions in many areas of our lives, and that is still the case today.

Being able to hear the Lord’s voice, and then do what He says is something amazing and very exciting in life. “The dynamics of faith”. Obedience to God, in what we experience Him saying to us, can be likened to a small nub, a small nail driven into a large iceberg that is hindering us. We don’t think the little nail can accomplish anything – but it causes a crack in the iceberg that causes the whole mountain to slide. A small nail, a small act of obedience.

Many times in prayer during these five years, I experienced both God’s healing emotionally and spiritually, and also deliverance. God taught me about emotional healing and redemption, and He called me to start writing my first book: Redemption – Your Time is Now. Today, my second book, The Road to Azusa, is published and translated into English, and my third book is in progress, a Christian novel that is a sequel to Azusa.

Whatever circumstance you live in – for God nothing is impossible. He both wants to and is able to intervene in your life. Believe and pray, and be prepared for change. It may not happen in the blink of an eye, but both the journey and the destination are worth everything.

If you feel that you have failed in life – Jesus wants to meet you where you are, take you by the hand and teach you to walk with Him.

If you feel unloved – Jesus wants to help you discover that you can live in the greatest love of your life, with more love from God in your heart than you can receive.
If you don’t know Jesus – He is the Son of God and he is God. He has done everything for you on the cross of Calvary. He is the one who knows you the best, and he loves you infinitely.

Romans 10: 9 says:
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
If you experience a calling on your life, but feel that you are too old and that you should have done a whole lot of things earlier: It is never too late – but always too early to give up.