Testimonies of lives changed
2 Corinthians 12:10 (NIVUK)
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Born for a purpose
I came to Ireland three and a half years ago in 2010. I didn´t really want to go and live abroad at that time. I thought till then that I will grow old in Slovakia somewhere close to my parents and friends, do the job I´ve wanted to do since I was a kid, have my own family and my own place to live. I tried to have a relationship with God and do what I thought is right in His eyes, but I had a feeling I have to cope with the difficutlies of life all by myself, He´s not there to help me. For some reason I always found life very difficult and I didn´t feel „fit for life“.
Plus I had a few sins in my life that I just could not get rid of and I thought God is fed up with me for doing them again and again but on the other hand I thought He is not helping me and I can´t stop doing them by myself. In the end, what I was going through in all aspects of my life made me leave the job, family and country and it all happened unexpectedly within two weeks.
Moreover, I came here suffering from depression which with my circumstances of the new life got even worse. Living in a sin, I believed God´s anger is on me and I was left alone. I thought He wants to punish me or teach me a lesson and I´m just not learning. Several times I wanted to come back to Him and I confessed everything and asked Him to forgive me because I was afraid of Him and I wanted to hear Him say something but there was no reply and I was tired of my monologue. I even tried to provoke Him, make Him very angry just to make Him say or do something. When I was alone in the house at night I would shout: „ Curse me if you want, but say something!“ I couldn´t stand Him being quiet.
For two years I felt like I am in hell. The inner pain and anxiety seemed unbearable and I wanted to die. The thought that I´m going to die either naturally or not was the only one that helped me to calm down and fall asleep. However, realizing that I´ll have to live after death made me very angry with God. I started to hate Him for creating me and I´d say it to Him every day.
I also hated myself. I hated my body, my mind, the way I think, feel, behave, communicate and I even hurt myself from time to time. Two of my problems and at the same time sins became my only concern and lifestyle. Both of them had been haunting me since I was twelve and I had no power to fight them.
One of them is overeating. I overate to the point of being sick very often and then I starved myself because I was gaining lots of wait and would go to the gym twice a day because I was scared of being fat. My body suffered in both cases.
These sins separated me from God and I believed God hates me for doing them. I couldn´t talk about any of these topics to anyone as I was very ashamed and disguisted with myself.
The last few years I felt I am such a loser that those things are the only things I am good at in my life, otherwise I am a complete failure.
The year 2014 was for me the year of experiencing God´s love, mercy and restoration like I´v e never experienced before. Although I became a Christian many years ago, I feel like I was born again just last year.
For several years I read the God´s Word only few times feeling I have no right to read it considering the way I was living and perceive God and it did not address me anyway, so I gave up. Last year I wanted to give a present to one man who tried to help me a lot in the past and He is a Christian, so I wanted to give Him something that He likes to show I care.
Therefore I opened the Bible again and entered some Christian sites as I was looking for Christian wishes. I needed to find 63 verses because he was 63 years old and symbolically I wanted to give him one wish for every day. It was at the time when I felt there´s no hope and no solution for me.
I came to the website talking about Jeremiah when he felt low and it was written there :“God knew about him before Jeremiah was born and he had a plan for him. He was born for a purpose. ..and God knew about you before you were born. You were born for a purpose.“ And then it said something like this:“Even the fact that you are breathing gives glory to God. Each breath gives Him glory as a Creator. Your enemy is against it and he wants to destroy you.“ These words touched my heart.
After that there was a short passage from Jeremiah and as I was reading it, God spoke to me through these words:“This is what the Lord says: „If you return to me/if you repent, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. And if you speak what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth.“ I felt so much love and mercy, but also His willingness to have me in front of His face that I had to cry and asked Him to forgive me for what I was thinking about Him and for wanting to die and hating not only Him but myself and believing lies. He snatched me within a moment from a very dark place and placed me in front of His face.
When I think of the first and last sermon I heard in this church, it is my life. The first one about the girl called „Much Afraid“ and I could identify myself by this name and the last one „Born for a purpose“ and the words from Jeremiah, that´s my whole year. It´s hard to see a co-incidence in all of this.
I would like to thank the God of my restoration for all the miracles that happened last year. I want to thank Him for healing me from depression, giving me freedom from my addiction, doing miracles in my family-my parents and my brother giving their life to God, restoring relationships in my family,few of my friends giving their life to God,using my struggles and failures to talk to other people´s hearts, giving me reason to hold on to life at the time I was living without Him, giving me new accommodation where I feel at home, new close friends, the church, and mercy to hear His voice.
Romans 10:9
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.
1 Peter 3:15
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
Psalm 119:46
I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame,
NIV translation
Psalm 149:1
"God heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds." (NIV)