Testimonies
The Sermon on the prodigal son 21-04-2019
How I asked God to show me His love, and He answered my prayer. And how after that devil tormented me for a week.
I was at church on Sunday, as I was every Sunday, and the priest of our parish delivered a sermon on the prodigal son. And he said we needed to pray God, that He would show His love us. I decided to give it a try. Monday was a very good work activities on the farm, I drove to cultivate the fields, and such a job is good in that, that you can pray and listen to worship songs and think about God, say something to Him, contemplate Him, work do not interfere with these things. As I drove that morning, I prayed to God to pour out His love for me, to let me feel it. That God loves man always, I knew, but that I needed to ask in prayer for it straightforwardedly in addition to feel it , I didn’t think so. I drive with that tractor, I listen to songs of praise, I pray, and I feel like thoughts start to flow one after another, so deeply touching, so grabbing something inside, so thrilling, I just want to be in it, to experience what is happening and to cry. There is no way to get a different reaction. Just feel that you are loved, thoughts show you, here you were loved, there was love, etc., and so everything went and went in such waves maybe 2 or 3 hours, and maybe 4. It seems I submerge in that state and pop out again. I recover and a new wave comes again. It’s hard to put that feeling into words. Is it love? It is not like love for a woman, a brother or a parent, maybe in some aspect it is like love for a child, but only somewhere. The state is similar to light drunkenness (in spirit): it is hot, a little dizzy, I can’t say that the mood is high, but that the feelings are released, without brakes, it is true, although the mind is clearest, it does not interfere with driving at all. I may not explain in words here. Any way… in the afternoon I already feel that’s it, I no longer can hold those feelings, those thoughts, I can only drive and “look at one point”, I no longer have the strength to think.
The next day I say well yesterday I really enjoyed it, I have to ask God for love again so that He will satisfy me with it and I would not look for any “anesthetics” from the world, from hardship to be my drug, to forget the hardships, fatigue and so on. That day I was working on the tractor again and that state caught me again, flooded me, only for a shorter time, because the person did not tolerate such feelings for a long time.
In the days that followed, although I prayed for the same things, I never experienced anything like that. On the contrary, everything suddenly faded and I felt like I was in the “desert”: praying but not feeling that you are being heard and that you are getting help, the strength to go the daily path, and inside you are beginning to find poisonous, toxic thoughts that suck your spiritual strength into doubts, which begins to multiply, reproach to God, that it is impossible to follow God ‘s path, and that man is always destined to be a loser in the fight against sin, who only wins is Jesus, but my part is always as a loser, there is nothing to be proud of. Maybe pride speaks here? Or I see that God can fullfill what He promised in scripture in my life, but I can’t do my part perfectly, I keep stumbling and stumbling, so how I can expect God to live up to its promise of blessings, not curses. And such and similar thoughts haunt me all day long. Praying but how to the wall, neither that state is removed nor new forces to withstand the next day comes. In the morning you get up more tired than you lay down yesterday. Finally, the desire to pray or say something to God disappears. No more power, thoughts to retaliate, and so on. But I will still try to listen to the songs of praise through the headset, so that even if they silence those toxic thoughts a little, they will beat them back.
Somewhere in a week of all this (spiritual) fatigue, I say to God, “Will you examine me again, examine my heart, see how I will deal with these difficulties, will I rely on You, or seek pain or some forgetfulness in earthly things, “anesthetics”? I say, “this time even if it will be necessary to look at one point after the tormenting thoughts, I will not seek oblivion in earthly things”.There was silence from God that evening too.
The next day I am again in those toxic thoughts, that there is no guarantee of the salvation of man, for man does not know when he will die and does not actually know, will he die with some sin after the last confession, and so on, because of his imperfection, man may not make perfect use of Jesus cross either, for man lives and it is here and there he is defiled, but when he’ll die, he does not know. It goes such destructive and in reality it haunts you because you can’t find arguments on how to get rid of it or stop it because you are being harassed and harassed, all your arguments are shattered in the coming doubts. And at one point the thought came, “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Heavenly Father.” After this thought came a clear understanding, my sins will be swept away in the presence of the heavenly Father by the mercy of Jesus, if I will make his works known to other people. And at the same time, I felt that the love of God was pouring in on me again, that I could think of nothing in it, that I could only swim downstream and cry only. It is as if flood water flows through the bottom of a dried up river and IT floods me. I wanted to share those things not to praise myself as a good worshiper, but to give the glory and praise to Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, because you receive all things as a gift of God’s love, not that you somehow deserve it, because you see yourself you should get arrows at your address or at least serious reprimand. When I was flooded again with that new wave of Divine Love, God revealed to me the meaning of one sentence that an officer told me when he appointed me to perform military service in the arsenal of weapons. When I had to go to the commissariat to find out where I would be appointed. When Ie approached the officer who was assigning someone to serve, when it was my turn and I approached, he looked at his papers and uttered a single sentence and explained nothing. He said, “Well, with such reputation, just into the arsenal.” I asked, “What is my reputation, what is wrong.” He wasn’t even going to explain anything to me, he says, “Go, .. next.” That sentence went deep into the “files” in my head and didn’t give me peace of mind for years. “What is my reputation?” And as I read the Bible, I saw that when the Israelites went to war, when they came to the place, they set up a camp (arsenal), and some remained to guard the their belongings and the camp, and others went to the front, to the battle. That’s when that third wave of God’s love flooded me, he explained to me what that officer’s sentence meant, “with such a reputation only in the arsenal.” With my reputation, even if there will be a war, God would introduce me to the guard of belongings, the storage of the camp, where it is safe, where there will be plenty time for prayer and being with God, and I will not have to go to the front, where there is a great danger of dying and so on. He then finally put all the details of the puzzle in place and a picture of God’s love opened up before me, so that when I received it into my heart, I threw something inside again that I could only cry in it, because there are no words for what is happening in you at that time. From the utterance of that sentence to the explanation, God waited for 22-23 years. And that sentence didn’t get lost anywhere in the labyrinths of my thoughts. This is only possible for God. His word is eternal. If God pressed his word into you, it will remain in your mind forever. Thank you God for your unspeakable love. I will worship and praise thee while I live. You deserve all the honor and glory.