How I found God

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It was in 1963, dur­ing my third year of uni­ver­si­ty (in France), that I came to know Jesus Christ. This was the most impor­tant event of my whole life, incom­pa­ra­ble in sig­nif­i­cance with any oth­er expe­ri­ence. And I thank God that He patient­ly went with me until all hin­drances — espe­cial­ly my wrong ideas, my anx­i­eties and inner resis­tance - were removed.

Before God revealed Him­self to me, I went through a hard time because of sev­er­al urgent ques­tions that trou­bled my mind. On one hand, I saw wrong­do­ing every­where; on the oth­er, I real­ized that the major­i­ty of mankind was suf­fer­ing, tor­tured by dis­eases or hunger, war or per­se­cu­tion or oth­er mis­ery. What added to my des­per­a­tion was the fact that I myself could not be the “good per­son” I desired to be. I said to myself: ”Life is ter­ri­ble. What is the use of fight­ing day by day? If there is no sense in human life, I am not will­ing to con­tin­ue this absurd jour­ney. So, I must get to a con­clu­sion. Is there a real mean­ing in our exis­tence, yes or no? I must find out the truth.” To my think­ing, the cru­cial ques­tion was whether or not there was a design­er who cre­at­ed the uni­verse. If no pow­er­ful, good, trust­wor­thy being was behind the scenes, work­ing to draw some­thing good out of this uni­ver­sal mess, what rea­son did we have to play this game? I decid­ed that, as a Ger­man, I should log­i­cal­ly start my search with the expla­na­tions offered in the so-called Chris­t­ian West (before try­ing far-east­ern or oth­er religions).

Up until then, I had found no con­vinc­ing answer in either the Catholic or Protes­tant Church­es. (Look­ing back, how­ev­er, I must admit that I had nei­ther lis­tened care­ful­ly enough nor drawn clear and rea­son­able con­clu­sions from what I had heard.) In addi­tion to all the Chris­t­ian teach­ing in school and in the church­es, God had already giv­en me many proofs of His exis­tence, even of His wis­dom and love – for instance through the beau­ty I saw in nature and through the study of biol­o­gy, physics and chem­istry (in this con­text, see Romans 1:19–21.) But I hadn’t ade­quate­ly respond­ed to all this, and doubts took over as I grew up. So I had to start my search all over again from zero as an adult.

Under that pres­sure, I began read­ing the Bible thor­ough­ly to get an answer. At first, this book didn’t seem to give me any­thing of what I need­ed: no expla­na­tion, no re­sponse, not even a help­ful hint. Final­ly, I cried out: ”God, if you are real, I want to know you! Then do some­thing so I can find you!” (mean­ing the God of the Bible).

After just a few weeks, I real­ized to my sur­prise that my sit­u­a­tion had com­plete­ly changed. Count­less small inci­dents in my dai­ly life seemed to prove there was an invis­i­ble One who knew me inside out and could even read my thoughts! I kept expe­ri­enc­ing such indi­vid­ual care and atten­tion that it became more and more dif­fi­cult to believe in mere coin­ci­dences. The facts seemed to tell me that a Friend tried to con­vince me of his exis­tence. I felt this must be some­one who saw me all the time, under­stood me, took me seri­ous­ly, respect­ed me and enjoyed giv­ing me the best – in short, some­one who real­ly loved me. I had the impres­sion that this Friend was even court­ing me! At the same time, the Bible came alive when I read it. Cer­tain phras­es began to deeply touch my spir­it, such as Jere­mi­ah 29,13f: ”You will seek me, and find me, when you will search for me with all your heart”. – These expe­ri­ences were so impres­sive that at a cer­tain point I had to con­clude: This is real! Here are facts that can­not be denied. - Then I did some­thing very new and un­characteristic for me: I knelt down in my room and said, ”Lord, I give up my doubts.”

As soon as I addressed Him as ”Lord”, thus hon­est­ly acknowl­edg­ing Him as the high­est Author­i­ty, some­thing alto­geth­er unex­pect­ed hap­pened: I felt that some­one was there in the room. Although I did not see Him, I real­ized with cer­tain­i­ty He was near me. Then, a love that words can­not describe flood­ed me. This won­der­ful, holy love could only come out of a heart that was good: free of evil, free of pride, free of ego­ism. It seemed to me that I had known this heart from eter­ni­ty. And I real­ized that we all belong to Him, not only I, but every­one else too. After a while, words of the Bible I had learned long ago came into my mind, sup­port­ing what in fact I had real­ized from the first minute: God had come to me in Jesus. I remem­bered phras­es like: ”He came unto His own…” (John 1:11); ”He is the true God and eter­nal life.” (1 John 5:20); ”…you in me, and I in you…” (John 14:20). The true, liv­ing God had come to me, into His own. I had opened up to Him and thus allowed Him to enter my life. Instant­ly, I had the assur­ance that He was in me – a sweet, new real­i­ty. And I knew that He want­ed to stay with me for­ev­er. Through Jesus, the Almighty and Most Holy One could be close to me. Oth­er­wise, I would have died in His pres­ence. Jesus is God Him­self, so to speak His arm stretched out to reach mankind. Intu­itive­ly, I could grasp what it means that God is tri­une. (Lat­er I read a good illus­tra­tion: God the Father, the Eter­nal Spir­it of Life and Love, is like the sun in the sky, Jesus like the sun­beams com­ing to the earth, and the Holy Spir­it like the sen­si­ble cre­ative pow­er that brings forth life and trans­for­ma­tion after the beams have reached us. Or, as it is described in Rev­e­la­tion 21: God is the Light, and Christ is the Lamp.) The won­der­ful Being I had just begun to love was the one true God. He was the Truth and Love I had been seek­ing, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, all of my life. He was the answer to the deep­est desire of my heart.

From that day on, a very per­son­al rela­tion­ship began to devel­op. He has gone through thick and thin with me, speak­ing to me (most­ly through my con­science, the Bible, oth­er peo­ple or the cir­cum­stances), answer­ing my ques­tions, shar­ing His thoughts and feel­ings, giv­ing me strength and joy, encour­ag­ing and com­fort­ing me, show­ing me my mis­takes with much under­stand­ing, sym­pa­thy and even humor, and con­vincing me of wrong atti­tudes or habits. Only lat­er, I began to see how ter­ri­bly cor­rupt­ed the human heart in fact is. This became clear to me main­ly by my real­iza­tion how we treat God: despis­ing His love, ignor­ing His will and even Him­self, only want­i­ng to draw prof­it of His gen­eros­i­ty. In my own life, I dis­cov­ered all this, and also ingrat­i­tude, pride, etc. But Jesus Christ is here to save from all sin. – Due to my lack of faith, lat­er on I some­times refused to fol­low Him, although He was absolute­ly right in what He told me. So I expe­ri­enced fur­ther days of inner empti­ness and dark­ness. But despite my blind­ness, incon­sis­ten­cy, and unbe­lief, He care­ful­ly kept watch so that the rela­tion­ship nev­er total­ly broke. He always encour­aged me to express my opin­ions, and His lov­ing per­sis­tence helped me on until I could see my obsti­na­cy and give it up. By all the expe­ri­ences I went through and all the mis­takes I made, God worked to trans­form my char­ac­ter. I know that with­out His divine life which I received when Jesus came into me, I would have no way to become the per­son I am meant to be, the per­son He designed in eter­ni­ty past. And it is only His hand that can shape me, though He always needs my coop­er­a­tion. Thanks to His kind­ness and patience, the process of trans­for­ma­tion is going on while my trust in Him grad­u­al­ly increases.

In the course of the years, I also gained pre­cious insights. One of the most impor­tant is the per­cep­tion that every human being has been called into exis­tence for just one pur­pose: To under­stand God’s offer and answer with a free deci­sion, which leads all those who choose Jesus into a glo­ri­ous, nev­er-end­ing love sto­ry with Him.

Im Lauf der Jahre wurde mir die Not­wendigkeit des Kreuzes überdeut­lich. Wäre Jesus dort nicht für uns gestor­ben, dann hätte kein­er von uns eine Chance, wed­er ich noch irgen­dein ander­er Men­sch. Meine Lebensge­schichte be­weist aber, dass es für Gott keinen hoff­nungs­losen Fall gibt, wenn man nur aufrichtig zu ihm ist. Er kann jeden von uns durch sein Leben und die Kraft der Er­lösung total neu machen. Die Ge­burt aus dem Geist da­mals, als ich Jesus auf­nahm, war ein Ge­schenk (Joh. 3,5), und auch das Wachs­tum der neuen Persönlich­keit bis zur Vollen­dung schafft nur er, wobei er allerd­ings meine stän­dige Mit­wirkung braucht.

This God to whom I belong, who died for me and has become my life, has proven to me His trust­wor­thi­ness abun­dant­ly. There is no fault in Him, not one. He desires to save all of us. He loves us with a deep­er love than any­one can imag­ine. He is at work to build up a king­dom of love with those who are will­ing to be trans­formed and yield to the truth. In this incom­pa­ra­ble king­dom, I will be with Him for­ev­er – as a mem­ber of His Body, His Coun­ter­part, togeth­er with all my broth­ers and sis­ters, sis­ters, that is, with all those who have accept­ed their redemption.