My Story of Coming to Faith, Part 1 – The Search for Truth That Led Me to Jesus

Can I recommend you write your story of experiencing Jesus to share with a link in Google Docs or OneDrive – and even record it and make a public or private link to it on YouTube & other social media? It can be so helpful to have – when time is short for meetings in life.

I encourage you deeply: appropriate this journey yourself.

In hindsight – choosing to take this journey is the best and wisest thing I have ever done.

Thanks be to God, my dear, dear Father, for showing me grace to wake me up to Your love for me & all.

The few pages below describe a deep 2½ year intense journey from the fall of 1991 to where it all came together in February 1994 – and then has continued growing ever since. Every word is intentionally and carefully thought through and meant to be LOADED with meaning.

Please read – digest – and think deeply. My prayer for you is – that you would understand well what I have intended when I wrote this.

I am sincerely convinced: to truly know and experience that we are eternally and undividedly loved by Jesus (God in flesh & blood) and we are gently called to respond – is truly the most beautiful and precious unshakeable fact for all forever. It is the very heart material of God.

In 1991 I Dared to Stop – And Ask the Big Questions and Go for Answers

• What is the real and deepest meaning of life? Why are we here? What is our purpose?
• What is true? What is truth? Who is God? Is there a God or not?
• I want a personal encounter with God, so I know myself that this is God – not just my own concept. Who cares about answers to these questions if the answers are not really true?
• I want to know what true love is. How is it fully truly defined?
• I will not believe something, because I want to believe – and therefore simply be brainwashed. There is absolutely no point in that. Then I might as well just play chess, football, or join a good volunteer organization. I will only accept a worldview if that view as far as I can possibly establish – is truly true eternally and independently of me believing it.

My First Truths

• I know that I don’t know the answers.
• I know that I want to know.
• I know that I think I know there is something to know. Maybe there isn’t – then so be it. I will live with that, then.
• But: I think there is something to know because many honest people – even people that I personally met and know – testify that something truly supernatural has happened to them.
• There is nothing more important than finding the answers to these questions.
• I do not want to miss out on this! It now seems to me to be the most important thing – ever.
• At the deepest level: I know that I know that I truly want to live – and not die. I like to live. I like life. Death is not natural and good / awesome.
• I believe love is a good thing and I want to know the true definition of love as well as truth.

Then I Discovered Something About True Love

True love gives freedom – does not force others to love. But loves – gives love. Does not use violence to force others to love. Real value in love comes from free will. True love of any real value is pre-conditioned on free will to choose.

We are not just pre-programmed computers – we have the honor of making real, true choices. This adds true value to true love – because we can choose not to love. So, unfortunately, this does open the “terrible door” to not love. This is the price of the best there is in this world.

The Names – Personality and Character of God

Please click here to see what God is really like and therefore what God is really like: Article

And another place is to look after having read in the Bible, that God is love (1 John 4:8) – is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 – the love chapter. God is the love that is described there.

Then I Discovered 2 Important Things

First Foundational Discovery

The Christian God in the Bible IS eternally permanently fully all these things. If people who call themselves Christians say or live otherwise in one way or another, they are not representing God in that area. This discovery is foundational to keeping you strong and unoffended by other Christians – because Christians do not do this perfectly – and neither do you. Only one, Jesus, Daddyo, and the Holy Spirit – are perfect.

Second Foundational Discovery

There is good living, modern, non-religious churches out there – full of people who believe you can and should experience God for yourself and have seen and experiences real miracles in and around them.

And they are not just there in church because they must – but because they want to and love to be there – and because they love God, others, and themselves.

It’s a family, a family of people recognizing they are loved by God and who want to love Him back and who want to love others, and themselves.

I then started going to a modern living church, reading the New Testament, and believing: GOD IS LOVE! Which is great – (but…)

But What About Jesus?

I knew I was not yet a Christian – I was likely on my way there. I was trying to understand the missing pieces.

And What About a Second “Track” I Had Been Exploring Deeply?

Up until that time I had been going on 2 tracks – a New Age, alternative, gnostic, “belief in reincarnation track” – up until then – and a “Christianity track”. I thought reincarnation was “proven” = little kids as well as adults could tell secret details of diseased people who died just before they were born. Was reincarnation then not proven? Christians did not seem to go well with reincarnation. Why? So where to go?

Decisions and Direction

I decided to – from here on – from having discovered: GOD IS LOVE (the Christian God), to only read Christian books, to go to a living church when I could, to read the New Testament, to pray, to go to Christian camps to fully understand the Christian faith.

Jesus – The Missing and Central Piece in the Puzzle

Finally!!! The time came for me. I had my own very real undeniable personal encounter and experience with Jesus, Whom I discovered to be God, Who is LOVE!

It came quite unexpected in some ways – even though I was really fiercely and proactively seeking to know the truth about God – especially the one in Christianity. I was reading a book about a near death experience while listening to music by a Christian by the name of Keith Green.

My journey into exploring faith, meaning, love and experiencing God personally was actually spurred on in 1991 by reading a book written by Keith Green’s wife, Melody Green, about Keith Green’s life.

So, reading the book now about the near-death experience – I finally understood what Jesus was doing and I found that what He did and Who He is – is absolutely essential to all that I was looking for – and perfectly more. Jesus is the perfect embodiment of: God, Love, Meaning, Knowing God personally, Truth, Life, Light, Justice etc. ALL OF IT…

I finally understood and believed in my heart, and I spoke it with my mouth – Jesus is alive, He is God, He is our Master, my Master – and best Friend. He is our Forgiver, my Forgiver. He is Light, Love, Truth, Purity, Freedom, Power, Justice, Wisdom, Honor, Humility, Grace incarnate. I finally understood that the cross and His blood and life spilled there is the centerpiece of time, creation, and the only place of our reconciliation with our Daddy God – the Father.

AND He gives us all He is – as a FREE GIFT. That is the GREAT EXCHANGE!

How Did I Arrive at That? My Own First Personal Tangible Encounter with God

As I sat there in my room – 19 years old – suddenly I felt an external yet internal supernatural warmth and peace come over me and reside inside of me – mostly in my stomach area. I had never felt anything like that before. It did not come from me but was inside me.

I literally experienced the love, goodness, and peace of God. It was totally unexpected – but it was very nice – and I could feel it permanently for many months after that (now – many years after – I still feel it at times).

Shortly after that I read that Jesus said in the Bible in John’s story of the life of Jesus: “I will give you my peace”. And “from your inner being will stream rivers of living water”. This really helped me believe in the words of the Bible.

I now had personal peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. This theme and experience with the Holy Spirit is promised and detailed all over the Bible.

How did I arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is the answer to all the questions I asked when I set out (and more)?

• In the book I read – Jesus was described by a man who had a “post death” experience as: the Son of God, not just a light and an energy as the New Age teachings described, but “a Person of Light” – made of the “basic element of Light” – He is both a Person and Light in its essence. Pure light – from whom all others receive life and light. He’s like one million suns – or a million welding flames = blinding light – yet it didn’t blind the man – because he was in the spirit.
• Imagine that! That is the Jesus of the Bible – right now – right here – for you as well!!
• Then Jesus was described as pure true love – the very essence of love. Because Jesus knew everything about the man (all knowing). The man saw his entire life and all the consequences of it – including the attitudes of his own heart. And what the man saw about himself was a life that was selfish, full of pride, full of selfish ambition, full of striving for money and outer recognition from people, full of lust – it was not pretty, it was not really awesome – and he started evaluating himself against the love of Jesus. In the light of the love of Jesus:
• He then started condemning himself
• He then started making silly excuses and coming up with silly explanations and diversions
• Then Jesus laughed a hearty healthy laughter – it was humorous.
• What happened next blew my hinges, my fuses, my mind, me! away: He understood that Jesus loved him with the same permanent, unstopping, fiery, passionate, true, eternal, unfiltered, undiluted, pure, burning love to the same degree that Jesus is LIGHT, LIFE etc. Jesus completely perfectly loved him. Please – let that wash over you too. Even though Jesus knew everything about him – also all the not so good stuff – the bad. Jesus still completely forever perfectly intensely truly and fully eternally all-powerfully loved him.
• How is that possible he thought – with all the bad he had done and that Jesus knew? He knew, he had not deserved it himself.
• THE BIGGEST ANSWER: The cross. How does that work? Why? True love is also full on truth, real justice, and full consequences. The world has fallen away from God – rebelled. We are sinners. We sin (we do not act in pure love) – for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s part of who we are. Our hearts are dark, selfish, and evil at times – for some more than others. But compared to the purity of the love, light, and truth of God – we are completely dark. But the cross is the tool God used to fix that problem. And only one Jesus ever died on a cross as a perfect person to take all our imperfection.
• The Bible says about Jesus: “There is the lamb of God – who carries the sin of the world.” John the Baptist and “He became sin, so we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 (2 Corinthians 5:21)
• How and why does the cross work? How does it solve the problem of our committed “non-love”
• We sin in the flesh – in our bodies. This world, we are born into, is falling apart. It is under destruction and sin. It is not how God made it originally. We get a body that will die and is away from the glory of God. Even the atoms in our body are not perfect anymore. This whole created world is longing for restoration to God. This is according to the Bible – but I would say, also our experience in life. Sin separates us from God. God has to say: sin is wrong (which is correct), and there must be a consequence (which is true and there is). The consequence is separation from God – our friendship with Him has died – and in the end – we all die physically. But God wants to remove the sin, the consequence and the death of relationship (the enmity) from us – as well as physical death (our bodies will one day be raised).
• Jesus was God incarnate. The incarnation (God in the flesh). He was the sperm of God and the egg of mankind. The virgin birth is real! And important because of this. He was 100% God and 100% human. The God-man.
• Jesus was perfect in the eyes of God in every way. He had no sin and rebellion and He never sinned – even though He was tempted in every way by demons and people.
• Because Jesus did not deserve punishment, for He had no sin and never sinned. He could take our punishment. Only one who does not deserve punishment of death of relationship and physical death himself – can take the death of others. A person can only take one death sentence.
• Since we have a problem – all of us people. We are sinners. I found that hard to accept. “I was a good person” – I thought. So many people today think of themselves that they are “good people” – so they don’t think they need to be forgiven by God and reconciled with God – and so they don’t need the cross. And thereby they miss the meaning of life that God wants to give – they miss the foundational truth of being reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. People might compare themselves to a thief, murderer or worse – and say – I am good. But actually – all of us – also the “good people” – need forgiveness and our goodness is dirty – compared to the perfect goodness and love of God. The good news is – God wants to forgive us, lift us up and give us life and freedom from a bad conscience.
• On the cross “the great exchange” happened. The Bible says:
• A core understanding of love is – that it is also justice. In justice lie evaluation, decisions, choices measured up against what is love, truth, life, freedom, purity, freedom, relationship, wisdom etc.
• When we compare ourselves to the pure love of God – we realize we are not as good as we think we are. We realize, we need forgiveness. We realize we do not deserve the love of God. We realize we are not as good as God.
• Here come the good news
• As 100% human – Jesus could represent us. The Bible says: The sin of the world was laid on Jesus on the cross. He was the sacrificial “Lamb of God”
• The Bible talks a lot about the blood: Blood is the only payment for sin – because the life is in the blood.
• As Christians we believe the Bible is the eternal Word of God. Jesus said – not a comma will ever disappear from it. In the story of Jesus according to John – Jesus is the living Word – the Bible is the written Word.
• If you sin – which means: missing the mark of the life God wants to give you – the wage and consequence of sin is death – and the ultimate death is missing our friendship with Daddyo.
• So, all sin – including both mine and yours – forever – was laid on Jesus on the cross – Jesus then died in our place. He lost friendship and presence of God and He lost His life. So that we could get what He had. And now – IF we personally choose to believe that, personally receive that, understand that – and receive and believe and act and then also speak about having Jesus as Lord and Savior – then “the great exchange” happens:
• We personally accept and trust: ALL our sin is laid on Him. ALL His perfection, friendship with God and life, and the Holy Spirit and all the power of God is given to us. For free!
• The Bible calls it: Righteousness by faith alone.
• This means – we have unpacked the “Christmas gift of God” – it is given to all – but not all unwrap it. As Christians we now have peace with God – through faith in Jesus.
• Remember – I felt and experienced a totally unexpected peace after I believed in Jesus – and I still do (at times – like for instance now that I am writing about this – thank you Holy Spirit, that I am your house on earth J).

What Happened Next?

I exploded with enthusiasm! Why had nobody told me this before? I was both baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran church. This was the best!! So much better than what I had even dared to hope to find when I started searching!

This was unimprovable!

To freely be given complete perfection, complete forgiveness, to be made right, made righteous, completely forgiven and free from any need to FIRST become good enough (reincarnation, good works) as a free gift in the eyes of God.

To be given eternal peace with God through a “package”, a gift of grace established securely in eternity by God Himself through Jesus Christ. YESSSSS!!! That is what it is to be a Christian.

Who can and how can anyone ever improve on this message: Free eternal forgiveness of all from God and intimate friendship with Daddyo – God The Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit.

Since then, I have been a born again Christian and have strived to live this life to the max helping people to get to know this same love that I know and experience. Introducing people to my BEST friend – Daddyo – my Father in Heaven and Jesus His Amazing Son – my bro’! And the presence, peace, strength, honor, gentleness, and humility of the Holy Spirit.

Just wow – how precious this is. It is the very best that I have. And all is a gift for all.

I cannot encourage you enough – you – the reader, to do what I did – believe in, receive this good news for you, that Jesus lives, loves you right now, knows your fully – including all sin you try to hide (yet LOVES you fully), wants you to come follow Him, know Him. It is real – for He is real.

Where Am I at Now?

I strive to be best Friends with God because I AM called to be His best friend. I am a child of Father God. I am a brother of Jesus. I strive to be like God because Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit to live within me and changes me from the inside out.

And the best truth is – all of the above is for you – it’s for everyone. All we have to do is to choose to believe it. Choose to live in Him – and yes – choose to obey Him, to follow Him – or not. But why say no – when:

This Is the Best Offer – Ever!

But God asks us to choose it freely. He will not force you. Only you yourself can make the choice. God is deeply in love with you. You ARE His child. You ARE forgiven. You ARE accepted. You ARE completely seen and known by Daddyo, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Will you respond to His passionate love?

A Christian Is

As a Christian I am a person who is born again on the inside. This work is done by the Holy Spirit of God Who is living within me now because I believe in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit of God – Who gives us feelings of peace can live inside me – because I know and trust the eternal character of God, Jesus Christ – who is truly love. I willingly and proactively choose to follow Jesus as my Master now – giving Him my ALL – my everything.

I willingly choose to be a disciple who fully follows Jesus, who surrenders my own plans, will, desires to become like my Master in every way.

I do this willingly – because Hi is love, He is smarter than me, He knows me and this world better than me – so I passionately seek to know His will and to do it.

I now do what Jesus did and what He trained His disciples to do: read the stories of Matthew 9-11 & Luke 9-10. I practice faith, hope, and love. I heal the sick, cast out demons, prophesy, raise the dead, help people get filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I lead people to faith and to turn from trauma, self-pity, unforgiveness, poor self-image, curses, occultism, an empty and destructive lifestyle to a lifestyle that truly bears powerful eternal fruit.

And I train others to do exactly the same – and to train others to train others to do the same.

So, come, follow me – and I will help you do what I do, bear the fruit that I do. It is the Best life I can imagine!!

Also Be Aware

There is also a bad and evil, deceptive, and destructive spiritual world.

The list above of the personality of God is exactly opposite!!

The Eternal Satanic “Periodic Table”

Article

An Attempt to Explain the Supernatural World from a Christian and Biblical Perspective

Word doc

Why I No Longer Feel Logically or Spiritually “Forced” to Believe in Reincarnation

Even though there are verified stories of kids knowing secret details (like where they hid their money) of a married couple where one had died shortly before the child was born – I no longer “have to” believe in reincarnation. I now know there is a dark spiritual world – who portrays itself as light.

There are real demons at play who lie, who deceive. And they were around and watched as the couple hid their money. And they can give thoughts, ideas, visions – even to children.

So, this seeming proof of reincarnation does not have to be accepted as proof – when you have seen the reality of this dark side of the spiritual world and have seen as many demons cast out as I have.

Also – reincarnation is directly opposed to Christianity as a concept. The Bible says “it is allotted to humans once to die – and then comes the judgment.” Why?

• Reincarnation is inferior and directly opposite to the Christian salvation which offers “righteousness through faith”. Reincarnation is in essence a self-improvement process to get closer to God / Nirvana / get higher. Jesus says – once you’ve sinned – you cannot un-sin. Forgiveness is the only way forward – but how can God forgive – let go – and remain just, still be truth, still be justice? JESUS on the cross fixed this forever. Read how above. The Perfect took the just punishment for sin. He could only do it if He was perfect – and He was. The only perfect one. We have to receive what Jesus did personally by faith – believe it. No one else can receive Jesus for us. THAT is our only requirement from God. This then makes us absolutely clean = perfect. It makes us as clean and pure, holy, and loved as Jesus. No sin on us. All sin forever on Jesus. You and I are free!! And we are as holy as God – as a gift!
• Jesus says that this then happens:
• John 15:9 – I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.
• John 17:21 – Jesus prays: “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.”
• This means we are now as close to God as we possibly can be – simply through faith. We do not have to follow the logically false notion that we can clean ourselves by doing good. A wrong is not changed to a right – if we do good. We get clean by all impurity being put on Jesus on the cross. We can only receive this God love-bomb on our knees – in humility and thankfulness. Then we strive to live that gift out – the best we possibly can by following Jesus wholeheartedly.
• So, this 100% flips the table on reincarnation. It is now false. It is a lie from the pit of hell. It is the lie of satan and his demons. It keeps us from needing Jesus on the cross right now. It keeps us from receiving the biggest gift ever – Jesus on the cross and His blood as the only valid payment for our sins. The eternal perfection He offers – for free. This can never be improved. Reincarnation now becomes yet another – “I made my own way to heaven” solution, another form of good works – of false self-cleaning – creating self-righteousness before God – which doesn’t work – because it doesn’t satisfy the truth and justice and consequence of the sin of you and I. Only Jesus on the cross satisfies this part of love – which is also truth, justice, consequence. We cannot go any higher than perfection J!

My Bold and Loving Heart to Heart Challenge to You

Take time to set aside quality time with your God, Father, Daddy – who created you. Close the door behind you – go directly to God yourself. He is calling you. Spend that quality time with Him. He loves you.

It is evidenced by Him sending Jesus to die for you – taking your and my sin in Him. He loved us before we ever loved Him. And with faith and patience – reach out that you might find Him. He is near and is to be found. Seek – and you shall find.

Knock and the door will be opened. Ask – and you will receive. Just do not give up. And contact me – I would love to talk with you about all of this: peter@skov.cc