I sought freedom and fell into dependence. This personal account tells of my childhood, my search, and how I came to know Jesus Christ as Savior.
My testimony
This does not mean I am perfect. But I am completely forgiven. My hope rests on what Jesus Christ has done for me.
In 2016, I was able to introduce the evangelistic flyer from Missionswerk Bruderhand, ‘Sehnsucht nach Freiheit und Leben’. It tells of my journey to faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.
A childhood marked by violence and escape
We can choose many things in life, but by no means everything. As a child, I did not have a particularly happy start. I was born in 1978 in the former communist Czechoslovakia. My biological father was an alcoholic, and I encountered family violence very early. One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting on a couch at about three years old, holding a wet cloth to my bleeding nose.
A porcelain plate had broken because of me. My father made me feel his anger.
When I was four, my mother divorced him. She discovered that my father had cheated on her while she was in hospital giving birth to my younger sister. After the divorce, she planned to escape west with us children. My mother opposed the regime and had contacts in the Charter 77 civil rights movement. In 1983, one contact helped us reach Austria via the former Yugoslavia. We arrived at the refugee camp in Traiskirchen and spent more than two years there.
People who told us about Jesus
At that time, committed Christians from Switzerland came to the camp to tell the refugees about Jesus Christ. They explained that Jesus came into the world to pay the debt people owed before God. He himself was sinless, yet out of love paid for our guilt with his life. After dying on the cross, Jesus was raised by God and taken into heaven to be with him. Through this, anyone can receive forgiveness of guilt. All this was new and unfamiliar to my mother. Nevertheless, she stayed in contact with the Christians.
During our time in the refugee camp, we saw refugees come and go.
But nothing changed in our situation. A single mother with three children was simply a complete welfare case. My mother wrote to the Christians asking for help. They then sent us 1,000 schillings so we could set out for Germany. However, during the several days spent looking for a way across the border, the money ran out. As dusk fell, my mother feared we would have to spend the night outdoors. In desperation, she tearfully pleaded with Jesus for help before a roadside cross.
An elderly couple then appeared, returning from a hike. They were Christians. They let us stay overnight with them in their holiday cottage and later took us across the border by a hidden route. After we reached Germany, my mother said we would never have made it without God. Thus, as a child, I already had a certain belief in God, but no personal relationship with him.
Freedom that made me unfree
With this background, I grew into a rather unrestrained teenager. I sought adventure and did whatever I felt like. Even before secondary school, I learned to use my fists and repeatedly became involved in fights. Later I began drinking and smoking and regularly visited nightclubs. Soon so-called soft drugs were added. At that time, I was a young man with many interests: I practiced breakdancing, played guitar, enjoyed singing, painted, wrote poetry, and was interested in spiritual things. My reading included esotericism, Eastern mysticism, and Socratic philosophy.
At some point, my pursuit of freedom, adventure, and pleasure turned sour.
The supposed freedom led me into dependencies. Adventure ended in emptiness, and pleasure turned to disgust. At twenty-two, excessive partying and consumption had damaged my physical health. One day I felt so wretched that I feared I would die.
A cry to God for help
In desperation, I turned to God and pleaded for help. I confessed that I had wasted and ruined my life. I was broken and wanted to give him my life if he would save me. As I prayed inwardly, I experienced something like a moment of clarity. It was as though a haze were lifted from me. I could see my life from God’s perspective. I realized that I lived only for myself, was guilty before God, and separated from him. I was not the good person I thought I was.
At the same time, I knew that God had accepted me.
Nothing would remain as it had been. The next day I felt physically very well. An indescribable joy filled me, unlike anything I had experienced before. A deep peace from God came over me. Since that day, I have known his presence. At once I became free of every addiction, with no desire for intoxication of any kind or for cigarettes. God answered my prayer, just as he had my mother’s years before. He led me to his Son Jesus.
What Jesus has done for me
In the Bible I read that Jesus is the only sinless human being. Yet he bore the just punishment for my transgressions. On the cross, he gave his life for my lovelessness, arrogance, and injustice, for my evil thoughts and lies, for my selfishness, hatred, envy, and anger. He paid the penalty for my indifference and ingratitude toward God. Jesus turned God’s righteous judgment away from me and took it upon himself. Out of love, the Son of God came to this earth so that everyone believing in him would not perish. Jesus defeated death and is therefore the only bridge to God. No one can stand before the absolutely holy and perfectly righteous God without Jesus. He is my forgiveness and my righteousness.
Forgiveness that changed my life
A personal relationship with God had life-changing effects for me. I could forgive because God had forgiven me. I could love because Jesus had loved me even to death. My hatred for people I regarded as enemies disappeared. Relationships that had broken down were put right.
Since that experience, I feel like a person born anew. This does not mean I am perfect, but I am completely forgiven. That is why I want to live for God, who accepted me as I am and changes me for good. God answers prayers. That is why he said
‘If you are in distress, call on me for help! I will help you, and you will praise me.’ (Psalm 50:15)
An invitation to trust
But you do not first have to enter some special distress to find God. Your real need is already evident in your conscience: can you, as you have lived until today, stand in judgment before the absolutely holy and righteous God? Has he become your heavenly Father? I pray that this account encourages you to trust Jesus completely and follow him in everything.
The Bible says: ‘Jesus answered: I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life! No one can come to the Father without me’ (John 14:6).
Josef Dražil
My experience and Christ’s promise
Here I describe how I experienced God’s help in my life. People experience change differently; not every deliverance comes by the same path or at the same pace. The foundation of forgiveness is not the intensity of an experience, but Jesus Christ and his promise. Whoever believes him has eternal life (John 5:24).
For further reflection
John 3:16; 5:24; 14:6; Romans 3:23–26; Ephesians 2:8–10. The call to seek help in distress is in Psalm 50:15. The following reference leads to Missionswerk Bruderhand’s flyer offering.