My life as a New Age adherent
I have not been a Christian all my life. When I was a child I attended Sunday school and prayed the Lord’s Prayer every night. The second thing I did more like a superstitious act than an enquiry to God.
I had my first experiences with the supernatural in my late teens. A couple of nights a dark and intimidating presence woke me up and rendered me scared and trembling under the quilt. After the third visit my mother retrieved her old Bible and advised me to lay it under my pillow. It actually worked.
In my mid-twenties I had become very interested in alternative medicine. I had read several books on the topic and I soon practiced some of the techniques described. Those who dared to lay their fate under my hands witnessed about pain and illnesses that disappeared after the treatment.
I continued to read and many of the authors introduced me to intriguing subjects such as healing, reincarnation, karma, out of body experiences, chakras and so on. A couple of years later I had warm hands with healing powers. People experienced a distinct heat from my hands that healed them from a variety of ailments. What a power!
My new faith infused in me an animosity against everything that was Christian, particularly how the Bible depicted Jesus and God, and the idea that Jesus was the only way to salvation and God seemed at that time both ludicrous and arrogant.
When I was 28 God began to make his presence known. He sent Christians in my direction and many of them began to pray for me. God now led me into a process where he disclosed, one by one, the ideas that I firmly believed in as lies.
Finally I gave in for my new friends never ending invitations to visit a Christian meeting. I left the premises rather shocked. Everything was alien to me and I had also faced a new force with which I had no prior experience – The Holy Spirit.
I now understood that there existed two spiritual regimes and I had to choose one of them. Admittedly, in the end I did not have much choice because God was very convincing.
That is how my Christian walk began. It has not always been an easy journey. I have been through periods of profound despair, of legalism and five years ago a depression that was terminated when God illuminated me on his grace, and I finally understood that the gospel really is good news.
When I Encountered Grace
I remember it as it was yesterday the first time I heard a preacher preach the gospel so crystal-clear it almost there and then completely changed me. It is almost five years ago. Joseph Prince visited Norway for the first time. The announcements had in advance proclaimed what he stood for and that he had received revelations from God that had changed him from an ordinary preacher who usually would balance grace with law into someone who solely preached God’s grace. Prince thought he preached grace until God told him he didn’t. This was an eye-opener for the young man who had to discard all his manuscripts and begin all over again.
It was an odd experience to be present and in a physically way sense how the atmosphere in the room changed when Pastor Prince was preaching. It was almost as a sigh of relief permeated the premises when he with conviction and eloquence explained the new covenant.
In the car on my way home some tears of happiness escaped because I had been given some answers to the many questions I had faced as a Christian. The tears flowed because my inner yearning and pain for the truth was met that day, and inexplicable paradoxes in the Bible were solved when they were read through new covenant lenses. Grace gave those sections in the scripture a new meaning and everything seemed all of a sudden so simple and logical. I have during the years heard many messages and read many Christian books which only purpose, it might seem, are to put heavy burdens on persons like me instead of pointing at Jesus.
The years after have been a process where I have become more secure in my own grace walk. I have learned to accept my shortcomings and have a profound understanding that God loves me and accepts me anyhow. I have stopped giving myself faith objectives and have stopped using my inner strength to become a better person. What transforms me on a daily basis is God’s grace. I do not feel condemned anymore when I am reading a criminal book filled with horrible details or listen to music which would give other Christians nightmares. I am who I am – this is how God has created me.
From Grace to Union
I came to end of myself in March 2003. I was completely exhausted. Since I became a believer in 1992 I had done my very best to live the Christian life, and I had agonizingly painfully experienced that I had undertaken mission impossible. I thus entered a deep depression. In addition there were unresolved issues from my past I had to deal with.
In retrospective I clearly see that God had me where He wanted me. The law had done its job and had led me to Christ. I was now in a position where God could reveal His grace without having me struggling against His love. Rapidly my faith in Christ’s finished work grew. I clearly understood that I had died with Christ at the cross and that I was dead to the law. I wasn’t under its dominion. In fact I never had since the day I accepted Him.
During the summer of 2009 the Spirit began taking me to new levels of revelation. I hadn’t merely died with Christ, but I was also resurrected with Him to live in an unbreakable union with Him. He applied two key verses in the scriptures to open my spiritual eyes:
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Col 1:27)
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)
An absolutely necessary prerequisite for those awesome truths to settle has been to lead me out of the organized church. Within its limited confines God would have had severe problems convincing me about His unfathomable grace and the almost inexplicable union life.
My settled position is that I am joined in one spirit with Him. I am a perfect manifestation of His divinity, and I am a partaker of divine nature. My life in the flesh I live as Him. I am as He is, and am set completely free to be a perfect expression of myself.
