"My world was falling apart..."
I was born in Poland in 1975, into a Catholic family. I remember childhood very well. Ever since I remember my parents always tried to give their faith to my younger brother and I. They tried to convey their beliefs into our lives but I was not interested. I never thought about faith seriously. Since an early age I discovered my love of motorcycles, which my parents didn’t accept. As soon as I could I bought my first motorbike, I will never forget that feeling…
After the completion of my education, I began living what some would call, "a very colourful life." I began a routine of drinking until I was unconscious, broke the law and many other things that are too shameful to mention. I flew on the wild side for several years, having “fun” with my friends.
However at the same time, many people including my parents were saddened by my attitude, but I didn’t care. In all my selfishness I thought my life is going to look like this until the end of my days, but in 1997 the Lord God placed a woman in my way! A woman of incredible beauty and with a wonderful heart. My passion for motorbikes dropped to second place. I had one goal, to get this girl.
Unfortunately, to my surprise the problems started when we learned more about each other. She had found out about my way of life and that I liked to smoke and drink a lot and have “great fun” with my biker mates. She was a totally different kind of person; she attended church every Sunday, the prayer group during the week, she was reading her Bible every day. I realized it won’t be easy but I had to trick her. So in her presence I started to pretend to also believe in God and when I was alone I lived my own life as I used too. When she discovered my strange behaviour she wasn’t very happy. Then she boldly set out a condition: “You have to make a choice: “Me or Your awful life”.
“The choice was easy”, I said “You are what is most important for me”. However it was yet another lie. I guess I upset God with all I had done. So He allowed me to experience hardship and place me in awkward situations. I lost my driving license because of driving under the influence of alcohol, I was arrested, hand-cuffed and brought to a sobering-up centre, I lost all respect in my younger brother’s eyes and almost lost my beautiful girlfriend. My world was falling apart and my parents were fed up with me.
When everything was beyond my control I decided to go to the Sunday service to check on what was going on with this God. I was shocked from the first few minutes. I never met people like this before, filled with love, kindness and smiles on their faces. There was great music, people praying. The word of God read in such a clear way. All those things worked to touch my heart. So I decided to come for another meeting like that – the next Sunday. Probably after the fourth service I landed on my knees asking God for forgiveness. I realized that God is great, He is mighty and He is Holy and He will not allow anybody to mock Him. I invited God to become Lord of my life, to take all my broken life away and make it new. I started a new chapter in my life and in 1998 and I got baptized. My life has been completely changed since. I felt that the chains of sin were broken!
Where am I now? Today I can tell of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, he gave me new life, the most wonderful wife, great friends surrounding me and assurance of my future. Peace for my soul through the Holy Spirit. He has given me great opportunity to share His gospel with others and what happened in my life. I praise God that He has placed me in this country to be good tool in His hands sharing my faith.