As an atheist put off by the hypocrisy of Christians, Christopher’s life mantra was work hard, play hard (with alcohol and drugs onboard). Follow the story of his turnaround, with some charismatic detours along the way.

<p>As an atheist put off by the hypocrisy of Christians, Christopher’s life mantra was work hard, play hard (with alcohol and drugs onboard). Follow the story of his turnaround, with some charismatic detours along the way.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adverum Productions

Journeys Season 1

Christopher Laubscher

Should Christians Have Ecstatic Experiences?: Christopher’s Journey

A solid foundation on which to stake our existence?

Are we merely cosmic orphans, not knowing where we come from or where we're going?

And if life is meaningless, how do we deal with that?

Do we resort to opening a bottle, lighting a joint, or dancing ourselves to exhaustion?

I was fortunate to find answers on my journey to faith, And this is my story.

My name is Christopher Lobsher and I was born in South Africa in the town of Nelsbret close to the Kruger National Park where many people go on safari.

My biological parents never married, unfortunately, but my mother did marry another man and he adopted me and so became my stepdad.

Both my biological parents however come from missionary families originally from Sweden but as I was growing up God wasn't really a part of our daily lives.

The most that he was there was when we prayed for our evening meal together.

So church was something that my friends and extended family did but not something that we did.

So after high school I started working as a waiter at a restaurant, a very well known steakhouse in White River And I soon made friends with my colleagues there, who as well weren't really brought up in a very Christian home.

They invited me to come with their parties, and so it was living a very hedonistic lifestyle.

We were partying on the weekends, drinking, smoking marijuana, taking drugs, and that was my life for almost 3 years.

Then something began to change in my life.

I was watching the news and felt that I was seeing things there that the Bible was talking about.

And So I picked up my mom's Bible and turned to the book of Revelation, hoping to understand.

I also continued searching and read books on numerology and New Age.

But there I didn't really find the foundation I was looking for, I didn't find any solid answers.

I felt like I was just a number and that I was living a predetermined existence.

At the time I was living with my grandmother on my mom's side.

She was a born-again Christian, part of a Pentecostal church in White River, and she could see that I was searching and she had been praying for me during this whole period and she actually invited me to come with her to church 1 day.

Now I had unfortunately had some negative experience with Christians.

While working at the restaurant they would come in after church service on Sunday and they would be rather condescending and not very generous with their tips.

I felt that there was a lot of pretense in Christianity, a lot of waste of money, but I myself had not given much thought to God.

I believed that there was a force out there, that there was something pervading the universe, but not that it was a personal God.

The first Sunday that my gran invited me to go with her, I actually said no, because I had been partying late the previous night so I wasn't interested.

But she was persistent and asked me again the following Sunday and I thought to myself well I mean it's not that Christianity is completely foreign to me why not give it a try And so I went with her the Sunday after.

And so there I was, 1 bright Sunday morning at Calvary Assemblies of God, and they started with their praise music, And it just felt so alive that these people had a connection with something real and tangible, and I really wanted that for myself.

The preacher started preaching his sermon about God's love for the world, and how Jesus came to this world to die for us.

And so something started to stir within me.

I didn't necessarily feel sorrow for sin, but I felt sorrowful for not having God in my life.

And I felt sad for the emptiness I'd experienced so far.

And here was God offering me a personal and close relationship with Him through the Gospel.

Then the preacher gave an altar call and asked if anybody would like to give their lives to Jesus.

And to the shock of my grandmother, I stood up and walked to the front of the church.

I was convinced that God wanted to save me and wanted to give meaning to my life.

And there and then I gave my life to Jesus.

I accepted Him into my heart and I haven't looked back since.

Now nobody at the church told me about baptism, But as I read the New Testament and read about those who were converted being baptized, I really felt the conviction that I need to be baptized and have my past life washed away.

Nobody told me that I needed to live a different life, but I began praying and reading the Bible ferociously and things started to change.

I didn't have the desire to go partying anymore or drinking anymore or taking drugs anymore.

Almost every second word was a swear word, but even that changed.

I still had all the same friends and and they claimed to be to be Christian But their lifestyle was anything but Christian And so I kept being invited to to parties and to drink and to take drugs Before my conversion I also used to smoke a lot of marijuana, so you know they would say like, that's not such a big deal, just smoke with us.

So I was really in danger of lapsing into old habits again.

Providentially I escaped that life situation.

I was given the opportunity to move to Sweden and get to know the other side of my family, my biological father, his wife and my half-siblings.

And they were a wonderful God-fearing family with my granddad as the patriarch, the theological patriarch of the family.

He was the missionary I'd gone to South Africa.

And so I really developed in my Christian experience, grew a lot and left that old life behind.

And I started studying at an art school near where we lived and started sharing the gospel with those I came into contact with there.

My family's church here in Sweden also had charismatic leanings.

I remember how back in South Africa in the Pentecostal Church during services people would fall down backwards, they would roll on the ground laughing and crying and speaking in strange tongues and these ecstatic experiences were seen as a sign of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Of course I was yearning for the Holy Spirit in my life too.

I also wanted to be touched by the Spirit.

Others were having these experiences around me, but for some reason it never seemed to happen to me.

A so-called prophet, I remember, came to our church 1 time and invited us up to the front and there was a lot of music and singing, and he laid his hands on people, and they were falling down, and it came to my turn, and I was praying earnestly that God would touch me.

And he eventually told me, you know, just accept it, just stop praying, just accept it.

And something clicked in my mind, and I just thought, but wait, what do you mean stop praying?

Now in Sweden I started to question these ecstatic experiences.

And as I studied the Bible I discovered that the true gift of tongues were languages that people could understand and that people translated in order to be understood.

And so I couldn't see from the Bible that babbling and gobbledygook was from God.

Through my research, I also discovered that ecstatic experiences were happening in all sorts of non-christian cultures.

In heathen religions it would often be connected with drunkenness and Having come from a life of drinking, I didn't feel that 1 inebriation should replace another, however spiritual or sincere people are.

But I felt uneasy sharing my convictions with my family and kept it to myself.

As I continued reading the Bible, I realized that as Christians we should be obedient to all the commandments of God, including the seventh-day Sabbath.

My family believed that the law had been done away with and their reason for going to church on Sunday was because Jesus rose from the dead.

And so I kept my thoughts to myself but I was praying that God would send somebody to me to explain things and make things more clearer.

And it was hard because I thought that I was completely alone in my beliefs and I felt that I was on the fringe.

When I went to visit my family in South Africa later on, My stepdad gave me a DVD series of Bible lectures that he had been given by a friend down there and they were about Bible prophecy and so I started watching them And the presenter was just using the Bible to explain what he was teaching.

And I was astounded by this, because I'd never heard anything this clear before.

I binge-watched the 28 one-hour seminar series.

And he talked about all the things that I discovered in the Bible and so much more.

By this time in my life, I was tired of error.

And I was willing to follow the truth wherever it went.

He also, you know, I found out that he was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher and I thought, you know, what's a Seventh Day Adventist?

But apparently it's a worldwide church that holds all of these beliefs that are based in the Bible.

And so I wasn't alone anymore in my views on the Sabbath and the gifts of the Spirit.

And so I googled Seventh-day Adventist Church to see if there was a church nearby where I lived in Sweden.

And amazingly, there was a church in Jönköping.

And so when I arrived back, I immediately went to visit the church and joined the church officially 2 years later and have made friends for life.

Eventually, seeking the truth became such a big part of my life that I just wanted to dig deeper so that I could have the skills and knowledge to share it with those around me.

I was also encouraged by fellow church members and friends to study theology.

And so I did a four-year degree in England and today I am a minister.

While in England I met a wonderful girl called Marju who became my wife and she has been a tremendous source of encouragement, order and peace in my life.

And we both work here in Malmö, and I work as the minister in this church.

Having God in my life has brought me out of chaos to order, from dysfunction to harmony.

I discovered in God a father who loves me and who wants what's best for me.

Dan Millares

Searching for the Meaning of Life: Dan’s Journey

I was struggling with questions like what is the meaning of life and how do I find true fulfillment and happiness in my existence.

My experience is that I found unexpected answers in unexpected places at an inconvenient time.

My name is Dan Mejares and my childhood was a happy 1, despite many conflicts that came up in our family.

Although I was brought up alone by my father, I felt very loved by him and had much fun with my siblings.

We had a lot of freedom and we were allowed to just be children.

My first 15 years of life felt like 1 glorious summer vacation.

Growing up we never talked about God in our home.

At the most I got some critical comments from my parents concerning religion.

As I matured I started viewing Christianity more like a preference.

Some people like spaghetti and others like rice and or potatoes and I was kind of pathetic towards Christianity, but was very tolerant of others having religious views.

I thought of faith as something that 1 imagines, as something that you make yourself believe even though you know it's it's not true.

People may want to believe that the sun is blue and if that makes them feel better, no problem.

I went to Gothenburg to study at the university and my brother had already moved there to study in the city so I moved in with him and meanwhile he had become a Christian and This was kind of my first serious encounter with the Christian faith.

I soon noticed that he was reading the Bible a lot and praying.

And since we lived in a small apartment of 17 square meters, I didn't miss much of what he was up to.

Friday nights, instead of going out, he was spending time with God.

He seemed very sincere in his belief, but I felt that it was boring.

I studied mechatronics at Chalmers University of Technology which is Sweden's best technical university.

Mechatronics is a mix between 3 traditional branches of engineering and it's the mechanical engineering, it's electronic engineering and computer engineering.

The program was very popular and there was big demand on graduates from this type of program so companies like Volvo and Scania and SQF, they were hunting for people to work on the side of their studies and during the summer vacations.

I got picked up by Volvo to do a summer job.

And when I was 6 months away from graduating, I was off the permanent job.

And all along, the dream of my life had been to work at a company like Volvo.

So yeah, now my dream was about to be fulfilled.

I didn't have much time for my friends and I was absolutely sure that pursuing my dream career I would reach happiness.

My father's encouragement have meant a lot for me to get a proper education start a good career to get an opportunity that he never got has meant a lot for me and to respect my father's wishes and to make him proud and happy.

So here I was, putting all of my energy into my work, but slowly a huge disappointment started to creep over me.

I made a lot of money, but I was not fulfilled.

I had climbed the mountain of what I thought was success, but I was finding at the top that it was barren and empty.

I wondered if my father had been wrong in preparing us for a successful career as a means of finding happiness.

But at this point, I also started to consider some of the bigger questions in life.

I realized that there must be something else that I had not yet found, something that would make my life have meaning.

Well, it was natural for me to start my search into what my brother and my Christian friends had found.

I began attending youth meetings with a Christian group Wednesday nights.

They were very friendly and they were good at socializing and I felt very welcome.

Not after long though I started to become hostile towards them and challenged them in their faith.

They didn't know that the reason for my hostility was that I was actually searching.

I thought that here are these young, intelligent Swedes, these students, how can they be so sincere in their faith and believe something that they have to know is not true.

They approached the Bible in a way that they approach other branches of knowledge with using logic, reasoning and critical thinking.

We discussed creation a lot and just faith in general.

And they were able to open their Bibles and find answers.

They started to share media resources with me.

And I was very fascinated by the content in some of this material that they shared with me, you know, the prophecies of the Bible.

And I wondered, why have no 1 told me about this before?

I almost felt angry at my friends, my Christian friends, that they hadn't shared this with me.

My brother was away sometimes and I made sure that I took his Bible.

I read it and I made sure to put it back exactly where I found it so he didn't see that I had touched it, that I had read it.

I didn't want him to know because I was afraid that he would be right, or that he had been right, about his faith and especially about our lifestyle.

As I learned about the prophetic content in the Bible, I was amazed by all the fulfillments throughout history but also in present time.

So I was forced into considering whether God exists or not.

I also turned to an older person in the church by the name of Ruben Engdahl.

He gave me a book called The Great Controversy by Ellen G.

Up until this time, I had enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of faith, I would say that I agreed intellectually with the existence of a creator.

I used to call it a supernatural intellect that was kind of the origin of the universe.

But as I'm reading this book I meet the person Jesus and I realize that everything in the Bible, in the prophecies revolves around him.

So with this question I come to Ruben and he gives me another book by the same author called The Desire of Ages.

And as I read that book in the first few chapters everything starts to make sense for me.

I learned about the fall of man, God's plan to save man and that Jesus actually is this, well the creator of the universe.

He put aside his divine power and came down to earth to save mankind, to save me.

I was crushed to the core and I had lived my life for 22 years and ignored God, ignored my creator and ignored Jesus.

Still he says, I'm willing to give everything to you.

Your value and My love for you doesn't come from what you can produce and what you can do, but that you're good at your work, good-looking friends, and your car and your apartment.

Everything that I can produce is not what gives me meaning and value, but simply what He has done for me, what Jesus did for me.

I had tried to pray before, the God of the universe type of prayers, may the universe lead me.

I had read a lot of books on metaphysics and kind of new age spirituality and yin and yang.

I remember 1 title of a book called The Tao of Physics.

When I understood who Jesus was and what he has done for me, I started to pray personal prayers to God.

Forgive me for my insufficiency and for everything that I've done.

From then on, I started to identify myself as a Christian.

I'm now fired up and I go back to the youth group and I start leading out in Bible studies.

I tell them that people need to know who God is, they need to see the content in the Bible.

And at the same time I wonder for myself, what is God's will for my life?

So I started to travel to other Christian gatherings and just to associate with the faith and people living the faith of the Bible.

So during this time, I start to hear this voice.

It says something to the effect of spend time with me and study my word.

During that time I'm watching a pre-recorded series by an evangelist called Mark Finley and in 1 of the meetings there he makes an appeal for baptism and I'm all by myself in my apartment and sitting in my living room there in front of my computer and as he makes that appeal, it's for the local audience there, But I stand up all by myself and walk in front of my computer and decide that day that I want to be baptized.

I want to show the world that I belong to Jesus.

My friends were there with me and they had walked with me all the way.

They said that they never thought that I would be converted.

I was so cold and unresponsive as they tried to reach out to me.

Next I made 1 of the hardest decisions in my life.

I left my work at Volvo because of my, this sense that I had to spend more time figuring out what God wanted in my life.

And it was hard because I felt that I was letting down my father.

And when I shared with him, he was very disappointed at me for leaving the career that he had encouraged me to pursue all my life.

So I prayed to God to use me and the pastor in Gothenburg started to involve me in helping out there.

Cacyne Hernehult

Searching for True Love: Cacyne’s Journey

My story has a little bit of romance in it, But it's also about a new way of thinking and a new way of life.

They got together in Sweden and then I came along and was born in Malmö.

They married when I was around 6 years old.

And as they were both in their second marriages, I had much older siblings who moved out soon.

And I grew up as if I were an only child.

During my childhood we moved around many times and my parents got divorced when I was 8 and me and my mom moved back to Malmö because my sisters live here.

My father would come and visit us from time to time but he didn't live up to his promises and I felt a bit neglected by him.

And eventually when I, around the time I was 12, my mom broke up the contact with him and so I didn't talk to him anymore either.

I didn't get much religion when I was growing up.

1 of the reasons that my parents divorced was that my father became religious, but that didn't make anything better at home.

My sisters were also active at the time in a Pentecostal church, so I went with them to church for a while when I was around 8 to 9 years old.

And I remember that there was a big youth group and there were tons of kids and it was a lot of fun.

My mom doesn't believe in organized religion, even though she believes in God.

She has had 2 husbands who were Christian and they wanted to come across as spiritual, but away from the public they were anything but spiritual.

I was baptized as a child in a Catholic church and I don't remember thinking about God in my younger years but I later found my mom's Bible and I had drawn crosses in it and written God is love but as a teen I didn't think there was a God and every time my mom would tell me we were gonna do such and such or you know when you make plans she would say God willing and I would say no mom, Dios no existe.

So I was very bitter because of what had happened in my family and about what I didn't have or couldn't do.

I guess I was very affected by the divorce and all the moving, So I was resentful and angry on the inside and I guess it's also part of being a teenager But I was a good kid anyways And I was careful not to get into too much trouble and I tried to do well in school and I had Yeah, pretty good friends Because my mom had a low-paying job and it was a single parent We struggled a lot with money and I had I had the feeling that I needed to take care of things at home, so that made me grow up and mature much faster.

And when I was 12 or so I started doing housekeeping at a hotel on the weekends and pretty soon I got my own job there.

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Series

Journeys Season 1

Should Christians Have Ecstatic Experiences?: Christopher’s Journey

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Parts

Should Christians Have Ecstatic Experiences?: Christopher’s Journey

14m

Searching for the Meaning of Life: Dan’s Journey

14m

Searching for True Love: Cacyne’s Journey

14m

Can Faith Be Rational?: Maj’s Journey

14m

I Would Never Become a Christian: Miikael’s Journey

14m

Finding Hope for the Environment: Jan’s Journey

14m

Beyond Rituals and Crucifixes: Conrad’s Journey

14m

Escape From New Age and the Paranormal: Samuel’s Journey

14m

Finding Peace at Last: A Miraculous Journey

14m

Hungry for More: Jonas’ Journey

14m

Learning to Trust the Bible: Albert’s Journey

14m

Existential U-turn: Chris’s Journey

14m

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