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The Amish Voice 3
that believeth not God hath made him
a liar; because he believeth not the
record that God gave of his Son.
11 And this is the record, that God
hath given to us eternal life, and this
life is in his Son.
12 He that hath the Son hath life; and
he that hath not the Son of God hath
not life.
13 These things have I written unto
you that believe on the name of the
Son of God; that ye may know that ye
have eternal life. . . .
I became convinced that there was
definitely a way I could know I had
eternal life. If Jesus came to die for me
and to give me life, why could I not know
that I had it? According to these verses, if
I have the Son, I have life, but if I don’t
have the Son, I don’t have life.
Eph. 2:8 For by grace are ye saved
through faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should
boast.
This was scary stuff for me. I
realized that I could not get to
heaven by being good enough.
This was frustrating, because
now I didn’t know what to do,
since God would not accept my
works in exchange for salvation.
Being good was the only thing I
knew how to do to please God, and if
that didn’t work, I didn’t know what else
to do. I felt like my salvation was outside
of my control, that there was nothing I
could do to get God to save me.
I tried all the things people told me I
needed to do. I confessed my sins, and
was as sorry for them as I could be.
Many, many times I asked God to forgive
me. I often prayed until I felt better, but I
was never sure that God had really
forgiven me. I always felt like I couldn’t
be sorry enough or feel bad enough about
my sins for God to forgive me for them.
As I continued to read the Bible, I came
across verses like these:
John 3:16 For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have
everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world; but that
the world through him might be
saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not
condemned: but he that believeth not
is condemned already, because he
hath not believed in the name of the
only begotten Son of God.
Even though I had heard these verses in
German many times, I never understood
them. I had heard about
der glauben
(faith) growing up, but I didn’t know
what the Bible meant when it said I must
believe in Jesus Christ to be saved. To
just believe was too simple; there had to
be more involved to salvation than just
believing in Jesus. Surely there was some
work that I had to do; surely I must do
something to clean myself up before God
would save me.
Yet the words of the Bible kept coming
back to me:
“He that believes is not
condemned.”
That sounded so easy; and
it was exactly what I was looking for. I
wanted be free from this condemnation,
this guilt and fear of death and hell. I
wanted to be free from the judgment that
hung over me, and in that simple verse, I
saw a way out.
Many times I thought to myself,
“If I
could just believe.”
But I didn’t know
how to believe. When I tried to believe, I
would look inside my heart and try to
make faith rise up inside of me and try to
find a feeling that told me that I had
believed; but when the feeling didn’t
come, I would give up, deciding that I
must not have truly believed. Therefore,
believing was always something just out
of my reach, and I felt like I would never
be able to reach the point where I truly
believed and was born of God.
I hated this feeling of helplessness. I
wished that God would just come down
and save my soul because I asked him to.
Didn’t He see that I wanted to be saved?
Didn’t He know that I was trying to be a
Christian and wanted to do what was
right? Didn’t He see that my heart was
sincere, and that I truly wanted to know
Him and serve Him? Why then could He
not just do the miracle that it took to save
me? What more could I do to show Him
that I was serious about following Him?
It seemed like I was doing my best
to do my part, but God was just
not doing His part. I did all the
things I knew how to do to be a
godly young man, but it seemed
like God didn’t care. I fought sin
as hard as I could and did my best
to be righteous, but none of my
efforts succeeded in giving me peace
with God. There were many times when
the full weight of the importance of my
salvation was so heavy upon me that I
cried out to God for mercy because I
didn’t know what else to do, but it
seemed that God did not hear me.
I was in this state of despair for a long
time, and I wondered if I would ever see
the light. I envied other people who were
rejoicing in the peace and forgiveness
they had found in Christ, and I
became
even
more
exasperated.
It
was
frustrating to see others
possessing the peace