First step
I had been an atheist since the age of 13. Now here I was living in Finland alone, knowing no one and unable to speak the language, working at the Finnish Sports Institute which was way out in the countryside. Few there spoke English.
I had arrived a few months earlier and started working for a private language school, which soon ran in to difficulties despite the long hours I and the other teacher worked. A few months later my Finnish wife left me taking the children and I was left alone. I found work at the Sports Institute and moved there to live as well as work.
After a long period of sleeplessness, it became clear that my job at the Sports Institute was at risk. At that time I had made one friend and I went to visit and seek advice. On hearing my situation my friend suggested that if I needed to sleep before my meeting with the director then I should pray. Oh no, I thought my friend is a crazy Christian.
At home that night sleep still would not come. I had already tried sleeping pills with no effect. I had also tried alcohol (on a doctor’s advice!) and even tried alcohol and sleeping pills together. That combination should have killed me, but it didn’t have any effect on me either. I was getting really desperate. Nothing had worked. Tomorrow was the scheduled meeting with the director. In desperation in the early hours of the morning I said, “God, I don’t believe you’re there but if I am mistaken let me sleep.” I fell asleep immediately and slept like a baby until morning.
I woke up next morning and went to the breakfast room where the staff ate breakfast together. While there, the telephone rang, it was the director’s secretary, who informed me that my appointment with the boss was postponed for three months. Also a colleague told me he had given my name to a sports association who needed consultation services on the use of the trampoline for training freestyle skiers. Suddenly things had changed and I had slept for the first time in a very long time.
Maybe there was something in this idea of prayer, so I decided to try it. I prayed that God would make it possible for me either to keep my job or find another one. There was a problem: I did not speak Finnish and all jobs were advertised in Finnish. Over the next three months I received twelve good offers of work without making any application for a job. In fact without even looking for one! I did not know which to accept and so naïvely, or so I thought at the time, I put the matter into God’s hands and asked Him to show me which was the one He wanted me to have.
Second step
A few weeks after my first experience with the power of prayer and how God had answered my prayers in wonderful and unexpected ways, I was lying in bed wide awake in the small hours of the night.
Although I was experiencing something totally new in my life, old pains and hurts were still a major, if not a ruling part of my life. So, I lay in my bed, feeling totally alone and unloved and even unlovable. It felt as if I was falling down a long black hole and at the bottom were sharp jagged rocks waiting to tear me apart. I had come to the end of my strength.
I waited for the end.
Then something strange happened. Without a sound or anything visible, I felt a presence in the room. I felt no fear. Gradually I felt the room fill with a peaceful loving presence. It was almost tangible. The love surrounded me like a big thick blanket. I felt perfectly safe and at peace for the first time ever.
I wondered where this love was coming from. I heard no sound but quietly into my heart I felt the presence in my room saying,
“I am Jesus whom you have tried to deny all your life. I have never denied you because I love you. Let me into your heart now.”
I surrendered to His wonderful love.
Then, He gave me the love with which I could love Him.