Bamboozled By a Buddy
One day when I was sixteen, a drinking buddy got in touch. He said a great New Year’s Eve party was coming up in Uppsala, a city about a three hours’ drive away. He went on and on about how there would be booze and pretty girls and what a great time we would have. Would I come along? Sure, why not. Sounded like fun.
We decided to go there together and spend the New Year partying. Little did I know that the “party” he invited me to was in fact a youth revival conference. My friend was a lost grandchild of God just like me, with Christian parents but without a personal encounter with Jesus, now running away from God. In the weeks leading up to giving me this invitation, he had heard about this youth revival, listened to some cassette tapes with powerful Christian messages, and considered giving God a second chance in his life. As my friend, and realizing I too was trying to run away from God, he basically lied to me in Jesus’ name to get me to come along with him.
When we finally arrived at the “party” building, instead of finding a dance floor, drugs, and alcohol, we entered a room with about a hundred teenagers singing songs of worship to Jesus. I had never seen anything like it in my life. The only church music I had ever been exposed to were ancient hymns with strange words accompanied by a thundering organ. Hearing these young people my own age singing so passionately and lifting their hands—something I had never seen either—caught me completely off guard. My first instinct, to punch my friend in the face for lying to me, slowly faded, and I just stood there frozen at the back of the room. Listening. Watching. Experiencing a presence I had felt before during a few holy moments of my childhood.
God was here.
Still, I struggled. Looking at the young people in the room worshipping, part of me wanted to somehow join in, but another part said a very distinct no. My problem was not that I didn’t believe God existed. It was that I didn’t trust Him. How could I, when He was obviously both good and evil, loving and tyrannical at the same time.
The worship came to an end, and a guy in his twenties stepped up, opened his Bible, and read from 1 John 1:5: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
The verse hit me like a ton of bricks. I had never heard it in my life. Was this the Bible? Did he just say that God was only light and no darkness?
He went on to talk about how God is always true to His character, that He is only light, only love, only holiness, and that His will for us is only good. We, as human beings, have our own free will and can exercise it to do good or evil, and the world is a sad reflection of our failures and unwillingness to do what is right. But God is only light. This is why we can trust Him. This is why we can place our lives in His hands.
As I listened, I felt God performing a heart surgery of love inside me. For the very first time I began to understand that the God who was calling my name was a God of light only. A God that could be trusted. A God I could get to know personally. Tears poured down my face as it all finally made sense. I was like the prodigal coming home. So, what was I supposed to do now? How was I supposed to respond to this?
The guy up front said, “If you are here tonight, and you don’t have a relationship with God, you can come to the front…” He didn’t have to say anything more. I was already up there with him. Joined by my friend and about ten other young people, I prayed my first honest prayer to God: “Forgive me. Receive me. Save me. Use me.”
As I prayed while crying like a baby, I had no idea that this would be the turning point of my whole life. That it would the step that launched me into an adventure of a lifetime together with Jesus. And that I would go on to serve Him fulltime, pastor the largest church in Sweden, see a youth movement of tens of thousands of teenagers rise up, and preach the gospel of Jesus in over sixty nations.
This turning point did not primarily consist of a radical experience or an emotional high. Instead, it came about through a Bible verse the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to—one that taught me that God is light. All light. Only light. All love. Only love. All good. Only good. And that because He is, He can be trusted.
To learn more about Joakim Lundqvist’s newest book, Shine Your Light, visit MyCharismaShop.com