Text and Image: Florian Bockholt/Anna Davydova, Weil am Rhein (DE)
Dear reader
My name is Florian Bockholt and I will be writing a blog post once a month in the future. For my first contribution I would like to take you into a topic that plays a big role in my life.
In the years of walking with God, I have experienced many moments of struggle, disappointment, apostasy and repentance, faith, hope and trust and disappointment. Prophecies that didn't come true and moments when I didn't understand God or the world.
A testimony that marked my path early in my life was when I was in intensive care at the age of 5 with pneumonia. The doctors had already given up hope because no medication worked. I noticed how my relatives said goodbye to me. My congregation at that time went into the prayer fight during the night. At dawn my mother had a conversation with God in which He asked her to put my life in His hands, let Him make the decisions and trust Him fully. It was with a heavy heart that my mother handed me over to God.
After this prayer I was able to sleep for the first time in days and when I woke up the next day I was able to get out of the intensive care unit. Medication worked again and after a few days I was able to leave the hospital.
During my youth, although I kept trying to walk with God, I began to mistrust God and kept running away. The reason for this was that a lot of things didn't turn out the way I had imagined and I didn't understand why. Because of this, I started to isolate myself and self-medicate and seek fulfillment in many different areas. Meanwhile, I kept slipping into depression.
After an absolute low point in my life, in which I had to admit that I had absolutely no control over my life, I attended a service by Pierre Frey.
There I realized again that I want a life with God more than anything else. In this service, the prophecies that God spoke about me back then were confirmed. After that I went back to my church regularly and in early October I was baptized again. Since my baptism, I've stopped smoking weed and smoking, stopped pornography, no longer have depression, no longer fear the future or failure.
What opened up a new depth in my faith life is that this time I was able to accept God as a loving father. He became a good father and I became his beloved son.
In my life I have experienced deep hurts from my earthly father. I was able to forgive, but healing was only possible after I accepted God as my father and gave to God the expectation that I still had for my father. Through the relationship with Him, I experience who I really am, who is the person He created in me and who has been covered by my sins. Since accepting God as my Heavenly Father and receiving my identity through Him, so much has happened that could fill an entire book.
At the moment there are still many areas in my life that I have to give up and in which I have to trust. Matthew 10:39 describes it very well from my point of view “He who finds his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
It can only really bear fruit and flourish if you submit to God. Just as Abraham submitted to God when he was ready to sacrifice Isaac. Of course I'm not sacrificing my children today! (Among other things because I don't have one yet 😊). What God has shown me again and again is that he is personally present at this sacrifice. God saved my life several times, but in my childhood it also needed this sacrifice, letting go of my mother. I notice that in this process wounds are allowed to heal that have festered for years because it hurt me too much to let God treat me.
Everything I offer to Him, everything I let go of, gets better and comes into divine order, whether it's the relationship with my father and fatherhood, whether it's finances or relationships, God can work if I give Him space and it works tremendously.
I am so grateful to God for leading me back down this path with him. It's so much better than anything the world has to offer and while it's challenging at times, I trust God to lead me on the right path.
Dear reader, where are there areas in your life where you are hurt, where you have not trusted God so far, where you would like to experience a whole new depth with God? I would like to encourage you to take steps in faith, God will reward it :)
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