Week 8: Gulash and Atheists
We had prayed: To be a light in the city, to grow grass and bring a new season into Czech Republic.
But desolation greeted us. Walls of silence, spiritual silence, rose up in the depths of Czech Republic. In Chomotov, grass and roots grow through the park benches. No one really cares, that there is emptiness and blank stares. The image of a person yelling but not emitting a sound came to my mind.
A cold chill went up my spine when we pulled over by the church building and the building next to it was a sex shop. And the children walk by, looking for something but not knowing what they’re looking for.
Bara, our host, she has deep blue eyes. The warmth of God makes her distinct in the crowd. She was selected by God among 500 students of her high school—where she is one out of four Christians.
We got to sit down every night with different groups of people in the church, believers and unbelievers, who had a million questions and doubts to ask over vanilla tea. They were intrigued.
I couldn´t help but to be thinking all the time about how life could be for a 18 year old teenager who wants to believe in Jesus but everyone around her tells her there is no such thing. It grieved my heart to see disbelief.
But God was faithful. At the end of the week, I saw smiles coming from those who had previously rejected the gospel. Now they looked at us, speaking about God´s love, and they bowed their heads in prayer.
One day, as we walked through the streets, a homeless man shouted to us words I could not understand. But then someone explained to us that he said: “You are different! You are crazy!”. God confirmed our prayers!
The denseness of disbelief did not disappear as we moved down to the center of Czech and into Prague. It seemed evident that everywhere we went, there was something that was coming alive. The Spirit that lived in Jesus that rose him from death, also lives in us.
We held on to that when we prayed on the streets of a full, yet lonely, abandoned, Prague.
There we saw that it was easy to settle for this state of spiritual sleep, once you´re surrounded by it for the longest time. You become numb in your senses, to the spiritual atmosphere.
It is that way for the students we visited in a English Club. They are numb to the existence of God, to them, there is no such thing. And even if there was, they don´t really care.
It sounded hopeless, but to me it felt like being a candle in a dark room. We took advantage of the freedom we had been given to speak, to speak words of truth into the hearts that are numb to the realness and aliveness of God. My heart jumped every time, to think that might have been the first time they heard about
Jesus and it was coming out of my mouth.
They stared at us intently. Some smiled and some others looked away.
Every night I prayed to God, his heart for Czech Republic became more and more sensitive to my spirit. I felt sadness and urgency to cry. But not because of myself, but because of the fact that there was nothing I could do but pray for them.
It struck me one day we talked to a teenager and he said that he didn´t care if there was a God. He would find out when he died, and then, if he had to go to hell, he would, gladly.
My mind raced. But God wants to be with you in eternity! He loves you so much he wants the best for you and he wants you to be with Him. He doesn’t want you to go to Hell, he wants you to be with Him forever, starting in this life, not wasting another moment! He loves you so much, he sent his only son to be sacrificed for your sins… But none of these concepts would affect this guy´s heart.
But right next to him sat a girl with fire in her green eyes. She smiled the whole time he was speaking, and then she said: “I believe in God”. I can see that even in these places, where hopelessness seems to overwhelm the population, there is flame, there is hope.
Český Těšín was something I didn´t see coming. That was: the revelation of God in a whole new level. My friend, Amanda, and myself, had different kinds of dreams that related to the church we were staying at.
I knew that when we were going around the block, lost about where to go, the church that stood in the middle had been in one of my dreams.
Jesus revealed to me that he can speak, and he has been speaking to me, through dreams. I feel inspired to discover more of His purpose in my life with this.
The moment I came to that realization I understood many things. God speaks, as a fact. God speaks to me, as a fact. God is commending me of things, as fact. God will reveal things to me, as a fact.
As I write this I look into some notes I took while we were in the last city before coming back to Herrnhut, and I think the following statement summarizes the main lesson I got out of this time:
“After having contact with different human beings, different backgrounds and beliefs, different thought systems and costumes; I realize, am I really living the freedom in Christ that was given to me? My conviction will certainly define my behavior and actions. I should love my neighbor and be honest in my relationship with God. Because actions matter, this is how I am going to be remembered. The truth prevails. God´s truth prevails.”
