Half-belief in the whole truth – a complete catastrophe.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 13:05 — 9.0MB)

When Jesus calls us to follow him, he's not joking. He extends his arm to you. Then your response is required. You get to choose. Jesus Christ calls some to follow him early in life, while others encounter him later. Dear reader, I want to share with you, through my own testimony, how Jesus found and saved me.

Longing seeks fulfillment

I, Alexander Sperling, was born on October 17, 1991, in the Russian village of Solntsevka, near the town of Issilkul, in the Omsk Oblast of Russia. My birth family decided to give me up for adoption after my birth. A Russian-German family took me in. When I was eleven months old, we moved to Germany, where I was able to grow up in a loving and secure environment. My parents were very caring and gave me everything I needed. My mother was already religious at that time, while my father was not. However, he was very open and supportive of the Christian faith.

When my parents told me I was adopted when I was about six years old, I actually took it quite well. Even then, though my parents gave me everything I could wish for, I felt a void in my heart. Something was missing, something I longed for deep inside.

Half-baked – a complete disaster

Going to church with my mother was always boring for me as a child, yet at 17 I decided I wanted to follow God. My mind told me, "There must be a God. You need forgiveness, and the Bible is true." It was a decision made with my head, not my heart. My image of God dictated that after my formal repentance, I couldn't make any more mistakes and had to follow all the church's rules to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Naturally, I couldn't live up to that and eventually saw no point in trying any further.

Around the age of 19, I wanted to go my own way and live by my own rules – without God. At the same time, I started an apprenticeship and immediately made new friends outside the church. So, it wasn't long before I came into contact with parties and drugs.

The sting of the venomous snake

Very quickly I began trying everything the world had to offer, and that included regularly using soft drugs. I lived only for the moment and hardly gave God a thought anymore, even though my mother repeatedly tried to point me toward God. She prayed for me constantly. Nevertheless, the time came when I even broke my own rules about not using hard drugs.

Surprisingly, hard drugs gave me the feeling that I had finally found what I had been searching for my whole life. My inner emptiness seemed to be filled. But this state didn't last long, and I quickly became physically and psychologically dependent. My life began to spin in circles, and the valley of shadows I was descending into gradually grew darker.

Without a safety net or backup plan

After four years of drug addiction, something devastating happened that I will probably never forget: I was preparing everything in my room to use my drugs. I put on some quiet music. So quiet, in fact, that it wouldn't be loud enough to make my parents suddenly come in and ask me to turn it down.

This time, however, things didn't go as planned. The dose was too high. The result was an overdose! I woke up sometime later in the intensive care unit and didn't know what had happened. My mother told me how she had come home from her late shift, heard loud music coming from my room, so she went straight there and found me on the floor: blue-faced, foaming at the mouth, not breathing. She started CPR and called an ambulance, which then resuscitated me and later put me into a medically induced coma.

Throughout all this time, my mother prayed for me. She prayed before, during, and after the incident. At the hospital, they discovered heart damage caused by the overdose. I was to receive a pacemaker. The doctor said, "If your parents had started resuscitating you just two minutes later, you would have died."

What surprised me was that my music was supposedly so loud that my mother rushed straight into my room. I was, and still am, 100% certain that I had turned it down. I quickly realized that God had intervened and shown me tremendous grace, even though I had turned away from Him. On the day of my scheduled referral to the heart clinic, where I was to receive my pacemaker, the doctor came to me in surprise. The abnormalities in my heart were gone. He had no explanation for it, and I was discharged.

God's grace again – that much was clear to me. All the more surprising, then, was my first reaction to the planned pacemaker: "How am I supposed to continue using with that?" That's how deeply I was trapped in addiction. A truly ambivalent state.

"Stop! Resistance is futile!"

After being discharged from the hospital, it wasn't long before I started using hard drugs again. My parents suffered terribly from my addiction and, in tears, wanted to kick me out for their own protection, as they couldn't bear to see me like that anymore. I had never seen my parents so desperate before, and I promised them I would go to rehab.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts at cold turkey, this was my first attempt to seek professional help. I went to a detox clinic and immediately afterward to a state-run treatment facility. I was drug-free for seven months. But on the day of my discharge, I relapsed. My situation seemed hopeless. The drugs were like heavy chains around my heart, gradually tightening. Self-loathing and a sense of meaninglessness constantly haunted me, and the void in my heart grew ever larger.

My father, at his wit's end, made me an offer: no more drugs and he would take out a loan of €100,000 and give me the money. After a year of abstinence, I would get the money back. But I couldn't even manage that. I was trapped.

Damascus!

I had to break free from my addiction! I'd been suffering for almost nine years. So I started another cold turkey withdrawal in my apartment. I'd been suffering for two days already. My body screamed in pain and my soul was empty. At that moment, my parents suddenly appeared at the door and saw me in a terrible state. They took me home with them and brought me to a detox clinic that same day.

But even the withdrawal in the clinic was so terrible and difficult this time that I said to my mother, "If things continue like this, I'm going to jump in front of a train. I can't take it anymore! Or I'll relapse and accept my life as a junkie." I had given up on myself. God saw my condition at that moment. I'm convinced of it because He intervened. He moved my aunt to tell my mother about a Christian rehabilitation center in Lahr.

Victory through blood

I committed myself to rehabilitation and said to God, “No one could help me. If you help me, that’s fine. But if not, that’s okay too, and I’ll continue living as a drug addict.” On July 10, 2020, my parents took me to the “Betesda” rehabilitation center run by the Lahr community. The staff and fellow residents were all very kind and friendly to me. I saw something special in them, something I didn’t have but wanted—the peace of God, as it would later turn out. It wasn’t long before I came to know the true God, the gracious and loving God.

On July 21, 2020, I decided to surrender my life to Jesus Christ. It was a decision of the heart. The Lord didn't keep me waiting and came into my life. On that day, peace came to my family, and God freed me from drugs. He forgave me all my sins. My inner emptiness was filled with the peace and love of God, and my search came to an end.

Since that day, I no longer need to make an effort to abstain from drugs because Jesus has already won that battle for me. On September 6, 2020, I was able to enter into a covenant with the Lord and confirm my decision to follow Him through water baptism.

Eleven more days passed, and I was privileged to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit in prayer: the Lord baptized me in the Holy Spirit, as He promised in His Word. And even if I should sin now, I know that I have an advocate who is faithful and just and who always forgives me when I confess my sins before Him. I live by grace, and by grace I am forgiven. And my efforts cannot add to that.

Finally, I'd like to say something. Nothing can tame the power of sin: not self-motivation, not €100,000, not the wishes of one's parents, simply nothing on this earth. Only the blood of Jesus alone is capable of doing so. Dear brothers and sisters, let us honor the work of Jesus' redemption in a worthy manner. For it is written:

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the futile way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Alexander Sperling

Municipality of Lahr