Man's Understanding of God
In 2009, an interesting advertising campaign took place in London.
On eight hundred buses there was an inscription: “Apparently, there is no God. So relax and enjoy life." Christians in the capital of Great Britain were outraged by this, and they placed another inscription on the buses: “God exists, believe me! Don’t worry and enjoy life!” Difficult trials or serious shocks for some people become the road to God, and for others - the path to oblivion, depression and alcohol addiction. Interestingly, accepting God and believing in him is the basis for one of the most successful therapy methods for getting rid of alcohol addiction.
Even in the Bible you can see different types of reactions of people when they met the call of the Lord in their lives. John and James, being simple fishermen, heard the words of Christ and immediately followed him. Another man, a rich young man whom Jesus invited with him, left him sad. People live in the same conditions, but behave completely differently when it comes to questions about God.
How I came to Orthodoxy
I want to share my story of coming to Orthodoxy.
My path to God was long, 10 years long. It just so happened that at the age of 12 I became “infected” with the books of Natalia Stepanova, who doesn’t know, this is a Novosibirsk healer who “clogged” almost all bookstores with her books. I still see that people do not lose interest in her work. I came across the book “spells of the Siberian healer”, they are issued by number, in total there should be 40 of them. Natalya Stepanova is trying to teach our people magic, the most diverse (protective, security), of course under the guise of Orthodoxy. I don’t know what harm her activities will bring to Russia, but one can be very seriously damaged by her books, which is what I experienced myself; moreover, I suffered the violence of demons when I truly became Orthodox. Before that, I was an imaginary Orthodox Christian, of course I didn’t consider myself such.
These books are captivating because of their exciting stories and the wild imagination of the author, as they would say in our time, “it burns.” I don't encourage you to read them, but horror stories would be cool. Now I understand that this is all just a psychological device to increase the sale of books, but then, at the age of 12–13, this mysticism was very attractive, addictive, so in the morning I read conspiracies, I myself compiled a small prayer book, like the Orthodox one. So I “prayed” for a whole year in the morning. I tried a lot from books, the only thing I didn’t try was Voodoo magic, because of the great responsibility and danger, and all sorts of summoning demons seemed to me not so scary, so without a doubt I called upon spirits, now I understand that these are spirits of evil , and not cute creatures from the other world who would really like to establish contact with humanity. I recognized the true face, or rather “horns and hooves”, by changes in my life, which after some time began to collapse, but at that time I did not notice it, I lived as if in a vacuum that was formed by demons, because from reading conspiracies, God’s grace departs from this ungodly deed, and the person automatically falls under the influence of demons.
I lived confused, in delusion, for many years. Until grief happened. And of course, my first savior is the “divine” books of Natalia Stepanova. Now I don’t really want to remember and describe my misfortune, but with such hope I began to read conspiracies, following all the instructions, I read “the dreams of the Mother of God,” and at the same time I cried over the icons for a year, there was just an endless stream of tears in me, that’s how it was grief. I wanted to go to Church, but I kept putting it off. Maybe readers will think that it’s clear which way the wind is blowing, but I was just confused, re-reading these wonderful stories that were written in books, like zombies, and didn’t think at all that all this might not be from God. Previously, I had not even thought that there is a spiritual world that we people do not see, but when you get involved in the occult, you begin to experience a download of vital forces, because demons are attached, and Stepanova’s books are precisely occult. Although I didn’t know before what the word occultism meant, I don’t get involved in magic, as I thought, I do everything as God pleases, I didn’t have any knowledge about God, except from Stepanova’s books, where, by the way, there is an explanation of the Orthodox faith, of course with an admixture of superstitions and distortion of the meaning of church services, the Bible, the meaning of icons, and many other things are simply turned inside out. Complete blasphemy.
After 2 years, I finally hobbled to the Orthodox Church, and in the very first days I threw out a large bag of books by Natalya Stepanova, a persistent aversion to books, this destroyer of human souls, appeared, I immediately began to turn away from them and my heart began to tell me that something... that's not it. At that period of my life I didn’t want to go out at all; life seemed unbearable to me, and this was at the age of 20. The demons acted on me in such a depressing way, through conspiracies. I experienced grief, but the second grief was that I used satanic books and suddenly received my sight. Demons began to attack me, and they tormented me for 1 year, then I tried to forget the demonic violence. I went through the ordeals of an occultist. You could write a book about demonic violence. But I'll shorten the story. I’m sorry that in such quantities you can easily buy something that can easily destroy your soul, it’s terrible that the publishing house mocks people who are really in trouble and need help, and instead of going to the Temple, people, having read books, believe that You can solve the problem with naive conspiracies, actually aggravating your condition. Now I’m thinking, how many of us are such suckers? What harm did these books cause? Even a “mother’s book” by Natalya Stepanova was published, where everything is mixed up: Orthodox prayers to the Mother of God, lullabies with rhymes and spells. Surely there will be mothers who will charm their children from birth with these books, naively believing in the “holiness” of Natalya Stepanova, just read what gentle words the author writes, what convincing stories are given.
I, too, at one time wrote out conspiracies against children in a notebook, and Thank God that now I know, it’s a pity that in this way, through the violence of demons, from whom these conspiracies came, from Satan. Charming will not be in vain for anyone. And even if it brings a positive result, then you will have to pay for it, and the payment will be terrible. This includes alcoholism, drug addiction, mental disorder, depressive state, thoughts of suicide (for no reason at all), failed relationships, physical rape, moral violence, despondency, despair, depression, weakness of character, hostility to Orthodoxy, denial God, suspiciousness, bad thoughts, health problems (nausea, gastritis). All of these symptoms cannot be attributed solely to conspiracy; each has its own consequences (God’s Providence is different for each person).
Using N. Stepanova's books, you can easily become possessed. Why is no one talking about this teaching, why teaching? Because the author at the beginning of each book has a section “to my students.”
Stepanova's books are a huge slow bomb for the spirit of our society, and the results will not be long in coming. Just read on the publisher’s website all the requests for help, there are people like me once, and how many victims?
People, do not be fooled by the tales of these books, they will not help you, but they will cause enormous harm.
Deceived, naive soul
Why does a person turn to God?
If you look around, you will notice that most people are striving for something, making a career, trying to solve financial problems, arrange their personal lives, improve relationships with children, and so on. Every day is full of worries and troubles that fill a person’s life. But then something happens that clearly demonstrates that all this is worthless. That a high salary will not help return the love of a loved one. That the highest achievements in the chosen field do not matter if serious health problems arise. Situations can be very different.
This is where people sometimes realize that they have something else that makes their life valuable, even if it lacks some of the other values that many are accustomed to. One does not come to God through logical reasoning; on the contrary, if one thinks logically, it is usually easy to come to the opposite conclusion. But something in the souls of people is inclined to believe that God exists, even if they do not indulge in deep reflection on this matter.
It also often happens that a person strives with all his might to get something: build a career, buy an expensive car or a villa in the best place on Earth. But, oddly enough, while receiving all this, he finds out that something is still missing. All these things are of a finite nature, but the soul of man and everything he feels has an infinite depth, so only the idea of God and faith can saturate it. Otherwise, people are always missing something, something unclear and elusive. When this happens, people say that the soul hurts. This is the craving for the spiritual, through which they come to God.
Is the impossible possible? Two stories about coming to faith
When a miracle becomes a part of life - sometimes even against your will or despite all skeptical views - faith is born by itself. So she was born to the Apostle Thomas. He did not believe in the resurrection of Christ. But the Lord appeared to Thomas and uttered the famous words: And do not be an unbeliever, but a believer (John 20:27). When a miracle invades your life, you can no longer shrug it off and say: how can you believe in it? After all, this happened to you.
Here are two real stories, each of which led someone to faith, and helped someone to strengthen it.
According to your faith...
| Photo: Oepress.Ru |
Another misfortune came to our house suddenly.
Two years after my mother’s death, my father was hospitalized. He was never able to come to terms with her death. Reading the Psalms helped my brother and I cope with the burden of our mother’s death. Then the air seemed to clear up, there was something to breathe, and the strength to live appeared. Dad, to all my attempts to explain that the death of the soul does not come with the death of the body, invariably answered: “It’s easier for you, you believe.” For the authenticity of words, he needed to hear, see, feel. Then I realized that faith is a gift.
But she did not lose hope and continued to convince and talk about her experience of faith. It was hard for him to live with his misfortune.
And now - an ambulance, then a hospital ward and an incessant attack of pain circling the abdomen. That day is etched in my memory.
When I entered the room with the things I had brought from home, the effect of the painkillers was wearing off. The father curled up, wrapped his head in a blanket, and buried his nose in the wall. When she called out, thin arms and a face that had aged ten years appeared from under the blanket. The eyes, wandering from pain, expressed confusion. My heart sank. I felt a creeping heaviness, an eerie inevitability.
He began asking for new doses of painkillers. But all the pills and injections no longer brought adequate relief. He asked again and again to find a nurse to give him another injection. The sister became noticeably irritated, explaining that she had already done everything possible and could do nothing more to help. The pain turned him inside out, he suffered and asked for help. It was unbearable to watch. I began to pray. There was nowhere to wait for help at that moment except God.
- Dad, no one else will help you except God. Pray.
- But as?
– When something hurts, I keep repeating to myself: “Lord, have mercy,” and gradually it becomes easier. Try the same.
In the middle of the night the pain began to subside. In the morning he fell asleep. The next day, an ultrasound showed the death of pancreatic tissue (its contours were almost no longer visible, all the toxins had gone into the blood) and fluid in the abdominal cavity. The father was urgently taken to the operating room. To the surprise of the doctors there was no pain.
But no one promised a “happy ending”. The doctors gave an extremely sober assessment of his situation. Without the operation he will die today, with the operation there is a chance that he will at least die tomorrow. The survival rate of people in this condition is very small.
I distributed food to my roommates, packed my things and went to look for the operating room. All this time I mentally turned to God. The time in the operating room dragged on painfully long. I sent out requests for prayer to all my loved ones and took out a volume of the Gospel. I opened it and read:
And so they brought to Him the paralytic, lying on the bed. And Jesus seeing their faith, said to the paralytic: Be of good cheer, child! your sins are forgiven you. At this some of the scribes said to themselves: He blasphemes. Jesus, seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? for which is easier to say: your sins are forgiven, or to say: get up and walk? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, then he says to the paralytic: get up, take up your bed, and go to your house. And he got up, [took up his bed] and went to his house. (Matthew 9:2–7)
And at that moment I clearly understood that the Lord was near us. There was hope that we would have a tomorrow. I already knew that if dad came back to life, the first thing I would do was prepare him for confession and Communion.
Then there were ten long days of intensive care, during each of which no one promised that tomorrow would come for dad. Apart from mineral water and hygiene products, nothing was required of me. Each of these days either began or ended in the temple. Relatives, friends, and loved ones came to help. A lot of people prayed for us.
The New Year holidays have passed and Christmas is approaching. Dad was transferred to the post-reanimation ward. He was very weak and looked like a concentration camp prisoner. The struggle for life continued. Every day I was afraid of being late.
A new problem was preparing for confession of a person who knows nothing about life in a world where there is God. The generation of our parents has been deceived for too long and sophisticatedly. The consequences of this deception are dire. A person, not realizing what to repent of, leaves this world, taking the entire burden of sins with him. And, as a rule, even during his lifetime this burden disfigures his fate.
All night long until the morning, my dad and I talked about our lives, about mistakes, dreams that came true and unfulfilled. He planned to go pick up strawberries in his favorite places, and I understood that he really wanted to live until summer. It was impossible to delay confession and Communion.
Despite the upcoming holidays, the priest whom I asked for help responded immediately. I confessed and gave Holy Communion to my dad on the very first day of his stay in the ward. It was just around Christmas time.
After the priest left, there was silence in the ward for some time. Then the timid questions began.
-Who was it? Why did he come?
- Priest. To confess and give Holy Communion to the Pope.
– Why is this necessary?
“Now we need it to survive.” And in ordinary life, every Orthodox Christian should regularly confess and receive communion. A person sins constantly, the burden of sins accumulates. If the soul is not cleansed by confession, the consequences will be sad. First the soul gets sick, then the body. And through Communion, God’s grace is given to the soul, the soul is cleansed of sins, and a person gains the strength to live.
The brother also confessed for the first time on this day and received communion at the festive service. I celebrated the Christmas holiday in my dad’s room. My soul was quiet and calm, joyful. The next day dad started walking. A year later, we all celebrated Christmas together in church.
During the time spent in the hospital, more than one miracle happened. But the main thing is not the miracle itself, but the life after it. Dad gradually began to gain faith. I was convinced from my own experience that a miracle is possible. He completely changed his lifestyle. And with God’s help, he continues to work on his mistakes.
Marina Feoktistova
Alive!
My husband’s relatives live far away; we see each other once a year, when we visit them on vacation in the summer. Therefore, we do not have heated disputes about faith, which sometimes happen among neophytes with their non-church relatives. They are baptized people, but they are prejudiced towards Orthodoxy. Everything that happens in the temple is, for them, first of all, a tradition, a ritual, something inanimate - for old men and women. And why their young daughter-in-law needs “this” is not entirely clear to them.
- Do you go to church? – my father-in-law once asked me.
- I'm walking.
- But I can not. Once I wanted to come in, but some guy on the threshold began to cross himself so frantically, like crazy, and I changed my mind. So you believe in God?
- I believe.
He sighed heavily and asked nothing more.
That summer we were going to visit them again. The departure was planned for Sunday, and on Saturday morning his mother called her husband and said that his father was in intensive care. By the time we arrived, he decided to repair the door. The disk jumped off the grinder, broke into several pieces and flew into his head at the speed of a projectile. And although the ambulance arrived quickly, the doctors were not sure that they would take him to the hospital.
I don’t remember how we drove these thousand kilometers, but the next day we were there. The father was still in intensive care, his condition was assessed as serious. We alternately fell into numbness, then began to experience despair, fear, anger, resentment - why is this happening to us? But at the same time they lived in hope and believed in miracles.
- We must pray! Ask all the saints for help, read the akathist to the Mother of God, the nun to whom I turned for advice instructed me.
And I tried my best. Previously, I wasn’t particularly good at praying. I even once complained to a friend of mine that I didn’t know how to pray. Thoughts are racing all the time. And what should you ask for when everything seems to be fine?
- Nothing. When it comes, you’ll pray like that! – she “calmed” me.
That's it. I bought a large prayer book and began reading prayers and akathists. And if before she could not stand for prayer for even a few minutes, now she stood idle for hours.
I took it as a good sign that next to the hospital there was a temple in the name of the healer Panteleimon. We started going there with our little son. He lit candles, and I asked the Lord to save his only grandfather for him. I tried to encourage my husband and mother-in-law to do this, but they just brushed me off.
Soon the father was transferred to a regular ward. We were able to talk to him. The first thing he asked was to bring him a cross. The one with whom he was baptized. Small, copper, on a green ribbon, it was kept in a box among the documents. Before putting it on for the first time since his baptism, his father kissed it and asked:
- God help me!
This was a prayer.
The doctors, who initially gave up on him - the possibility of surviving after what happened seemed too fantastic - seriously took up the unusual patient. It was obvious that my father would lose one eye, but the main danger was the fragments of the disk stuck in his head. A week later, a terrible word was heard: craniotomy.
It was impossible to operate in a regional hospital. It was necessary to transport my father to another clinic. However, the move could have killed him. After long meetings, it was decided to operate on the spot. No one was responsible for the result.
When we approached the door of the intensive care unit the next day, a gurney rolled out of the elevator right at us. The orderlies were taking someone to the morgue who had been alive yesterday and whose relatives, like us, were rushing here at the door, waiting for the doctors’ verdict.
The doctor who came out to meet us began to say something about weak chicken broth.
- Wait, is he alive? - interrupted his mother.
- Alive! Bring him some broth!
Then for the first time I saw my husband and mother-in-law in the temple. They asked where to put the candles and what to say when doing so.
Then there was a painful recovery, another operation, and disability. Trying to learn to walk again. Long conversations, searches for answers to the question “why”, leading to nothing. But when a year later we came to visit them again on vacation, I saw that my father still had the cross on his chest.
Anna Vladimirova
