Testimony
God does know all about business!
“I worked hard and played hard (as the New Year’s Eve parties testified), but my conscience gradually steered me in a different direction. God had a plan for my life …” (Nico van der Merwe, What does God know about business?)
“Heee-haaa !” my best friend Gerrit yelled as he plunged into the pool, following the stripper. It was New Year’s Eve, 1977, and a balmy summer’s evening. We used to have the best year-end parties in town with a lamb on the spit, draft beer, wine, music and dancing until the early hours of the morning. We were known for these parties among our friends and their friends, many of whom we only saw once a year. As the stripper started her act on our patio table, I watched the faces of my friends, eagerly awaiting the next piece of clothing to fly. Their wives’ faces, though, reflected utter dismay as they looked at their husbands. But, something new had to be devised for these parties every year—and the stripper seemed a good idea for this one. I stood to one side and watched the spectacle unfolding. And then, as if from nowhere, I heard a voice, “Tonight, you have gone too far.” I looked around, but there was no-one close by and I shrugged it off as my imagination … but the remark lingered in my mind until I finally began to ponder my life and ways as a young man. After six years of working day and night, I considered attending our local church on the odd free Sunday. The church had a new young pastor, whom we later befriended. We invited the pastoral couple to dinner one evening and he impressed me with his wisdom and insight. I accepted his invitation to join a small group of people for a prayer meeting on the following Saturday morning. The meeting was attended by six people only: the pastor, four ladies and me. We sat in a tiny office discussing various topics and then prayed about them. I was so nervous I could not pray out loud, let alone to Someone I hardly even knew! What really struck me was the sincerity of every single person in that little group. Listening to their prayers, I realized that they actually knew the Deity to whom they were praying; and it certainly appeared as though they had some kind of personal relationship with God. I intuitively knew that they had something I did not have … and I desperately wanted to share in this.
I knew that God’s Word had something to do with this relationship. Yet, whenever I read the Bible I could not understand why people raved about it, as it did not make any sense to me. It was literally a closed book. After the second or third prayer meeting, I plucked up the necessary courage to pray by mumbling a few words. I clearly remember my head spinning uncontrollably, as if in a tumble-dryer. I started attending church quite regularly.
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