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Evidence of Alexey Ivanov
Alexey Ivanov
Before I met God my life was like that of most people who grew up in the difficult 90s. Variety of cigarettes, alcohol and easy drugs did the trick. I left school at fourteen and found myself in the company of other self-important teenagers like me. At fifteen, when I got my first conviction, I raised my authority among my friends. At eighteen I got my first sentence, and at twenty-three I was already sentenced to five years of special treatment. It was not the limit. It seemed to me that in a little while I would get what I was striving for – acknowledgement. But after another liberation there was a conflict for some reason, and all my, as I thought, merits suddenly vanished in the blink of an eye.
Overnight, everyone I thought of as my friends turned on me. Left alone, I stopped trusting people, and I sank into all my troubles. But, as they say: “A pitcher goes often to the well, but is broken at last.” – and I was imprisoned again. But I was even, in a way, glad about that, because there was not much else that tied me to this life.
But this time everything was different.
There was one other person with whom I was on good terms at liberty.
He, like me, was a criminal and a drug addict. But then one day he told me he couldn’t live any longer and was going to a rehabilitation center in another city. I laughed in my heart, but of course I said nothing in response and wished him success. About three months passed and the man came to see me. I was very happy to see him, but for the entire time of our conversation I could not understand who was in front of me? I thought I knew him, and at the same time, there was a stranger sitting in front of me talking about an event that had changed his life-a meeting with God who had turned everything upside down. I had no idea at the time what lay ahead of me, but I was shocked by his story. He gave me the New Testament and told me I will find answers in this book.
I was so intrigued that I read the New Testament in a couple of months.
Another couple of months went by, and I suddenly realized that I do not smoke anymore.
It wasn’t that I forced myself, it was the very desire to do it that went away. I had made numerous attempts before to quit smoking, but they had come to nothing. A friend of mine advised me to ask God to free me from my addiction. I took his advice and God gave me freedom from the urge to smoke. This was the first evidence of God’s work in my life. I began to read the Bible constantly, reading the last chapter on the last night before I went out. As I closed it, I suddenly realized that I had finally completed something important in my life.
When I went out the next day, I felt that something had changed around me.
That evening my friend and his wife invited me to a home Bible study group.
When I found myself with people I didn’t know at all, I felt a genuine love in the fellowship, as if I had known them for years. To my joy, I understood what they were talking about: Christ, and the Scriptures in which it is written. At the end, my new friends invited me to come to church on Sunday. I was so impressed with this meeting that afterwards, without waiting until Sunday, I took part in an evangelistic event in the area where our church was. We went with others like me, “former” people, and shared the gospel message with others. I say “our Church” because from that time it became my Church as well. In it, the Lord, having shown His love for me, never had the slightest doubt that everything in this world belongs to Him.
After three months, falling down on my knees, I repented and was reconciled to God, and after some more time I was baptized in water, thereby making a covenant with God and joining His Body, the Church. I made a hundred times more friends, God gave me a family, and opened up to me such opportunities and blessings that I could never have dreamed of!
I was so intrigued that I read the New Testament in a couple of months.
By then I had been sitting for about a year, with about the same amount of time left to go.
Today I am no longer alone, I have hundreds of friends with whom I can share both joyful and difficult moments in my life. I have a beautiful wife, who is the only woman I want to spend the rest of my days with. Thanks to the fact that in the colony I received a secondary education, having finished eleven grades, at the age of 28 I was able to enter the University of Construction, and at the age of 34 I was able to get an engineering degree. And I studied on a budget, i.e. at the expense of the state, with which I was in conflict and which I blamed for all my problems! While studying and working, God introduced me to people with whom I have organized a business, through which I can now earn an honest living for my family. And I can also show the way to eternal life to the same people I was not so long.
In conclusion, I would like to say that it is always difficult to take the first step, but now I don’t doubt for a minute that I made the right choice!
Glory be to Jesus Christ!
