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Christ Loves

Miracles in My Life

Romans 8: 28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,[j] who[k] have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Isaiah 44:2 - This is what the LORD says- he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you: Do not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.

2 Thess 2: 13 - But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you[b] to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.

Galatians 1: 15 - But when God, who set me apart from birth[a] and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles…

Passages such as these clarified why these things might be happening to me. Other passages produced the thought that perhaps it was because of my ancestors (my grandfather came most to mind), who were good citizens, possibly believers, and perhaps their prayers or because of their good life was I blessed in this way.
Whatever were the reasons, it was certainly food for thought and at a very early stage I started to question things, as I explained in my testimony. Because of these various miracles and events, and because I felt God's Spirit working in me, he naturally became a part of my conscience. At a very early age I would look up and apologize every time I swore, and often thought about God, even though no one had ever mentioned him to me before! How odd I found it then when my mother, an entrenched atheist, scolded me one day that I could go to church if I wanted to but she wouldn't. Many years later I asked her why she had said that to me, and she explained that someone had been pressuring her or something, so she felt the need to explain this to me.

Some may argue that it is rather bold of me to presume I may be chosen, but I could equally argue that it is bold of them to judge that I am not. Since then I've read much of the bible and understand that, even if I was chosen, I could forfeit my inheritance as Cain had for a bowl of soup. In any case, the experiences in my life seemed bizarre enough, and today I decided I will write them down.

Convinced from an Early Age

I'd say the first I remembered was when I was around 6 years old, before I became conscious of God. I was sitting on the lawn in front of our apartment building and thought I was rather lucky. Like something was watching over me. I felt separated from others, and somehow felt a glow around me. Since I thought that, my immediate conclusion was: "Well, if that's the case, then…", I leaned over to the left, buried my thumb and index finger into the grass, separated it, and right in between my thumb and index finger was a four leafed clover. This is what I expected to see as I versed the above words in my head. Expected, that is, if it was true and indeed I really was lucky. That having happened, I then said to myself: "Well, if THAT is the case, then…", whereupon I leaned over to the right and accomplished the very same with my left thumb and index finger.
This is, you might imagine, where my friend immediately rolled her eyes. And I can imagine most unbelievers would do the same. But I certainly was not imagining it, because it affected me and was the beginning of a lifetime's worth of miracles. [For those who don't have time to read my "time and God" explanation above, the above miracle is possible because God can implant the genetic command to create the four leaf clover (instead of the common three) beforehand because he already knows at which time and place I will ask such a question.]
The next two weeks I decided I would confirm my theory by correctly guessing which of the two elevators would come first and open when I summoned them by pressing the button. After this it was firmly set in my mind that I must indeed be lucky.

Not sure when I started to become conscious of God, but it was certainly by the time of the next miracle that I remember, because by this time I was already praying to God (my first time). I was perhaps 8 and I had almost finished constructing a model airplane but one of the wheels fell from the table and got lost in the thick shag carpet below. I had not painted the plane yet, so the small wheel with stand was still light grey, almost impossible to find in the light blue and thick shag carpet (the carpet hairs were about an inch long and standing firm high). I spent almost half an hour fingering through the blue forest but to no avail. Without this small piece the plane would be practically useless, because it would just lie there lopsided. I walked to the window and leaned my butt against the window sill, staring at the situation in front of me and wondering what to do. Which is when it occurred to me to pray to God, the first time I remember doing so. I thought it was absurd to make such a silly prayer, but I did anyway. I apologized for asking such a silly thing, acknowledging that he must be very busy, but it was simply frustrating to me and wondered if he could help me out. Nothing particular happened, and not knowing what to do, I simply walked forward to around my chair, dropped to my knees, dropped on my elbows, plunged my two thumbs and index fingers into the deep shag, and sure enough, perfectly in between them, innocently lay the small wheel.
So then it became clear to me that I could make direct requests like this through prayer. But because I was led by the Spirit and generally of good heart, I certainly did not intend to abuse this new "power".

The next time I remember praying was around the same time when I was away in a summer camp. There was a boy who decided he disliked me and he made my life at the camp a living hell. He constantly hurled verbal insults at me, and I was feeling depressed and wanted to leave. He was sleeping below me in the bunk bed and at night, while I was falling asleep, I prayed to God that he would solve the situation somehow. Within days I fell into a deep fever, like I never remember. Which is rather odd because it was the dead of summer and no reason why I should catch a cold. I remember that they put me into the camp's hospital room and that I was unconscious much of the time. Perhaps a day or two. But on one of those evenings all boys from my room and come to visit me, obviously brought there by the attending elder who was in charge of our room, and they stood in the doorway wishing me well. And I particularly remember the boy who had been abusing me. I looked at him the most, because I hoped he would stop abusing me, and he looked like he felt very sorry. Almost guilty. Hmm, now when I think about it, perhaps he put poison in my food. Whatever the case, after that incident he no longer bothered me and the rest of my time at camp was cheery. So in my mind a second prayer had been answered.

Over the years I had always been careful never to abuse this new "power", but by around 16 I was attending a boarding school. Life in my home had become a living hell, I became a rebel delinquent who refused to be repressed into nonexistence by a short tempered new stepfather, who had a blackbelt in karate and zero tact or experience with kids, and I proposed to my parents that perhaps they could remedy the entire situation by sending me to boarding school. They didn't really have the money for it but agreed it was a good idea and a necessity, so they did.
At the new school I felt alone, the other kids were from well-off families, and the entire place seemed rather cold. I was depressed and longed to be with my father, so I prayed in all earnestness for this to come true. Perhaps a minute passed, and because nothing had happened, I became angry and vowed not to have faith in God again.
Years passed and, out of the blue, I got the urge to call my dad. One thing led to another and I soon found myself in Colorado with his new family. By this time (long story) he had turned to God (previously he was a serious atheist, like most Czechs) and was preaching to me. Anyway, as explained in My Testimony (link above), he convinced me to read the bible, I eventually became convinced of its power and perfect logic, and realized that my prayer many years ago had in fact been answered, but in a long, drawn out and round about way. Now I was reading the bible, and also understood that God does not or cannot always answer all prayers immediately. I was learning patience and understanding, and how to be realistic about things.

The Holy Spirit can be Seen by Those Who are Spiritual

Once I was treeplanting and a group of us went on an excursion during our day off. At that time we were planting on the coast of British Colombia and decided to check out one of the islands. We went for a nice walk and then lay on the large boulders on the seashore. I was laying on mine and was looking at some islands in the distance, when I began to daydream and my mind started wandering to the thought of one day starting some sort of commune on one of the islands. I was imagining running it, and how we would all worship Christ, and help and support each other, and the commune would be a beautiful spiritual place of love. I felt almost giddy with happiness at these thoughts and daydreamed I was there on that island, and felt very spiritually happy thinking about it. Which is when one of my friends spoke up and said, "Hey, look at Karel! Do you see a sort of green halo around him, and how it seems to spread to us others?" He was sort of a spiritual guy who would go on meditation retreats and he said those weeks of quiet and communal meditation had made him sensitive to many things. The others in our group responded bluntly that they did not see anything, but it made me think that certain people are able to see God's light. I reflected on how I was often able to see light in people. Certain people seemed to glow and it was always those who had a cheery disposition and more or less led a holy life, or were positive and spiritual in some way.
Many years later an acquaintance of mine got hold of a bible I gave to him, but didn't like it and instead passed it on to another friend. I didn't know about this but the next time we met the acquaintance was enthusiastically talking about a book he recently read about the life of Jesus. I didn't know what he was talking about but one thing I could not help but notice was that his eyes shown like lightbulbs. It was amazing and I've rarely seen eyes shine so bright. Eventually we all moved apart, I was emailing with this acquaintance, and tried to keep him on track, but eventually he decided to believe in the Buddhist religion instead. In any case, I've met him a few times later on in life and overall he seemed a more positive a cheery person. But this incidence gave me the thought that the Word is Light and Love, as the bible says, and that by reading the bible one can become filled with the Holy Spirit, which is why he became a gleaming, "living being", at least for a while. This incidence imparted to me the thought that, not only by reading the good book can one become filled with the Spirit, but that the light shining from within them can be blatant, at least to someone like myself who can "see the light". Unbelievers, as the bible says, are generally blind to this light, and therefore probably have no clue what I am talking about.

Evil Spirits are Present in our World

Once I was working in a bar, two of the waitresses were standing at the till, when I noticed something like a dark spirit pass into them. Something felt strange and the whole moment was rather strange, but within a few seconds they were starting to claw each other. I somehow saw the whole incident escalate and gestured to the head bartender to look their way. By the time he did they were already clawing each other, but fortunately he was close, I saw it coming, and he managed to break up their scuffle without any great harm.
A few days later one waiter spat out of the blue and called me a liar. I spat out that he was an asshole. He invited me to step outside and I quickly followed him (this was during that period when I was telling myself I was an atheist), but the cook hollered out several times and convinced me not to follow him. I am perhaps the most sensitive about someone calling me a liar. Perhaps the waiter, who later felt remorse for his behaviour, is sensitive about someone calling him an asshole. The conversation was not provoked at all but it escalated very quickly, and I remember feeling immediate anger, so I deduced that the black spirit had tried its work on us as well. It was at that time that I began to think that dark spirits are present in our world. .

Many years later, when I was already a believer for over a decade, I moved into a house on the edge of town and rented out the rooms I did not need. I had a house warming party and everyone slept upstairs. The next morning they all complained because they heard someone walking around upstairs all night long and were convinced it was a ghost. One of the younger men purposefully got up and walked around to check, but couldn't find anything. None of them wanted to come back to my house. One of the women pointed out that she noticed a devil worshipping symbol hanging above the garage entrance. I immediately exterminated that into the fire.
My best friend was staying at the house for a while, and at some point before that she had a vivid nightmare of meeting a guy in a bar who was talking about the daughter he loved and that he'd like to introduce my friend to her. My friend went home with him, he took her to the bathroom and pointed her to go further. After my friend started walking down the longer bathroom corridor, he shut the iron gate behind her and, looking apologetically, said "sorry". She continued down the corridor, entered into the open bathroom and saw what looked like a dead girl lying in the bathtub, wearing her own, old clothes. The girl in the bathtub was partially decayed, and at that moment started to rise up out of the bathtub, and tried to grab my friend, evidently with the intention to eat her. At that point my friend woke up.
About a week later she was crashing on the living room couch at my "haunted house", I was sleeping in my room next door, and as we were falling asleep she started to make a strange noise, like she saw something and was very scared. She asked me to pray and make it go away, so I prayed in the name of Jesus for all evil spirits to go away. Later she told me it was then okay, it went away, and she fell asleep. But she explained to me her earlier dream (the one mentioned above), and said that, as she was falling asleep, this time the same girl was back but she was much more decayed and her now half-torso was hovering above her, reaching out to eat her.
I decided that this was enough and exorcised the house. There was a crematorium and graveyard not too far away, so I told the spirits could stay there but that they cannot come onto my own premises and they cannot harm or bother any of my friends who come to visit me. It was peaceful for a while, until one day my cat came from its usual neighbourhood excursions but most of the bone on one of its legs was exposed. Evidently it got caught in some trap. Perhaps some of the neighbours don’t like cats. In any case, I took it personally, and one day when I was coming back from a concert while carrying my African drum over my shoulder, I decided to get off the tram one stop early and walk through the graveyard. It was perhaps 3:30 in the morning and I was a bit inebriated. But the thought of my cat was lingering in my head on the way home, so once I got into the middle of the pitch dark graveyard, I strapped my big, African teak drum around my waste and started pounding into it and hollering at the spirits like the soul of Africa was pouring out of my gut. I chanted and prayed, expressing that I no longer have any sympathy for the spirits and that all evil ones are hereby eradicated from this entire region, preferably sent down into hell and not in harms reach of any humans. I never had a problem at that house again.

Animals and Nature Listen to God

On a side note, I should say that, through all this time, things were going positively in my benefit, and we can include all those times as little miracles. Right now though I am just focusing on concrete prayers or incidences I remember.

Okay, things are just gonna get weirder, so put on your seatbelts!
Now I am planting trees during summers between university, and I teamed up with a fellow kook and Christian. We would plant together and talk freely about God, and we both really appreciated it.
We were planting in an area with many beehives in the ground. At that time we had to screef away the surface with our shovel, to expose dirt and supposedly help the tree grow better. So essentially we had to dig away the top layer and many times we'd dig right into a bee's nest. One girl got bit six times one day and almost quit. I was reflecting on this and how I remember reading in the bible that "even the animals listen to God" (in relation to the passage where one of God's prophets scolds humanity for being so stubborn and disobedient). Since this was rummaging through my head, I felt that me and my good believing friend should be spared any bites. Sure enough, within an hour or two I heard my friend screaming. Later that day I asked him what had happened. He said he had dug right into a beehive and by the time he had realized what had happened, the entire swarm cloud was moving fiercely towards his face. Which is when he screamed and ran away, but he never got bit. And that settled in my mind that the animals really do listen to God, and ever since then I have treated them that way.
Some time later we were both sitting during the dead of day and resting, because it was extremely hot, no wind, and it was difficult to keep working. We sat there, and I contemplated how we were both believers, and that it would be nice to get a bit of rest from the intense sun. But it seemed absurd and even vain to ask for some remedy. After all, what remedy could possibly be given? In any case, the heat was so intense, and I thought perhaps something could be done about it anyway, so I muttered a prayer for some relief from the sun. At that moment came a gentle, cooling breeze, and a bit of shade. I appreciated the wind, closed my eyes and leaned my head back in relief. I opened my eyes and… Well, this is truly a weird one and I can imagine anyone's doubt. In any case, it was apparent that the shade was provided by a cloud that covered the sun. It was a thin cloud and the only one in the sky, which I confirmed when I looked all around afterwards. But the strange thing was that the cloud was shaped like a cross, with the cross of the cross directly over the sun, and something which looked like a hanging Jesus in its place. Covering the sun. I had opened my eyes for only a moment, as I had intended. But when I closed them the image had sunk into my head, and I quickly opened them again in amazement. Obviously I was shocked to see such a thing. I wanted to squawk for my friend to quickly look up, but by now the cloud had already dissipated a bit, and only looked like a thin, broken up cross. Perhaps a second or two passed and I thought I could still point it out to him, but by now it had dispersed into something not really resembling anything anymore. The moment had passed, and I guess it was just for me. Within a minute it was gone completely and the sky was once again spotless without a cloud, but my prayer had been answered, and it was truly a miraculous experience. I was beginning to believe that anything was possible for God.

Some weeks came by and another incident happened with my friend. But before I commence with this story, I now acknowledge that I should not take drugs or drink excessive amounts of alcohol, but these things were not clear to me back then. Treeplanting can be a highly repetitive and boring job, and after doing it laboriously for several months, a break from it can be very welcome indeed. And one day I wanted to change things by dropping a couple of hits of acid. I had three, so I took two and he took one. Undoubtedly many bizarre things happened that day. Perhaps I should not talk about it, but God was more powerful and visible to me that day than ever in my life, before or after that. We were planting in a "burn" (one of the ways to clear all the vegetation to make our jobs easier), and at this point the whole field was lushly peppered with fireweeds. These are the first to grow after a fire, and they are rich in colour, with violet pedals, green leaves, and generally quite colourful. Anyway, I was listening to U2's Achtung Baby, over and over again (the old days of cassette tapes and no iPods), and I found the next several hours quite a religious experience. I would stand on a stump and the field below me, with all its colours, seemed like an infra-red TV. The colours would blend and move and I would see constant images. When I tried to control the images, they would break apart into chaos. But when I would free my mind and let the images form, that is when I saw the most interesting shapes and messages. I saw how the clouds were formed in perfect mathematical formation, identical across the sky, positioned on some perfect grid. But curved grids and everything was organized into mathematical perfection. I was moving to the music and started to let go of my body as well. The more I let go the more natural movement it seemed to follow. I let go down to my shins, but then stopped - I felt uncomfortable about letting myself go fully. But at that moment I realized that I could even let go of my entire body and nature, God, or something could control it.
Then my friend came back. It was still hot and he decided to take his shirt off and wrap it around his head, like a Sheppard. He was even carrying with him a wooden staff that he had found. He looked very holy and gleamed of light. He sat down next to me, with the sun to my back, so that he shown bright. All the leaves on his side were bright green, as they were reflecting the sun. I turned around and all the leaves on my side were red, because they were the underside of the leaves. Everything on my side looked like burning flames of hell, and I saw faces calling out from within it. Then I turned back to look at him, who looked like Holy Moses himself, and a dividing line between us running into the horizon on both side, him in heaven and me in burning hell.
He then went off and I was left to myself again, and my thoughts started wandering, now towards evil thoughts. At that moment a bumble bee appeared and flew a slow circle around me. I realized I was thinking evil thoughts and perceived the bumblebee like some policeman on a scooter, circling me and issuing me a warning. So I stopped those thoughts. But after a while they came back and, once again, I was immersed in them, but a bee and two horseflies were prodding and poking my right forearm with their pointers. I know one can get hallucinations while on acid, but not this, which I saw and felt, and again the animals were listening to God.

Times Could Get Tough and Scary,
But My Doom Would Always be Avoided by some Timely Miracle

Eventually I finished university, and wasn't sure what to do with my life, but my last summer treeplanting everyone kept telling me that I should take a year off and travel before starting some career, arguing that I needed it. It was repeated to me so many times that I finally conceded and off I went. Europe appealed to me but I said to myself I would make my decision once in Prague. My first day there I walked around, eventually sat down because I was tired, and asked God if I should move to Prague. As I wrote in my life in Prague page, it was then that I had such an overwhelming spiritual experience that I thought God himself had sat on me. I was shaking like a leaf, and I must have been radiating like a lightbulb, because when I looked up my eyes connected with an old woman in a tram who was staring at me with her mouth gaping open, as if she had been staring at a ghost.

It was my first year in Prague and things started to look questionable. It seemed like it was a big waste of my time and I grew depressed one evening. When a remarkable thing happened. It's as if God raised me up above the clouds, out of the murky and dark thoughts within me, so that I could see all around me. I could see the path of my life beforehand, and the path ahead, and everything pointed to the fulfillment of all the dreams I carried with me my entire life. It was awe-inspiring and he gained my full confidence again. The next morning I could no longer see the vision, but I held onto the memory of it and the resulting faith kept me going for a long time still.

Eventually I ran out of money and needed to find work. I tried various jobs, and ended up working for a financial office. It turned out that the person who hired me was mostly interested in getting money from my dad, since he was a big investor in town, and when it was apparent that he would not get anything out of him, he let me go. Once again I felt like a dejected loser and my faith wavered. Someone in the office suggested I try translations. It seemed like a plausible idea. I asked some translation agencies around town what was required, and they told me I should have a downtown office, computer and fax machine. Fine idea, but I had none of that, and no more money. I went to the company to receive my last cheque, and the finance director in charge of payment said he wanted to keep in contact with me. I believe he was interested in English lessons. He issued me the cheque and then informed me that they have an office in the centre of Prague that they were not using, and that I could use at my disposal. Inevitably, he mentioned, it comes with a computer and fax.

That kept me going for some time but eventually they needed the office space. They sold me the computer for really cheap, but I couldn't take the fax with me. Instead I bought a scanner and used my computer modem to fax, but this turned out problematic and I was yearning for the day when I would get a regular fax. It was now my third year in the apartment flat (a year after when I moved out of the office) and the landlords said they needed it back. So I started to scramble for new accommodation. And I was still in desperate need of a fax. Meanwhile, for some reason (some might say), for several years I had been fantasizing about a Mickey Mouse clock, and I even imagined the colour red. Perhaps because I liked the essence of lightheartedness and lack of seriousness against a bleak corporate background of an office. Who knows, but this red Mickey Mouse clock kept resurfacing in my thoughts. I now went to the new place which I was considering moving into. It was perfect in every way, with a garden and next to a forest. Everything I had hoped for, with a bonus: the room which became my main office had a red Mickey Mouse clock on the wall, practically identical to what I had been imagining all these years, and the landlord said I could even use their fax machine, since they were not using it.

But the years went by and I couldn't seem to succeed as I hoped. I even tried to start a church and get involved on different levels, but nothing seemed to work. One stumbling block was that I had many friends, and I loved socializing over delicious and very affordable Czech beer, and I was too embarrassed to talk to these friends about my religious beliefs. Towards the end of my stay in Prague I began to pray for some way to be able to speak my thoughts to those around me. Perhaps courage, I did not know. I also prayed to help me stop drinking so much. It's a long story, but over time I grew increasingly sick of gossip and ended up falling out with many of these acquaintances. I grew angry at their selfishness and found out that my real friends had no problems regarding my religious thoughts, and in fact I was surprised that many of them were in their own way spiritual. I grew sick of the alcohol consumption, and now in hindsight I see that this prayer too was answered, although it took time (God must often be very patient with us).

Over the years my workflow would go up and down. Many years I would have plenty of cash, and there would be years when the trimmings were very slim. Always some computer part broke down, or there was some other catastrophe, and my meager savings were eaten away again, until I was counting pennies and sick with fear when my next invoice would get paid. Some customers did not pay, and it was very difficult for many years. But each time when it was on the point of starvation, money miraculously came through. This happened too many times to mention. Calculus was one of my best subjects in school, and if someone would say it was only coincidence or luck, I would have to object, because pure coincidence and chance would dictate that a payment might easily come a few days AFTER I ran out of money. Not always before, or even more so, at the very last minute. My faith was obviously being tested, and the manner in which some calamity happened and when cash flowed in was so uncanny in its timing that I had to attribute it as a miracle many many times. It would take too long to try to write down and remember every one of those times, but in hindsight God was simply taking care of things for me and I was living a constant miracle. Otherwise, you can read my travel trips stories through Europe. During the past two years I have been surviving on a meagre budget of 10 dollars a day and, unfortunately, had the income to match it. I feel like Job and that God has been working on my soul through hardship. In any case, with practically no safety net, it seemed a constant miracle of surviving from day to day, with money coming in from various strange sources at the last second, before starvation and inevitable doom would set in. I admit that the last two years while traveling was even crazier from this perspective than during my struggling times in Prague.

God's Guiding and Saving Hand Working Throughout my Life

Sometimes I would stand up from a crouching position and ram my spine into a cupboard. It hurt and angered me. Things like that almost never happened to me, and I asked angrily why, until I realized that I was thinking evil thoughts again. Whenever something happened to me I would ask why, and found that God was constantly at work on me. Or when I tripped on the pavement when there was nothing to trip over. I understand this could be something difficult to explain or believe, but such incidents were always lined up with something else, and it made perfect sense when I looked at it from that perspective. There are too many such incidents to write down here.
Oh, I just remembered one: it was New Years eve in Prague and I was celebrating as usual. Over my fifteen years in Prague I gradually got tired of the partying and began to consume less. On this occasion I'd say my consumption was moderate. It was the end of the evening and we were leaving a warmup party and headed for the bridge (where for many years I'd prefer to party around midnight, with the city lit up in all its beauty and fireworks blazing in every direction - everyone was allowed their own private arsenal). I was carrying a beer in my hand, as is allowed in Europe. Because fireworks were permitted to be sold to the general population, it became rather dangerous to walk around the centre during New Year's. People would huddle together in large, condensed groups for protection, and sometimes when I'd walk in the open, so I could move briskly from one location to another, tourists would fire rockets at me, or throw champagne bottles. There would be broken glass everywhere and it would be quite the zoo. Over the years I learned to protect myself: I wore a thick wool trench coat hanging down to past my knees, two sets of pants (once a rocket fired right into my thigh, burned a hole through my jeans and left a sear in my skin with shrapnels of the rocket buried within it for about two weaks), a thick hat to cover both ears, and on this occasion, I was wearing safety goggles. Every year there were stories of people losing an eye, and I wanted to play it safe. We were walking from the party, just at that point passing St. Nicolas church, when my friend in front of me commented that he hopes no harm will come to us. To that I responded, "I'm not worried, I've got my safety glasses to protect me, and I feel safe." And just at the moment when I said the word "safe", I slipped on a thin layer of ice on the pavement, did a half piroette in the air, and within a second found myself lying flat on my belly, the beer bottle in my hand now broken, with the mouth piece end now a long shrampnel, and the sharp pointy end jutting up to the sky but ending about one centimeter's distance from my left eye. I held this position for a moment, staring at the pointed end of the broken glass right in front of my left eye, and the safety glasses no longer seemed so safe after all. In my mind I corrected my statement that I should rely on God for safety, and not feel so confident in my glasses, the flimsey plastic material of which would probably do little in preventing the shrapnel from penetrating deep into my socket had I fallen somehow differently (three years of gymnastics during university may have helped some too). In any case, many may scoff, shrugging this off as coincidence, or may not believe any of my stories at all, but for me events like this so many times happen at precisely the time I say or think something, and the outcome so bizarre, that I cannot help but think that God himself is responding to me, in his very magical way.

The last several years before I left Prague, I was growing tired of the work I had been doing, and kept dreaming of the day when I could spend most of my time working on my company's development. The last two years while traveling through Europe, it has been a new struggle, but again the cash would come in at just the right time and it was a constant miracle of survival. Recently I have been frustrated that I have been struggling for so long, until it occurred to me that it is precisely the lack of work that has given me the opportunity to work on development on practically a full time basis. So very recently I have acknowledged that even this prayer had been answered, although I did not realize it. I have learned much over the past two years and have enjoyed the variety. I am traveling and doing pretty well everything I have dreamed of doing. I enjoy my work, even though I have been frustrated due to the lack of earnings. But I believe God has been working on me and teaching me the art of enjoying life without being so obsessed with earnings. I still believe I will find great success, but am learning to be patient, and most of my prayers the last two years have been:
"Dear God, I pray that I may become useful to you. I'd like to be successful so that I can give to charity and do something useful. I am tired of this money game and would like to serve you. Please help me with my arrogance, as I know I get quickly proud when the money does start flowing in."
One friend also taught me a trick of asking God a question and then opening a "random" page in the bible. I would try to open my mind and feel for a page and place my finger in the page according to inspiration, with my eyes closed. Virtually in every case I get an answer which exactly corresponds to my question (of course, it helps to have a good understanding of the bible and be able to decipher much of its meaning). For example, in this way did God tell me that I have a problem with arrogance and why I have lost customers, and I had to admit it was true. It has been a long journey in my life with God and I feel he is looking over me and responding to my prayers. My last prayers have been to give me strength and insight to learn how to completely surrender my will to him. This is a very scary step and something I have been struggling with for many years. I feel God must be exasperating me in an effort to work on my pride and soul. I am sure that if I would have attained great success before now, it would have went to my head, as it always did, and I would attribute it to my own skill and hard work, and not to God. I'm sure it will be difficult for me to convince you all this, but this is how I have been perceiving things my entire life. It is an interaction process. My thoughts resulting to actions, and the actions working in my life to move me in the right direction. I am not desperately seeking God and looking for any excuse to believe in him. Why should I? But I know that when I abandon and turn my back on him, the world becomes a dark and empty place, lacking his Spirit, which is why I always come back to him. Why I would rather pursue God than wealth. It is not some placebo pill of belief, but a Spirit which I feel, which nourishes my soul, and which keeps me, more or less, on a better path than if I were to serve my own passions, lusts and desires. It is by the occasional withholding of the Spirit and his actions in my life that he has remained firm in my conscience. I realize that many people seem quite contented to survive without him, but for me it is out of the question. Hence I have concluded that I must have been chosen before I was born, because his entity is so inscribed in my mind that there were times I had to question my own existence before his.
Hopefully I'll remember some more juicy miracles in the past, as I'm sure I could not remember all of them now, so I will add them later.

For those of you who have not had my experiences but for some reason are being drawn to God, I would suggest you try a taste of his Spirit. Once you receive it you will find it unmistakable. It is the driving force the world over and which convinces believers to deny themselves of instinctual satisfaction. God works on our hearts, and draws us near him. If we did not feel his presence and Spirit in our hearts, there is no way that such a large percentage of the world would fall for some supposed man-made religion denying ourselves of pleasure. Of course many believers do not deny themselves, but without the Spirit such a man-made religion would not gain any following. If people were so desperate for some sense of an afterlife, and there were no God, I'm sure that humans would think up something else to supposedly wow the masses into submission. For me it is not a matter of believing in God, as in believing that he exists. There is absolutely no doubt about that. But it's about believing in God and the extent to which trust him and put my faith in him. That he will part the sea when everything else looks hopeless. My faith has constantly been tested, as the bible says God does, and my life has been a long interaction with a thinking, responding, and loving being. I hope you let God into your life and interact with him. To this end you can read my page with simple instructions how you might initiate this (how to be saved) .

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