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Welcome to the well.
At the well we meet Finnish Christian adults
three times with every visitor.
Now we have a first meeting with Reverend Kalevi Lehtinen.
He is a Finnish preacher and an evangelist living in Germany.
He has influenced evangelical work for decades in Finland
and other parts of the world. He is well known.
He has written numerous spiritual books and
many of them are bestsellers.
Welcome to the well Kalevi Lehtinen. - Thank you.
I already mentioned something about you.
Could you tell who you are?
I am an ordinary human being.
I don't feel that I am some kind of guru or a special spiritual human being.
But I am deeply love in Jesus and want to tell everybody
about Him in every possible way.
I don't always fit into Christian forms where rules have become important.
I need to tell what is important from heart to heart
What are you learning right now?
I am learning about my boundaries. I am getting old.
I can't do what I was able to do when I was young.
Every marathon takes two times longer than before.
Many work related issues take more time.
Often you get stuck on your place what has been before.
I need to learn and estimate my work skills.
All what was before and seem good, it has not been helpful permanently.
I am developing new ways how to spread the gospel.
In weakness and suffering we'll find it's own meaning;
positive good message in the middle of difficulties.
What are you dreaming about?
I dream about people's movement.
There ordinary people tell another about Jesus
in the midst of a normal life outside the church.
Meetings, church services, missions not even media can't
reach the majority of the Finnish people.
But if 100 000 people would tell one new person about Jesus in a week.
Then 5.2 million would hear evangelism once a year.
I'll dream that I could get those 100 000 people to do that.
You are known as a world evangelist. How all this started?
I was born in the year of 1936 at New Year's day.
At that time my father was preparing for the Olympics at Berlin.
4 years earlier my father had won an Olympic gold
at 5000 meters in Los Angeles.
In Berlin he won a silver metal when I was half a year old.
My father was a public figure,
papers said I was born under lucky stars.
I had a loving mother who is still living.
She is 90 years old and still prays for me.
I have a close relationship with her.
My mother means a lot to me.
My mother's mother talked to me about Jesus.
She was a first person who told me about Jesus and
sang spiritual songs. That was a beginning.
Then difficult times came.
The war started when I was 3 years old.
I remember bombardments on Helsinki - I remember that fear.
Sometimes we stayed in Sweden
and it was very hard for me to go to school there.
My father was absent a lot.
All this has impacted me and my generations.
What do you think about the world you lived comparing today's world?
In that world there was not a television. We had a radio.
The main roads from Helsinki to Turku and Tampere were sand roads.
We had street cars railways only few owned cars.
The means of living was more difficult.
People had their gardens in order to grow products.
They bought animals in order to get food.
It was however the life that was managed.
Nowadays a source of living is easier, but there is still material distress.
Now we have huge machines which produce everything,
but it gets costly.
If you can't afford to pay their price then you suffer material distress.
The entire mentality has changed.
That generation, where we lived, was brought up with strict rules.
By means of making you feel guilty;
shame was used as a bringing up method.
You were put into the corner if you didn't behave properly.
Today's young people don't do anything
if you try to make them feel guilty instead they say bad words.
There is not an authority which can make them feel guilty.
Everyone of them built their own world on their own way.
Did people believe in God at that time?
I believe people believed in God, angry disciplinary God.
God was also used by means of bringing up children.
Relation to faith was felt more an anxiety than today.
Young people today dare to see God through sin and guiltiness.
I feel young people of today are healthier than then.
It was not necessarily a picture of God in the New Testament.
There was mixed up with authority, believe, fear and anxiety.
And today's picture of God is not from The New Testament either.
People have a need to believe in something spiritual.
Everybody has a need to know God.
Nobody is born as an atheist but you can become one.
In every culture people right from their birth have a presentiment
that there must be something greater or someone high above.
I have a belive like other Christians that
God sent Jesus to this world.
Pascal, French mathematician and physic said;
every human has an empty place; a size of God in their heart.
No creation can fill that except the Creator which
we learn in His Son Jesus Christ.
A presentiment and longing for this was then and is the same today.
The biggest problem is this unsatisfied need to find God.
Do you remember when God approach you the first time?
I remember the time when I consciously knew, it was God.
I know that God had approached me earlier.
The first time happened when my grand mother sang spiritual songs.
She took me in Helsinki to Salvation Army meeting
where I sang with my sisters.
It was an opportunity for us to perform.
When I was 8-9 years old I attended children's meeting in Kerava.
They talked about sin and
how we need forgiveness from Jesus Christ.
My little sins came to my mind.
So I walked to the alter and knelt down.
This lady came and prayed for me.
I signed a child soldier passport of Salvation Army.
It is still inside of my Bible. It is a valuable treasure.
Many years passed and I didn't remember that.
But this was a foundation.
I knew that a right alternative for me is to have a relationship with God.
I read from your book “Holy spirit here and Now”
where you tell about your youth years.
Your thought and your relationship with God
was like a peaceful life side by side.
You didn't have anything against God.
I remember my puberty age and my Confirmation school;
God didn't disturb me and I didn't disturb Him.
We were like in geometry 2 parallel lines that never meet.
It didn't fulfill my heart, that gave a picture about my life.
I was careless.
You said it didn't satisfy you.
What kind of longing you had searching for something real?
I was looking for a balance and a peace in my heart.
I felt a pressure to perform, to be smart.
I was a leader of teenage club, took part in a club of natural science.
I had a need to be somebody.
I realized that I needed to find a place with myself
where I didn't need to prove anything.
I felt that God had something to tell me.
How did it start?
It started on the first year of high school, I was 15.
We got a new teacher for German language.
We teased her, I as a wild one, was one of the teasers.
I thought I don't need that language so I didn't study at all.
Maybe God punished me and that's why I am living in Germany.
I failed in German language.
I didn't even buy a book until May.
I had 2 possibilities in order to pass.
I failed the test on my first try. The second time I prayed;
God if you help me to pass this test
I promise to go to young people's meeting.
I figured this is an honest deal with God.
I'll make God happy and He makes me happy.
And I did pass that test and I was admitted to the second year.
Once I walked to the steps of the church and
thought what am I doing here; this is not for me.
My promise to God started to bother me.
I had also promised to God something during Confirmation school.
I started to become conscious of my negligence.
I am not an honest person.
Then I met Christian young people and we argued a lot.
I often won those arguments. In an argument the one who is right,
he is not a winner but the one who can argue the best.
When I left as a winner it didn't make me feel satisfied.
I wished they would have assured me and this made me a bit angry.
Then in our school there was a Christian teen meeting.
There were 200 young people.
At the back wall there was a banner saying ”Jesus Lives”
I was thinking what does that mean?
It started to become clear that Jesus was not a religious founder
who died 2000 years ago. But He rose from death
He is the son of God and lives now.
If that is true how can I be negligent? The theme “Jesus Lives” is a part of
the biggest lies that been spread or if that is true;
I need to say that Jesus is magnificent, He is my authority.
My heart was telling me that. I started to long for that.
On that night a young preacher Simo Talvitie was speaking.
There are many young people who would like to get to know Jesus
but you do not know how to go forward.
I want to help you.
He was explaining the words of Jesus
”I stand at the door, if someone hears my voice and opens the door.
I'll come to you and eat with you.”
Jesus cares for us and wants to have a connection with you
because He loves us.
We have to do only one thing; open the door and
”welcome Jesus” into our lives. If you don't know how to pray,
stay on your seat and “big brother” comes and prays for you.
I stayed on my seat in the hallway of my school.
Seppo who was studying a science of medicine came to me.
Then we went to a dressing room of the gymnasium to talk.
Seppo explained the same Bible verse.
I started to feel that Jesus doesn't want me.
I had made promises to God at the Confirmation school
and during my German test. I thought my time is over.
Seppo read from the Bible ”If someone comes to me
I am not going to cast him out.” Seppo showed me that verse
and said; look it does not say everybody except Kalevi.
Then it hit me, I understood that God accepts me just the way I am.
After that we prayed. It was not anything dramatic.
But it was a holy experience.
I understood that I had walked without God and kept hiding from Him.
Now my hand was in the hand of Jesus and and we would walk together.
Then Seppo introduced me to some other guys.
Here is Kalevi who was just born into a child of God.
These guys solemnly shook my hand. I was welcomed to this group.
It was a great moment. 25 years later I received a congratulation
letter from one of the guys.
He remembered the time when we shook hands.
Shortly after you became a born again Christian
you turn into a system of law and deeds.
You even wrote down your sins. That must have been a heavy crisis?
I didn't know how to live a Christian life.
I thought it consists of certain performances.
I read the Bible, pray, love people, tell people about Jesus and
fight against sin. I do these things;
like exercises and mark them down.
I thought when I become a Christian I never sin.
Next day I started to doubt myself what if I by accident sin.
I bought a notebook where I could mark down my sins.
This way I could avoid sinning. I bought the smallest notebook.
Thinking there is not going to be any sin.
After the first week I had 10 pages of sin.
I became depressed thinking this is a bad beginning.
Then I thought when I become holy, it is getting better.
After the second week I have less sin and after that even less.
But checking my notebook on the second week
there were twice more sin than on the first week.
Then I really became even more depressed.
I threw my notebook on the fire.
I urge that nobody keeps this kind of a notebook.
This is not leading us towards Jesus but towards sin.
Many of my Cristian years passed like I was living at a soldier camp.
I lived under strict rules. I was anxious and felt miserable.
I was studying theologian. I was preparing myself to become a priest.
I started to doubt everything; maybe I never became a Christian,
maybe I was destined to go to hell.
I was 22 years old. One morning God answered me.
I was reading psalm 103. He remembers our beginning;
He knows what we are and He recognizes us.
He remembers that we are only dust.
Dust is unpleasant, useless and worthless.
So that nobody pays a cent for a pail of dust.
There are no factories which could make something out of dust.
So unpleasant that everybody wants to get rid off the dust.
I felt that I am worthless useless and unpleasant.
All of the sudden I realized that God has known that I am like this.
I can't perform or deserve salvation. He did it.
He gave Jesus to come to this world to die at the cross on behalf of my sins.
When God understood that I can't obey the law and fulfill that norm.
He demanded that from Jesus which would have been my part.
Jesus fulfilled my part and I was free from demands.
Although I was worthless just like dust, however, a great worth.
I asked what is a price for dust name Kalevi Lehtinen.
I realized even if I would have been only one in the world.
God would have loved me so much
that He would have given His only son to die for me.
Jesus paid for me and I was declared worthy of His love.
When this dawned on me
I understood that I have found the answer.
Before that I was under the rules;
do this try this and make an effort for this.
The key is not what you do but what He has done,
He has done everything. ”It is done”
I can rest in His fulfilled work. I have been an evangelist for long time.
I had spoken very harsh word.
Many young people wanted to follow Jesus but
they have become depressed because I had lead them there.
They told me this doesn't work.
I had told them try harder; it will become clear.
How could I have said that because it had not become clear to me.
Then when I told them now I have found the right answer.
The light lit in their eyes. God's grace filled them.
After decades almost 50 years
that same grace is still the cornerstone.
It is the foundation which has lasted.
The foundation where I stand and it will last because it is from God.
Thank you Kalevi for the first program. Let's continue next week.
We will talk about what kind of a life you live as
a radical Christian.
Subtitles: Marjatta Suurnäkki