Ambrose Maseko

Ambrose loved arguing with people about spiritual things, until one day, he saw that the truth was undeniable.

In his early life, Ambrose Maseko had big ambitions. “I wanted to be a lawyer or a politician and have many wives from all different races,&rdquo Ambrose says. “I wanted a big name on earth.”

To fulfil these ambitions, he began selling dagga (cannabis). While he found it easy to make money, he became addicted to dagga, as well as alcohol and cigarettes.

Much of his income was going to these addictions, but as these were the only way he could relieve daily stresses, he didn’t want to give them up.

While living this life, Ambrose tried to convince Christians that they were wrong, telling them, “I believe God and Satan are old friends, so you should not blame the Devil for anything”.

This argument gave Ambrose the excuse he needed to “live as I see and feel”.

Then, one day, something prompted him to attend a church tent meeting. “I went to try and demolish their arguments as I hated Christians and what they believed.”

Ambrose explains that his hated of Christians began many years earlier.

“All throughout primary school whenever I was naughty my teachers would quote from the Bible and then beat me without explaining why,” he recalls. “This made me hate anything to do with Christianity, and even though I believed in helping the poor I didn’t want to get close to God as I thought He would kill me.”

At the tent meeting though, the preacher talked about the “good work of the Spirit of God that brings changes in people lives.”

Ambrose was impacted by these words and decided to see whether they were true. “I watched the preacher for a long time and I saw him daily being transformed into a better person, just like 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 182 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18, says: ‘the Spirit of God is changing us to be good like Him (the Lord Jesus Christ).”

Wanting God to change him like this preacher, Ambrose made the decision to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savour. “The next time the preacher invited people to accept Jesus I put my prejudices aside and went forward to accept Him and asked God to forgive me for all the wrong I had thought and done.”

After receiving forgiveness from God, Ambrose felt God take away all his guilt and give him a new heart and new desires.

In this new-found freedom, he knew he should ask forgiveness from people he had hurt. He remembers receiving a variety of reactions: “Some of these people praised God for putting this in my heart, but others said that I would return back to my old life.”

Ambrose has proven these predictions wrong “I am doing my second year at Bible College and God is blessing me.”

God has completely changed Ambrose and his life.

“In the past, I was a failure because I hated Jesus and Christians,“ he says. “Now I am filled with love and God has healed my hurt.”