Assistant Pastor Martin Hunčár

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Published on Tuesday, 28 February 2012 20:09

Martin Hunčár (1971) together with his wife Daniela and sons Samuel and Jakub live in Bratislava. He studied at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, went through Bible School and at present, he externally studies Theology at Oral Roberts University. He was the Dean of Word of Life Bible School in Bratislava, is an assistant pastor in his local church, works also as the Head of the Publishing House of Word of Life International and is leader of Sunday School. Apart from that he travels a lot and preaches the Word of God and acts in the drama Lost Paradise Found. His writing is published in Victorious Life magazine and he is an author of six adventurous books for children and youth.

My journey to God

My salvation doesn’t belong to the category of “exceptional”. We all like to hear about the salvation of a drug or alcohol addict. I was neither. Maybe that is one of the reasons why my salvation is even more of a miracle. Many times it is those “well behaving” people who don’t realise they need to be changed. That was my case, too. I was brought up in a family of believers. My parents are hard working with good morals and I had a beautiful childhood. But God was not a priority. On the outside, everything looked OK, but on the inside, there was this feeling of emptiness and I became more and more aware of the fact that I am a sinner. I felt like a scribe from the Old Testament to whom a law was given, who knew the power of sin and tried to get out of it, but to no avail. I became a hypocrite. The gap between Sunday and the rest of the week grew bigger and bigger. Once I met a Christian who spoke about Jesus with great enthusiasm. That was something new to me. I thought God belonged only to church. But this man looked like He really knew Him. And then someone gave me a Bible. That was another breaking point in my life. On one hand, all those stories fascinated me, on the other hand, I felt convicted to be a sinner again and again. My hunger after God grew. I remember I once prayed “God, if you exist, let me know you, please!” And God did not let me wait for long. In April 1990 I gave my life to Jesus. For me, it was necessary to realise that I am not the “obedient son” but the “prodigal” one from Luke 15. I found out that all of my good deeds are not enough to save me. That was a blow for my pride. And yet, I still had the feeling that I am not such a bad man, after all, and that surely, there are many more people worse than me in the world. I gave up in the end when I realised that I am not better than those who are imprisoned because they committed a crime. At the same time I realised that God loves me unconditionally. What Jesus did on the cross became real and personal to me. I experienced the freedom I was longing for and my heart was filled with peace and joy. I don’t have any problems with the fact that Jesus loves me. One of the reasons might be that I was loved by people surrounding me when I was a child and I haven’t experienced rejection like some people might have experienced. Another reason might be that I simply believed in the love of God. Whenever I open the Bible, I meet His love. That is why, even though I realise I am not perfect, I don’t consider my weaknesses as something preventing God from loving me. There is a difference between God ´s love and human love. God loves us unconditionally. The driving force behind my relationship with Jesus is His grace. Even though many people consider me to be stable, I know of my failures. The knowledge that my God is faithful, loving and forgiving brings me back into His arms. My God, who will never leave me nor forsake me, is always on my side and He helped me many times – those are the reasons I follow Him in my everyday life.