Paul Effrem

God has a way of lead­ing those who desire Him. But some of us, like myself are not
always quick learn­ers. It took God many times to teach me some sim­ple truths. I thank
God for par­ents that loved me, trust­ed God and tried to raise me well.


My father was a wood carv­er from Greece who came to this coun­try and met my moth­er,
the daugh­ter of Greek immi­grants, while she was vaca­tion­ing in San Diego Cal­i­for­nia.
My par­ents took our fam­i­ly, con­sist­ing of my two broth­ers and myself, to St. Mary’s
Greek Ortho­dox Church in Minneapolis.


When I was a lit­tle child in my house, I lied and my moth­er told me it was wrong, and
that it was not only some­thing I did that hurt oth­ers but it both­ered God as well. She
explained that sins are things we do that are against God. If we want to get right with
God we need to turn away from the bad actions, telling God of the wrong that I had done
and ask­ing for God’s for­give­ness. I nev­er knew that things I did could offend God. It all
seemed like a very seri­ous mat­ter. So, I prayed to God telling him how sor­ry I was and
ask­ing for his for­give­ness and ask­ing him into my life.


I can’t say I was a per­fect boy after that. But I can say that I felt I had a heart for God
and doing the right thing. I still got in trou­ble at times but I kept com­ing back to God.
My par­ents sent me to a Luther­an junior high school for 7th and 8th grade where there was some Bible train­ing in school as well as Min­neha­ha Acad­e­my, a non-denom­i­na­tion­al
Chris­t­ian high school in Min­neapo­lis where there was more Bible train­ing. I remem­ber
learn­ing many vers­es of the Bible like John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He
gave his only begot­ten Son that who­ev­er believes in Him should not per­ish but have
ever­last­ing life
” andFor by grace you have been saved through faith, not by works lest
any man should boast.
” I trust­ed God for my eter­nal sal­va­tion but felt it was my job to
get myself per­fect. The prob­lem was I could not make myself per­fect. The hard­er I tried,
the worse I felt because I was not improv­ing. On the out­side I was a nice guy, kind of
quite and shy, but on the inside I was struggling.


I had some apti­tude for math and sci­ence so, in the fall of 1975, I went to the Uni­ver­si­ty
of Min­neso­ta, Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy tak­ing up Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing as my major.
Dur­ing my lunch hour I enjoyed study­ing my Bible. Some noon times I would join an
on-cam­pus group called The Chris­tians. Oth­er times I would study indi­vid­u­al­ly doing
Bible Study Fel­low­ship or my own study. 

Dur­ing my junior year I stud­ied the book of Romans and found myself real­ly strug­gling like the apos­tle Paul wrote about, where I did the things I hat­ed as explained in Romans 7:15 For what I am doing, I do not under­stand; for I am not prac­tic­ing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. And verse 19 says For the good that I want, I do not do, but I prac­tice the very evil that I do not want. Look­ing for a solu­tion to this prob­lem I read on to verse 25 where he wrote Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serv­ing the law of God, but on the oth­er, with my flesh the law of sin. There­fore there is now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spir­it of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: send­ing His own Son in the like­ness of sin­ful flesh and as an offer­ing for sin, He con­demned sin in the flesh, so that the require­ment of the Law might be ful­filled in us, who do not walk accord­ing to the flesh but accord­ing to the Spir­it. And chap­ter 8 verse 14 For all who are being led by the Spir­it of God, these are sons of God.


All this meant was that my strug­gles to try to fight my sin­ful nature in my strength were
over, I need­ed to switch to liv­ing in the Spir­it of God because Jesus already had gained
the vic­to­ry over sin and death and giv­en me the Spir­it as part of my adop­tion as a son.
Now, instead of try­ing to use my strength to over­pow­er sin, I would turn those strug­gles
over the God and let God’s Spir­it show me the road to life. In doing this, I noticed some
real changes in my life and a new peace came on me. Instead of focus­ing on how not to
sin, I focused on liv­ing the new life in Christ.


Since then, I have con­tin­ued to seek the direc­tion of God in life and to know the pow­er of
his res­ur­rec­tion in my dai­ly liv­ing. I real­ize that my old self has died with Christ on the
cross and now Christ lives in and through me. I know I have not arrived but Christ
con­tin­ues to draw me clos­er to trans­form me into his image through his sanc­ti­fy­ing
pow­er.