If only someone had told me much earlier that being a ‘good person’ did not qualify me to go to heaven, I wouldn’t have tried so hard. For 21 long years I was unaware of the possibility & indispensability of a personal relationship with the Lord Almighty.
Born into a traditional Indian Christian family where prayer was an option more than a lifestyle I didn’t think much of faith. My mother was prayerful while my father opted not to express any religious belief. As I grew into a teenager I began questioning my mother’s faith. The more I observed her the more I was convinced that she was wasting her time on a God who was either deaf or didn’t exist.
By the time I left home to go to college, science was my answer to everything. In my freshman year, our college, a Catholic institution, organized a charismatic retreat for all students, making attendance mandatory. Some of the messages I heard there made sense though I hated to admit it. I didn’t want to believe because I thought this was the “Christian sales pitch” that appealed to the logical human mind.
A couple of years later I heard my mother was quite ill. I was so far away from home & I didn’t know how to handle the news. I kept telling myself that science would come to her aid. But deep in my heart I had this nagging question, “Why did this happen to her?”
In that moment I hated God so much that I’d forgotten I believed He didn’t exist! As I sat by myself and focused on hating God, my best friend came looking for me & understood that I was troubled about something. She was a Muslim converted to Christian. She just sat there waiting until I told her what was bothering me. She asked my permission before praying for me & my mother. There was an inexplicable peace that settled on my heart after she prayed with me. A couple of days later my mom called & said everything was just fine. There was nothing to worry about.
I cried from relief. I was ready to believe that there was a loving, forgiving & merciful God after all. But I wasn’t sure whether this God was universally present in all religious faiths or just one. I was seeking the one true God with all my heart and I wanted Him to reveal Himself to me. And as I was traveling one day, deep in this thought, my eyes fell on a scripture painted on a wall in the street, “I am the Way, the Truth & the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” [John 14:6]. I had seen this wall plenty of times before, but this time the scripture sounded as clear as the voice of God in my heart.
That day I decided that Jesus was the only Saviour I would believe in. And I have not regretted the decision to this day. A long time after I had accepted the lordship of Jesus in my life He gently reminded me of an incident that had happened when I was just 10 years old. I met a priest who had asked me whether I loved Jesus. I found the question odd. So I just answered, “Of course”. So the priest asked me if I’d like to know Jesus a little more. And I replied, “Yes.” So he sat me down, & asked me to repeat the ‘sinner’s prayer’ after him. I didn’t fully understand what I was doing or why I was doing it but I repeated after him anyway.
11 years later, that prayer became a reality in my life. 11 years the Lord waited for me to make that choice a conscious one. And I am amazed at how sweet the Lord had been to me all those years in between when I had refused to believe in His existence. He protected me from the world & from myself. He kept me from getting into serious trouble. And I finally admitted that my mother’s prayers were always heard & never wasted.
August 14th, 2008 | Category: How I Met Jesus | Comments (2)
