I came to believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior during the week of July 10 -14 2017. Here is my brief journey to being born-again in the Holy Spirit of God.
I was born an Iyer, top Brahmin caste in South India. I have always believed in a supreme being and have been very religious ever since I can remember. I have prayed diligently, visited temples in India (where I grew up in Madras Chennai) atleast once a day and when I was a teen, went through the Upanayanam ceremony , which is typical of brahmin family. I was performing Sandhi atleast twice a day from the time of the upanayanam thru April 2017, and at times 3 during when I had breaks. I also chanted Gayathri mantram atleast 108 times a day most of the days and when I wanted something from the gods, 1008 over weekends. I also did yoga and suryanamaskaram few times a week. I also dabbled in stoicism, buddhism, read Koran and various Greek philosophers.
I have been very devotional and considered myself a practicing Brahmin with a desire to know the creator. I believed in a God, one God, who is the creator and maker of all the universe. I picked up various sacred Hindu texts on my own from the age of 14, from reading Vedas or Upanishads and to visiting local Ramakrishna madam library for more resources, trying to find answers to various philosophical, life and religious questions. The reference in the Hindu scriptures to prajapathi as the creator is something I looked forward to. I prayed often for self improvement, purposeful life and good things to happen to me and my family, among other requests. I flip-flopped from being a fatalist to self-reliance to asset my own inner-god.
Being a Brahmin, I was an idolator - worshipped various forms of idols from Ganesha, Shiva, Saraswathi and Lakshmi. I also prayed to various humans who were dead like Sai Baba or Ragavendra. There was also a deep routed reverence to animals and trees.
Inspite of all of this, I did not know God or who She or He was. I also didnt know how a creator could cause natural disasters, allow evil to happen and create hell or endless cycle of life/death through incarnations (which is what most Hindus believe). More than that, none of the answers I had given from the books I read made any sense to having a cogent view of God and life in general.
I started to read the Bible in April of 2017 as a novel from Genesis all the way to Revelation. Once I saw God was a He and a plural form of Father/Son/Holy Spirit, I was able to clearly see the nature of God, YAH, as the only One I need to worship. If there was such a Creator, an Omni-benefactor and Omni-potent being, then what good does it do to follow creations of our hands - idols, or His creations - sun or tree or cow? But I didnt know how to worhip such a God.
I started to see the nature of God revealed through my reading of Old Testament, that it was starting to make sense and was logically consistent with various perceptions and questions I had previously. It also challenged my own preconceived notion of who God was. I started to check out the historical accuracy of some of the facts in the Bible, especially, the prophets from Tanak, the events recorded and started to see the authenticity. I also checked out Dead Sea Scrolls and other scripts that confirmed the historical accuracy of some of the events and recordings. By this time, Bible also started to answer various questions and close holes in my own human understanding of suffering, death, why certain things happen, how we could have come about as people, moral living etc. I was reaffirmed by the fact that several laws that we still keep in India were referenced in Numbers, Deuteronomy and Levicticus. Hence I was convinced the God of the Bible, God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ezekial, Jeremiah and Moses as THE GOD of the Universe, that I was searching for.
I continued reading the Bible through summer of 2017.
I saw the theme of redemption, love of God for His people, the choice of a small group of people to demonstrate all of this (in Israel) play out. I saw my own inadequacies and corruptions against this. Once I understood the Law (Torah), I knew I could never come to keep any of it, however hard I tried. It got worse when I went to New Testament, when Jesus raised the bar.
Original sin and my own fallen-ness [Genesis3:1-22], [Ezekial18:20] became crystal clear. Bible provided an entire world view and a philsophical system for me that made the most sense intellectually, spiritually and emotionally.
But I wasnt willing to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
The reason was the price of following the Son of God [Luke9:57-62], [Matthew16:25-26] and [Philippians3:7-9]. My biggest predicament was the potential loss of my parents and my Indian family as well as potentially hurting them, given all that I have put them through in the past. This was very hard for me to reconcile. I love my parents and my sister and the potential loss of that relationship was unthinkable. I also expected to be used by God as He calls me to do His Will, which might be something I could not say no to or ignore. When you know The Most Hight, who created the universe and knows everything before it happens, calls you to do something, you better do it, if you have given your life to Him, right?
Hence I sat on the fence in coming to accept Jesus as my Master, eventhough I accepted these facts - The Bible, Jesus Christ as the Savior sent by God the Father to take on our sins: so He can impute His righteousness to us, so we can be reconciled with God.
Towards mid summer of 2017, when I was fully convicted by the Truth, I assessed the cost of loosing my relationship with my parents and my friends/relative and decided to follow Jesus. I fell on my face, repented, asked God to forgive my sins and make me righteous clothed in His righteousness, by accepting Jesus Christ as my Master, my Lord and Savior of my life. My best deeds are but filthy rags and only the substitutionary atonement offered by the sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, will get me into the presence of the Lord of the Universe, the One True God - YHWH of the Bible. How can I not want it when I have been wanting to build a closer relationship with the God of the Universe, ever since I was a young boy?
I was baptized in the Spirit that week in July (10-14) 2017 and by immersion in the Gulf on April 1 2018 (on Easter Sunday).
You can also see the video excerpt of my testimony on GBC Facebook page
There is a much larger background to this brief synopsis around various aspects of my faith that I came to a better understanding through reading the Bible, which will have to wait for a longer post. Similarly, the journey of my faith, growing in the Lord Jesus, the aftermath of my conversion, fruits of the Spirit and other details to follow in various other posts...