I was brought up in a good Hindu family. We went to the temple a few times a week to pray and give offerings to the gods and eat prasaad (a fruit or a sweet that has been sacrificed to the idols). In our home, we had a small pooja room for worshiping the different gods.
In my teenage years, I became even more devout–visiting the temple every day and leading my family in each of the fasting and celebration practices that go along with each Hindu holiday.
The more devout I became, however, the more confused and discouraged I became. How could I know for sure if any of the gods were listening to my prayers? What if I was making one of the gods angry by giving sacrifices to another? And why didn’t I have peace when I was doing everything I could to serve and worship the gods?
One evening, I heard my father talking about his brother Ravi. I didn’t know my Uncle Ravi very well, but I found it very interesting that my father said that he was a Christian. “What’s a Christian?” I asked. My father told me that Christians were people that turned their backs on our Hindu traditions and celebrations and stopped worshipping god. I forgot about what my father told me until a year later when I saw Uncle Ravi at a family marriage function.
I was 18 at the time and I hadn’t forgotten what my father had told me about my uncle, the previous year. I approached Uncle Ravi and asked him if he could tell me about his god. He looked a little surprised, but told me that he followed someone called Jesus. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card with a picture of Lord Jesus on it. I asked him what Jesus was like and how to worship him. I asked him what made him decide to become a devotee of Lord Jesus instead of Krishna or Ganesh or Shiva. He was distracted by the evening’s festivities and distractedly patted me on the head and walked away without giving me any more information.
That evening, I went home and added the picture of Lord Jesus to the wall with all the pictures of the other gods. I began to pray to Lord Jesus just like I prayed to all the other gods. Every day for two weeks, I prayed to Lord Jesus along with all the other gods.
Then one day, I lit my incense and began my prayers to all of the gods and to Lord Jesus as well. I walked out of the room to get some more supplies when I heard something like a huge gust of wind blow into the pooja room. I remember thinking that the sound was strange since there are no windows in that room. When I came running in, I saw that every idol that had been standing up on the shelf had fallen to the ground and every picture that had been attached to the wall had come down…all except for the picture of Lord Jesus. In that moment, a feeling of peace flooded my heart and mind for the first time in my life. I looked at the broken idols and the fallen pictures and said out loud, “If you can’t even keep yourself up on the wall, then you are not worthy of my worship.”
From that day on, I began to seek after Lord Jesus. It took me three full months, but I finally found another believer who could teach me about Jesus. I began to read the Bible and learn about the one true God and about His Son Jesus whose power had been displayed in my very own house. I started faithfully following Jesus and was baptized. I teach Hindi to foreigners in the day and in the evenings, I teach the Bible to teenage girls in a nearby slum. I am so happy to be able to share with others what Jesus Himself shared with me —
That He truly is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.