Alive In Christ Testimony of
Thenmozhi Aniyan the middle of the night, I woke up from the bed with fear, trembling, shivering, sweating and looking around while others were sleeping peacefully. Yes, that was the night I heard the voice of The Living God three times, hearing “your faith will save you.” It happened sixteen years ago, in 2003, and it was the turning point in my life. I knew nothing about Jesus except knowing that he is a god of the Christians sinceI was born and brought up in an Orthodox Hindu family. The place where I grew up is a village, where only Hindus live and we had no access to Christianity and Christianity had no access to our village. My forefathers only built the temples in our village. We were very spiritual and worshipped our gods faithfully. I was brought up well. I had never felt that I was a sinner and I needed a Saviour. I never realized the importance of knowing Jesus Christ.But God has his own way to reveal Himself to his chosen ones. In His time, He brought me out of my village with a divine purpose.While I was searching for a job after my graduation, my cousin who married a Christian and got converted to the Christian faith invited me to stay with them and search for a job. So my parents sent me there but my relatives and friends warned me not to go there as Christians would convert others to their faith. So I was very careful and strong in my faith. I used to be alone and chant mantras and offer prayers when they had family prayer. As time passed, they slowly started talking about Jesus Christ and some students from the nearby Bible Collegeused to visit me and share the gospel with me. I didn't like it. I used to argue with them and defend my faith. It was our practice that every morning after having a shower, I used to chant mantras and offer prayers to our god. Butone morning as usual, when I sat to chant mantras I could not do it and I was verydisturbed.I became disappointed in my religious life as something was troubling me and for the first time I felt unsatisfied. One midnight while I was in deep sleep, as I stated in
In
Kingdom Perspectives | March-April 2020
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the beginning, I heard a voice saying, “your faith will save you” and the voice was very clear and I heard it three times. I never had such an experience and had no idea what was happening. The next morning, I shared it with my cousin and she told me that it was the voice of God and she suggested me to read the Bible.I never heard that our gods speak to people through dreams or visions but when I realized that the god of Christians speak to people through dreams and visions, I became so curious to know about him and started to read the Bible. I started reading the Gospels and there I encountered Jesus who came to the world to save the people from sin. I started to make sense of what my cousin and the Bible college students were sharing with me about Jesus.I got convinced that I was a sinner and only through faith I would be saved by His grace.The Gospels introduced Jesus not as the god of Christians but as the Saviour of the world. I felt delivered from a system which kept us blind towards the reality of sin and eternal death. My eyes were opened to see the sinfulness of the human heart and the need to be saved. I sensed that I was lost but was found by Jesus and experienced the peace of God Which I cannot explain in words but started enjoying the inexpressible joy of being found by Jesus. As I have found a new identity in Christ and felt belonging to a new family of God, my heart grieved for my parents and siblings who continued to follow the worthless system which offered nothing more than a sense of fear, hopelessness, and disappointment. But they were content with their age old religious system and were dead against my newly found faith in Jesus. My mother was upset that I stopped doing pujas and renounced all the systems we were following for generations. What they had feared has happened that I became a follower of Jesus Christ. My relatives suggested to get me out of the Christian environment, but by that time I got a job in the Bible college which they did not want me to lose. The options before me
