MY LIFE AS A SECRET CHRISTIAN

My beginning 2 years in Christ was blossoms and anointed. In this post I will tell you how I came to know about Jesus and how difficult it was for me to survive in a Muslim family after accepting Christ as my savior. I am a 35 year old women now, its been more than 18 years I have accepted Jesus as my Lord, I still live in a Muslim family and I do namaz every morning, but my heart prays to Jesus.

I am still a secret Christian in a Muslim family.

Being brought up in an orthodox Muslim family I was a disciplined girl. Waking up early in the morning and doing namaz was a routine ritual. Since childhood I was taught to pray to Allah and I did what was told. I everyday used to ask Allah in prayer to protect our family and to bless us.

What made me search God?

It was in my teenage that I was actually seeking Allah. With tears in my eyes, every day I was waking up before everybody else in my home so I could pray in private. All I wanted was help regarding my academics. I was a mediocre always and my sister was pretty good, she was one of the toppers of class every year in school. My life started taking a turn when I saw that my father's behavior was changing. There were unreasonable grunting sort of looks, shouting at me and treating me like trash, while he was pampering my sister at the same time. This partiality killed me from inside. All of this was so harsh and cruel that I still have a very strong hold of those memories in my mind. I had to take treatment for depression because of all this. 

I still remember the day my world stopped. It was an afternoon, I came from school and I was lying on bed. Everybody assumed that I was sleeping. My house was filled with relatives. Someone asked my father why is it that you don't like your younger daughter and he replied "she's a waste, my elder daughter is going to buy me a car when she's grown up, she is capable of getting a good job and she is talented. The younger one is a waste of money to me. I'll send her in marriage, she is of no use to me".

 

I prayed a lot, I kept my faith alive though I was seeing no help was coming my way. I visited dargah (it’s like a church for Muslims where women are allowed) in my town regularly. I did every earnest prayer that was possible. 

 

How I came to know about Jesus?

 

I had a friend in college who is a Christian convert (from a Hindu background), I was casually talking to her about Jesus and she shared her experience with Jesus. One morning we were preparing for an exam, she said read this topic it's going to come in exam, I said how do you know? She replied I was praying this morning and God told me not to skip this, so it's definitely going to come in exam. I was shocked. I needed this help. She told me she has weak memory and whenever she reads a topic she goes and reads it out loud to Jesus and this helps her remember it. She often used to say "God spoke to me".

I immediately borrowed a bible and started reading it. Asked her how to pray and started doing it. The help came, but the sanctification process came first. I will write a detailed post about how Jesus helped me in my studies.

 

When I started going to church?

Two years later I met another friend through whom I visited a church for the first time and there I learnt about being born again. 

After I received Jesus as my personal savior, during worship time in church I felt God moving by my side. I experienced his touch and I was "anointed", this is what my pastor said about what I experienced. After receiving this anointing I don't know what happened to me, but I was not watching TV, I was not going to movies with friends, and all this was happening automatically.  Any music which had filthy F..... words in it I felt uneasy and I walked away from it. I was spending a lot of time reading bible and singing worship songs. It was all joyful.

Later as years passed by I was under a cloud of demonic attacks and disappointments from God. With time I grew stronger and wiser.  

 

Where I am now?

While I was searching God I worshipped every God I heard about. I tried Hindu gods as well. For years, my search for God continued and my anchor dropped in Christianity. Still today my belief that only the name of Jesus can save me and my family from the demonic powers existing on earth is rock solid and this is a fact I want my family to realize one day. You don't deny that sugar is sweet once you taste it, similarly you cannot deny the power of Jesus once you experience it. But the tragic thing is that my lack of knowledge and not knowing the power of rebuking spirits in Jesus name made me go through hell. 

Once you experience the truth there is no turning back. Never did I experience a God talking back to his believers, giving guidance and taking care of their needs. It was only in Christianity that I experienced it all. A spirit talks to you suddenly and prevents you from hitting someone on road. A spirit talks to you and asks you to do a quick prayer to prevent demonic attack coming towards you. You dream about the negative energies around you and you immediately receive guidance about how to face it. This is all the Christianity that I have experienced. Yes there is disappointment sometimes because everything I ask for is not granted, but still for this life Jesus is the God and there is no turning back.    

 

How I used to pray and the big mistake I made.

 

I learnt about prayer through my Christian friends and I was locking myself in the bathroom for hours to pray. I spent a lot of time kneeling in prayer in the bathroom. Even before knowing Jesus I could sense a power working against me always, it worked in such a way that it never allowed me to prosper or be happy. Now I was sensing another power that was working in my favor.

 

Later I learnt that prayer can be done anywhere and in anytime. I could pray walking. I could pray sitting in class. I could pray while pretending to read a book and Jesus heard.

 

One big mistake I made was I did not understand the significance of confessions and rebuking evil spirits through my mouth, out and loud. I didn't realize what I was doing. I always used to pray, ask and beg God to release me from the spirits that were attacking me. I literally begged God and I also did millions of fasting prayers without even realizing that the power is in my mouth. All I had to do was confess out loud and command evil spirits to stay away from me. I was shy to confess because I had never seen these kinds of things in Islam. By the time I understood this concept of confession and rebuking, it was late, I lost many of my precious years of life to Satan. I spent all my youth in misery.

 

 Here is my advice to you all coming from other religious backgrounds, whenever you see any disturbing spirit activity around you immediately make a confession and say, “In Jesus name I command every evil spirit to depart from me and I cancel all the demonic activity happening against me.”

You will have to wrestle with these evil forces all your life so make it a habit.

 

I choose to take it easy.

There are many women and men in my church who came to Christ from other religious backgrounds, most of them come from Hindu background. I was being taught by two such converted sisters in the church that I used to attend. They were teaching me to forsake my religion and that I have to accept Christ fully and they were motivating me to declare a war with my family. They were telling me that God will not take a stand for me unless I take a stand for God in public and I also fell to one of their extremely wrong guidance that it is like dishonoring God when I don’t attend church on every Sunday. I struggled a lot with these issues. Fell for the wrong guidance. Believed that everything that comes out of a pastor’s mouth is from God. Pastors are also humans who happen to listen to God's voice more often than people like us, but there is absolutely no need of following them blindly, have your own mind and reasoning. 

Thankfully I have a reasoning mind and I questioned my pastor a lot about all this. He is a very practical man, he guides me well.

So folks, it’s not a crime if you are not able to attend church, it’s not a crime if you choose to be a secret Christian. It’s not at all a crime to marry someone from your religion, but pray before you seek someone in marriage, listen to Gods voice, take approval and then follow. I am a happily married 35 year old women with a 3 year old kid and a loving husband. I was praying for around 5 years before I got married. I also heard this many times in church that a believer has to marry a believer and I kept thinking and became more and more worried about this because if this was to happen then my dad would kill me and then kill himself after that, but that was not Gods plan for me to marry a Christian and it is not for most of you too. I struggled a lot with this thought that I will have to marry a Christian, but God was not responding. Then one fine day God gave me a vision that whomever I marry I have to pray for him to come to Christ, by doing namaz along with him by my side every morning.  

There were some critical situations that we as a couple faced that could have broken our marriage, but I saw God holding my marriage intact.

Few years before my marriage, when my father started searching guys for me in my community, I prayed and asked God to give me a husband that loves me and not my body, someone who cares and will love me even if I put on weight and grow old with wrinkles, praise be to God, he did that for me. I used to ask God to fill my future husband with the true and pure love, I asked god to fill my future husband’s heart with love that lasts even after all the physical attraction is gone and God worked.

When I tried to confess about me receiving Jesus as my God, my father couldn’t bear it, neither could I bear his reaction to it, plus evil powers started hovering on me in full force. There was a war declared and lost. I gave up. I was being guided by the lovely church sisters that this is the time I should seek God’s anointing and that I should stay strong, be willing to suffer for God. They shared all their experiences they had during this kind of revolt with families upon accepting Christ. They endured all the beating, slapping, pulling of hair, threats of killing and it was joyful for them. They suffered all this knowing that they will be rewarded for this. They expected me to do the same. I couldn’t, really I couldn’t. Even today whenever they see me they see me like a betrayed one, like I am someone who failed God and the entire church. They consider me like someone sinful and someone worldly, not so interested in God kind of person. But the fact is I am OK. I am fine. I am still with God and God is still with me. No one in my family knows that I still worship Jesus within my heart. God is asking me to pray for the salvation of my father and I am doing it everyday.

It’s absolutely OK to take it slow and easy.

I hope this article is helpful to you, may God bless us and protect us all. AMEN.