I grew up in a non-Christian home and never stepped into a church the first 16 years of my life. I used to pick fights and argue with many other Christians. I hated how people were really hypocritical and unable to explain the reason for why they believed in Jesus. My perspective changed though when my older brother became a Christian in his last year in school. I had always respected and looked up to my brother; he was smart, hard-working and a truly kind person. He started to share the gospel with me whenever he had the opportunity. Arguing with him was not the same as with other people. He had responses to my objections and his life was one where I could clearly see how the gospel had affected his life. Something was different with him. After a certain point when I had argued with him every single day for a week, I had to sit down and really think about what I was arguing.
I realized that I wanted to believe the gospel. I so badly wanted to know that there was a guarantee, that there was a promise on this earth. The gospel I heard from my brother was that if I believe in Jesus, then Jesus will guarantee my way into heaven. My own beliefs led me to believe that I had to be a good person to go to heaven. How good was good enough though? I could never find the answer to that question over the years. Instead I was told about Jesus, who came so that no matter how good I am, that trusting in Jesus would make me more than good enough to be secure in my life. I started to question what I was fighting and arguing for? I was fighting for a life of constant worry and not knowing where my soul was going to end up for eternity. When I realized this I desperately sought to learn more about Jesus and to find proof of whether he was real or not.
How was I supposed to know if Jesus was real? I searched for proof and when I looked I found so many different things. Just a small part of it is that the body of Jesus has never been found, proving his resurrection and power over death, over 400 prophecies made hundreds of years before Jesus was born were fulfilled through his life and death on the cross and the willingness of His followers to give everything, even to the point of being tortured and murdered for their faith. Everything I was looking at said this Jesus that I was being told about had to be real. What now? That’s what I had to ask myself. I had never been to a church before in the first 16 years of my life, but if Jesus is real, it’s time to get rid of my pride and start going to church and following Jesus with all my life. And that is the story of how I became a Christian and committed to this religion for the past 6 years and the foreseeable future.