TESTIMONIES

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I would like to share my testimony with you because Jesus has blessed my family and I very abundantly. He has saved my life and brought me from eternal death to life. I am constantly amazed by what He has done for me, and is doing, even though I am undeserving. I have come to realise that it is only by God’s grace that we are chosen to be able to believe in Jesus (the living son of God) and accept his word (the bible). It is by nothing I have done but by God’s grace alone that I am saved. ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works.’ (Ephesians 2:8-9)

My testimony revolves around 3 major miracles that Jesus has done in my family, that has made me realise that He is alive and the Son of God, two (miracles) of which I was apart of.

Miracle 1:  (My Hindu great grandmother seeing Jesus)

My mum was born into a Hindu family, and became a Christian at 19 years of age, when she went on a Christian camp after her HSC. The only reason she went on that camp was because it was the cheapest camp at that time, and she wanted a break after doing her exams (Jesus works in great and mysterious ways). After becoming a Christian, Jesus gave her the boldness to preach to her grandmother about what Jesus has done for us. Her grandmother shouted at her, saying ‘who are you to tell me about God! You are just a little child, inexperienced; I have been on this earth for many years!’ But my mum just kept on trying to share the gospel with her grandmother, who kept all the Hindu god’s on her dressing table.

Two years before my great grandmother died, she became ill and couldn’t speak anymore. She could only communicate with groans and pointing. However, a couple of months before she passed away, an amazing thing happened. She had a dream in which she saw Jesus coming towards her. She asked Him ‘Is it time for me to come with you Jesus? He replied ‘not yet my child’.

How did my mum know this? Because that is what her grandmother told her- all of a sudden, she was able to speak, just for a moment, and that is what she said.  

Miracle 2: (My birth in New York in 1986)

After the riots of 1983 in Sri lanka, my parents went as students to USA. They had been told by doctors in Srilanka and the UK that they could never have children, and this brought great sorrow to my parents. My mum fought with God saying, ‘You’ve taken me away from my homeland Lord, away from my loved ones. I have none of my own family here, and now you don’t want me to have children. As Christians you want us to have a good life father, and I just can’t accept that you won’t give me children Lord.’ (she said something along those lines) But in September of 1985, all of a sudden, my mum had this feeling that she was going to fall pregnant. Everyone thought she was going a bit crazy, including my dad. He thought she must be really homesick for Srilanka and was thinking about sending her back there for a holiday to see her mum and sister for a couple of weeks while he continued with his MBA. However at the same time, my parent’s niece in Canada (who was only 3 years at the time) had a strange dream. She dreamt that my mum and dad would come to visit them, and when they got off the plane in Toronto, they had a little baby in a pram with them. When my mum was told about this dream, she asked her niece (my cousin) ‘Naomi, was it a little boy or a girl that we brought in the pram when we came to see you’. Her niece replied, ‘I would have liked it to have been a girl, but my uncle and aunt brought a boy.’

Two weeks later, the doctors told my mum that she in fact didn’t have Irritable Bowel Syndrome as they had previously thought, but that she was indeed pregnant, with me, a baby boy, against all the odds, 8 years after they were married. Praise be to the Lord!!!!

Miracle 3: (Fire in New York)

On a cold Winter’s night in March of 1986, a married couple lay asleep in the attic of a three storey house. The wife wakes up to the smell of what she thinks is smoke, and motions to awaken the husband from his quiet slumber. He, who would normally ask a few questions before responding, for some strange reason this night, just grabbed their document bag, took his wife’s hand (who was 3 months pregnant at the time) and ran down the stairs to the floor below without asking any questions. The wife upon seeing the smoke and flames ran back up the stairs and a wall of fire separated them.  The wife pregnant with her firstborn is unable to walk through that wall of flames to rejoin her husband. She runs back up to the 3rd floor, suffocated by the smoke and stands near the window. The husband not knowing what to do next, runs through the flaming wall of fire which singes his hair and eyebrows. He manages to get to the 2nd floor window, (which he is only able to break because he has the document bag in his hand) and climbs out onto the ledge which measures 30cm wide. He looks up and sees his wife hanging out of the window above and asks her to jump. He realises the only way they are going to survive is to put their trust in Jesus. She lets go and falls towards the 2nd floor ledge window where he grabs her. They both then jump down towards the snow covered ground below. A bystander seeing what has unfolded manages to get underneath the falling wife and helps break her fall before they hit the snow. The husband jumped next. They had made it. That married couple were my parents, and I was the little baby in my mother’s stomach at the time. 4 people died that evening, people who lived on the first and second floors of that 3 storey house. They died trying to warn the others about the fire. By all rights, it should have been my parents, who were living in the attic on the 3rd floor of that house with just a small window, who should have died. But someone from above was looking after my family. For some reason, Jesus didn’t want my parents to die that night. For some reason, Jesus wanted me to survive and be born, and that’s how I know that Jesus has a plan for me, and I intend to live out my life according to his will. 

When I look at the world around me, the way it has been so intricately made: the ocean waters only coming so far inland and then receding so amazingly, the millions of trees that just sprung up in the forests of the world, the countless stars in the sky, and the greatest creation of all, us humans (the way our bodies are so magnificently put together), I just know that this couldn’t have been random; there has to be a higher power involved. I have come to know that there is a God (the one and only) who created the heavens and the earth, one who is perfect and loving but He also requires Justice.  Because of my wrongdoings, I could never be good enough to have a relationship with our creator. Justice demands that we deserve punishment for the wrong we do and I deserved death (separation from God our creator in hell for eternity).

But when I heard that the one true living God loves you and I so much, that He sent His one and only Son Jesus to this earth to die on the cross, to take my punishment, your punishment and all human’s punishment that we deserved for letting God down, this brought me so much happiness. And death could not hold Him down!! Jesus was raised from the dead after 3 days and is now seated at the right hand of God our creator where He intercedes for those who put their trust in Him and has given us a hope for eternity, that we too may not die in our wrongdoings but live with Him for eternity!! To know Jesus (the one true living Son of God) has paid the price for me, so that I can spend eternity with my creator, God…..this has changed my life.

Looking back on the time before I came to actually have a personal relationship with my Lord and Saviour Jesus, at about 15 years of age, I can’t believe some of the bad things I did as a person. But now I realise that becoming a child of God means putting to death my old selfish, evil ways, and coming up a new person in Christ Jesus just as it says in Romans 6:1-14 (the bible).

From the miracles He has done is my life, I know that Jesus lives. That He is the only way, truth and life and hope for eternity.

Now I want to live to please my Saviour (the one who has saved me)….Jesus.

I pray that you would give your whole hearts to Jesus, repent of your sins and turn to Him before it is too late. His second coming is near. Tomorrow could be too late. May Jesus bless you and reveal Himself to you!

By Sam Karu