Thursday, September 4, 2008

My Conversion Experience

I was born into a Mar Thomite family. My father's name is Thottukadavil Ittyipe George belonging to the Chiramel family and my mother name is Gracy George hailing from the Varampathu family.

My first real contact with the gospel of Jesus Christ was when an Englishman came to visit us at our home in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa. When he spoke about Jesus Christ, for the first time in my life I realized that being born with a christian name did not make me a christian. Indeed, I needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Thus started my quest to come into a living relationship with Jesus. Though this Englishman, by the name of Mr. Clark, came and took bible studies in our house during the days when my father was alive and even after he expired, the Englishman's bible studies did not seem to make an impact in me.

We had to then come over to India and in the ensuing years I continued my journey in worldly lines with the desires of any young teeenager of wanting to be rich, to have a beautiful wife, and enjoy life at its fullness and I continued in my own way in those lines.

However, it was during my college years, when things were not turning the way I wanted it to that a realization came that somewhere and somehow I was taking a downhill trip in life rather than upward. It was perhaps at that time that God decided that I needed to come face to face with Him.

It took place at a prayer meeting conducted by some catholic lay persons along with some devout catholic nuns in a hospital chapel. It was then that I came into my first encounter with God. As these devout people were praising God in songs and then later in praise and worship that I felt a beautiful presence enter that hall. It was so calm, so peaceful, like the experience of a gentle breeze and yet in an inexplicable way it was the feeling of coming in contact with a person who was Spirit. Thus, the first time, I came into the experience of the existence of a living God. It was the experience of facing the holiness of God and it felt like the Spirit of God and I were looking at each other face to face, although no figure or form was seen and that was the time I realized God's holy against my sinfulness and the need for a salvation experience. No power of human words can describe the reality of that experience though I have tried so to the best of my ability.

It was after that I came into a living relationship with Jesus. From that time on, through a series of different experiences, that I came to experience a change in my life in that I began to love the things of God like reading the word of God, desiring to pray, and witness to what God had done in my life. This I did with another catholic friend by the name of Chandru Dassappa.

Thus, started my journey into the christian faith, a journey that has taken many twists and turns, a journey that has had more downs than ups because of my own unfaithfulness to keep up to God call, a journey of always striving to attain the holiness of God , more often than not failing. However, it is by the infinite grace of God that I have continued in that journey to where I am now.