I moved round Australia looking for truth in other religions. Eastern religions were very popular amongst young people I associated with. I practiced meditation as the Indian people do, but I never could bring myself to focus my thoughts on Indian Gods as they do. One day I was in this state of mind of calm ‘nothingness’, and felt myself in the face of a great light, like on a border of darkness to light like the sun. The light was inviting me over. It said “Come over, give yourself to me”. But a fear came over me in a thought that I would be giving my soul over to Satan if I were to go past this point. I snapped quickly out of this state of mind and never practiced it again.
I saw an emptiness in the lifestyle people around me were living. My search went on. At night I would sometimes stay up for hours gazing at the stars and moon, trying to reach out to God through playing music, singing, asking Him to reveal Himself to me, and show me which way to go. I felt if I asked long enough and hard enough He would lead me to truth, and he would bring things about that I would know the steps I was taking would be in the right direction. The suggestion was made to me three times by different people that I should go to New Zealand, I was convinced and am still, that this was God’s leading, when the third offered a lift right from my door with some friends bound for Sydney, from where I could fly over.
When I walked on the airplane a strong feeling came over me with the thought that I would never return to Australia. I had burned all my previous bridges behind me and this was my next. My life was to get worse before I would find the truth. I began to feel totally lost and undone before God with no hope, till finally the Lord brought me to the crossroads and asked me in a clear plain voice in my head. “Which way do you choose? That way, or my way?” The picture was clear. A continued life of sin and darkness where I knew I was only deteriorating in, or the life of good and truth. It was my choice. I determined then and there for the way of truth and walked right out off the road of the devil out of the place I was in.
Now I was stranded on a street with nothing; neither friend nor money. I said to the Lord “What now, Lord”. Immediately two girls stopped in front of me and preached to me the gospel of Christ. I wanted what they had with all my heart. I saw myself as most unworthy; filthy and sinful, but I wanted this truth and to be clean. I felt like the leper before Jesus. I was shivering with cold, and had a feverish head-ache while they spoke to me. I saw and felt myself being lifted up in a strange vehicle, with only a few other passengers, two of them being the girls speaking to me. This vehicle appeared to be very plain and old fashioned on the outside, but somehow sensed it to be made of some very valuable metal underneath, like gold; and I looked down on the place where I had been standing, in the city square, and saw it as a mad circus that I had been very much a part of. I felt very unworthy. Then I was back in reality. One girl gave me her coat. I forgot my head-ache while they took me to their home. They talked to me till nearly morning but I needed no more convincing.
I had counted the cost; my independence, family, my own will. Within the week I was baptized a born again Christian. I’ve never once since doubted that this is the true Church of God and that it was God’s leading that brought me here, and here it is He wants me to stay.
Next I phoned my parents. They were apprehensive, worried that I had joined a sect. I tried to tell my mother how wrong the Catholic Church is. She argued in its defense and still does, maintaining that a few bad things or ‘popes’ don’t make it all bad. She stuck to her beliefs; her idols of Mary. When I talked to my grandmother, she was furious. She said Jesus Christ came as a peacemaker, not to divide families. She slammed the phone down. My other relatives were also angry. One sister never wanted to hear from me, because I told her she was living a wrong life, and Jesus was the way of truth.
But against my family I had made my choice. I would lose them, but Christ meant everything. God blessed me a hundred fold with brethren that were my family now. He also gave me a husband Three years later. My parents visited me after the birth of my first child. Then they could see that I had a better life here in this church. But my mother never could let go of her Catholic faith. My father saw that Hopeful had become a father to me as he had never been himself. I think he envied him. But though I’ve tried to warn him of hell and eternal damnation, he always just brushed it off like water off a duck’s back, not allowing it to penetrate his conscience any deeper. Conversations over the phone have never gone far on the spiritual line, and another visit from my mother and sister, proved my mother unmoved from her Catholic faith, and my sister utterly worldly. I have had several visits from another sister from overseas, who at first seemed to be totally ignorant of the truth, but now though she has heard it, she is just too settled in her lifestyle to want to change. I feel sorry for them; they don’t know what they are missing out on. But these are no longer my brethren, though some have tried to think they still are family. We have nothing in common while they do not want Jesus.
The truth is precious to me, and I cannot let it go for family, possessions, independence, or any of the world, come what may. I am determined that nothing shall separate me from the love of God. I will obtain my crown in Glory.