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Encountering God

Hemanth grew up in the Southern part of India. He was born into a Hindu family. Though it was expected of him that he would also blindly follow the religion of his ancestors: Hemanth’s story turned out quite different.
 

Looking for God
Hemanth always had a lot of questions and was not convinced that the faith of his ancestors was something he agreed with. He found that Hindu faith was mainly focused on karma and that the Hindu gods are loving but, also angry and destructive. From his desire to get more answers; he went out on a journey to discover what he believed about God.
“I was always interested in Christianity because of the way Christians love unconditionally. It seems like most people look for reasons to hate and judge and the Christians I knew where not like that. I was always curious but in India; Christians cannot express their faith freely. If they would, they were in danger of being attacked. When I came to the Netherlands to study I was able to ask my questions and learn more about the Christian faith.”
 

The Word is active and alive
“While studying here, I met Luc. He was a Christian and I started to ask him questions about the bible. We started studying the bible together. I was very happy to discover more about it but it felt more like stories to me; like a grandmother telling stories to a baby. I felt like i was missing certain answers so I went to Alpha to learn more. In that period God started to show himself to me. I began to experience His presence in my life. I believe He was always there but this was a new experience. Reading the bible also changed. It went from stories to something that was alive. It is like it says in Hebrews 4:12: ‘The Word of God is active and alive.’. When God revealed himself; everything changed. The Bible is the only book in the world that speaks back to you.
 

Dreams from God
Hemanth describes around that time he also started to have dreams. One dream in particular had a lot of impact in his search for God. “I had a dream in which i saw a disaster. I was in the middle of a disastrous place and I was surrounded by dead bones. Then I saw a bright light, it was so bright that I could not look into it. Then the bones came together and became a skeleton. Then the muscle and the skin came on the skeletons and they came alive. After that they sat on their knees. I had the same dream the next day and I thought God was maybe trying to tell me something. I told my friend about the dream and he told me it was similar to Ezekiel 37. I don’t know exactly what it means but I thought maybe God wanted me to prophesy as well. In my journey of discovering prayer and prophesy I had a very special encounter. I was praying for a couple and saw darkness around them. Then I saw a small person carrying a very bright light. I felt this small person would guide them out of the darkness. When I told the couple, they started crying and told me they were pregnant and they were not sure if they wanted to keep the baby. Afterwards they decided to keep the baby.


The change
Though Hemanth is very grateful for his encounters with God and the peace that he has found in Jesus, life is still challenging. He describes: “I still struggle with certain things and I don’t know how to tell my parents that I became a Christian. But my struggle is getting simpler because God is helping me. I got baptized and I got a job in the Netherlands. I feel like God is putting things into place. I see light ahead!”

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