Today, instead of freewriting, I am
trying to do free talking. I have set my timer to 20 minutes and my recording
program is also recording whatever I am talking about. Next to that, the
notepad is also typing the same things about which I am talking.
Yesterday we had a 10-minute
experimental session, and it did not work out well.
At first, I had created it through
typing, and with that, I could correct it and put it back as a blog post.
Now I will keep talking. When I talk,
the notepad will keep typing it with no punctuation. Everything else will just
keep going ahead. I will stop all the things and first I will compare what I
have typed with what I have recorded.
This will help me make sure that what
I have recorded is the same thing that I have typed, is the same thing about
what I have talked about. So, this will help me correct things.
Then, after that, I will enter
whatever I have collected in a notepad. I will take it to Scrivener and keep
that as raw data. Then after that, I will make a copy of the raw data and I
will edit that to make sure what is in and what is being edited is the same
thing that I have spoken about.
So now again I see the notepad had
stopped, so I restarted the recording on the notepad. If you talk beyond a
certain speed, notepad also cannot keep up with it, so I must talk at the same
speed.
Now let us come to the actual
content.
My goal today is to see how I came to
know God. This is a larger topic. Let me see how I am organized and if I can
keep dictating to it without losing my thoughts. I must ensure that the notepad
is going ahead without losing things.
Okay, let us come back to what my
topic is. How I came to know God.
I was born into a Christian family.
Even though I was born into a Christian family, in our family, we did not have
any bible related activities or anything like that in our home.
And there was another problem. There
was no church nearby. You need to take a hired taxi to go to church and, in
those days, it was not even easy to arrange for such a taxi. So, we went to
church, which was about 7 miles away from our house. On a couple of occasions,
when I was a teenager, I remember walking to the church from home and back with
my father. So that is how it was.
We were staying in a tea estate, and
my parents enrolled me in a school with hostel facilities. In that school where
I was studying, we used to have an assembly every morning, and then in the
assembly, the principal used to say some brief Christian message.
At that early age, it was difficult
for me to understand what was being talked about. During my younger days, I had
no introduction or anything else to do with Christianity. I was studying my
Pre-University Course in Sankarankovil, where I started going to church every
Sunday because my relatives insisted I do it. I went to church every Sunday as
a part of routine things, yet I learned nothing.
When I got into IIT, something
changed, something different was there within me. When I was studying at IIT,
in time I came to know about an uncle of mine, Dr. Xavier Ponnaiya. He used to
invite me for lunch at his house.
So, what I would do is, I will first
go to the church that he was attending. Then, after church, I would go with him
to his house. So, this way of Sunday became a routine for me. My first thought
about these deeper things came into my life only then. I would discuss with my
uncle these religious things about the message that I heard in the church. Some
deeper thoughts used to come into my mind then.
Later, after passing out, I came to
Delhi for employment. In Delhi after a couple of weeks, I started attending a
Tamil church that was around. As I had come from Tamil Nadu, I had no other
place to find Tamil friends. That was how I started. And I also came to know
that another uncle of mine, Michael Ponrathnam, attended that Church. He
introduced me to the church. Through him, I started going to the church.
And there again I used to go to the
church, and after church go to his house for lunch, sometimes with him and go
back to my room in the evening. It was the first time I started regular church
attendance. Until that time, I had no regular church attendance.
Then later I got married in the same
church. After marriage, we started regular church service attendance because my
wife was very particular about going to church every Sunday, even though I had
no such needs then.
Later, I started attending Delhi
Bible Fellowship as well. Somebody introduced me to the Delhi Bible fellowship.
In the morning I will go to the Tamil Church and in the evening, I used to go
to Delhi Bible Fellowship. In Delhi Bible Fellowship, we used to have in the
evening a one-hour study called Bible Hour. It was there I came to know more
about the deeper truths of the Bible. One Dr. Ramesh Richard, who graduated
from Dallas Theological Seminary, taught this. These messages appealed to me a
lot, and that I have liked them.
Somewhere around this time, Dr.
Samuel Kamaleson came on evangelistic work to Delhi. For some time in one week,
he was preaching and teaching in our Cathedral Church Parish Hall in the
evening. And in that week, he was teaching in the Cathedral Church Parish Hall.
From Dr. Samuel Kamaleson, I came to know even deeper truths. I still remember
his teaching Psalm 139 last two verses where he talked about “Search me, O
God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalms 139:23-24)
After that, Delhi Bible Fellowship
organized a citywide campaign. Dr. Samuel Kamaleson again spoke on the citywide
campaign. One evening I went with my wife, and I remember my mother-in-law was
also there with us. On that campaign somehow, Dr. Samuel Kamaleson’s words touched
me deep in my inner self and when he made the altar call, I went forward. Until
that time, I did not know deeper things. At that altar call, I learned a couple
of things about my need for a God. I thought I was responding to the altar call
by my will. But one counselor, Sudhir, reminded me I did not come on my own,
but God had called me and that was why I got attracted and I went forward.
After my altar call protocols were
over, I realized my wife also had come forward. She had met with some other
counselor. After such altar calls, an organization like Delhi Bible Fellowship
would track the people who have come forward and follow it up with them. For
some unknown reason, Delhi Bible Fellowship never followed it up with us.
Thereafter, we went back to our normal way of normal Christianity and that was
it.
Long after that, I had forgotten all
about Dr. Samuel Kamaleson’s teachings. I was back into my normal routine
things. Many years later, when I was browsing through the TV channels, they had
God TV on our cable network. Now there was a deep spiritual thirst within me,
and I started watching on God TV and watched all important programs. I used to
watch all the programs on God TV’s channel. It was here I learned
what the Bible is and what it teaches and things like that.
And at some point, in time, I had one
experience with God who kept on hammering into my heart the word “The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah
17:9) That is where I got to know the sinful nature of man. God hammered it
strong into my heart. I later found out that it is the sinful nature of man
that causes all evil things.
Soon I learned more about what the
Bible teaches. Even though I was never a serious bible student, I learned a lot
through the people I was listening to on God TV. Andrew Wommack was one of my
favorites then. I used to buy his CDs and listen to them. The other people were
Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Keith Moore, Creflo Dollar, and many more.
From their teaching, I have written a couple of blog posts from time to time
depending on my thoughts then. Other than that, I never went into anything else
deeper.
After one year of my marriage or so,
I even left Delhi Bible Fellowship because family responsibility became more
after the birth of our daughter. Before that, at Delhi Bible Fellowship, I
listened to one message which said that I should root myself where God has
planted me. That Delhi Bible Fellowship message said to me I need not move to
Delhi Bible Fellowship, but I can continue to be with Cathedral and be fruitful
there. So, after that, my spiritual life continued with Cathedral.
My true spiritual care for growth
came from the TV and later from the Internet. When Internet technologies
improved and speed improved, I used to read on the Internet or watch videos on
the Internet.
I have not organized my thoughts
today and there are a lot of repetitions. There are a lot of other things, but
let me see how, from this material that I have talked about, I must figure out
how much of it is there, how much I altered it? The notepad seems to get broken
from time to time. So, I’m
speaking faster than I need to speak. Though the recording is going on, the
notepad has not caught it up.
I will have terrible work to read all that,
listen to the recording, and verify notepad contents. Let me see how much of
all thoughts I can get into this document, and later let me see how much I can
understand it.
Since this is the first time I am
recording through voice, I do not know what the mistakes are that I am making.
The next time I will be better, more prepared, and better organized with my
thoughts a little better. I will then be able to talk about it more clearly. I have
another about 30 seconds of dictation time. Let me see how this material comes
out. This is again an experiment, so I may publish nothing because this is an
experiment.
Next time around I think, I will do
better.
