How the Lord can Work in a Five-Year-Old Heart

by brother John

I was born into a religious family in southern India. I speak Tamil. My father took me to the Temples where he worshipped his gods. I didn’t realize it was the LORD working in my little five-year-old heart and mind, but my father’s gods never made sense to me. Some were very ugly with many arms. Some were threatening with their swords. As I heard my father make his requests when I was four and five years old, I observed that his gods never did anything for him. The idols were made by men. They stood still. I thought the gods were the same. They were silent and did nothing.

When I was five, I earnestly prayed out in the open air, not near an idol, “I want to know the true God!”

Soon after that, I was in a home that had pictures on the walls of the great Indian leaders like Gandhi and Nehru. In the center of the row of pictures, there was a very strange picture. It troubled me that this stranger was included in the pictures, and why in the centre? He was on a cross being punished. I thought, “Why would anyone have a picture of a criminal alongside the great leaders of India? What kind of leader is that? What crimes has he done to be punished like that?”

Again, I did not recognize how the one and only true and living God works quietly in a little boy’s heart and mind to help him think correctly about the LORD. After some time thinking about this strange man on a cross, I asked the owners of the home about the picture. “Who is this? Why do you have this picture in the centre of the great leaders of India? What did he do to be punished so severely?”

The husband and wife sat down with me and spoke very kindly to me. To my great amazement, they started to explain the picture by saying the true God had sent his Son to earth! “The true God? These people are going to tell me about the true God? That’s who I want to know!” They patiently explained that God’s Son had done no wrong. They read from their Holy Book how Jesus did many miracles of goodness for people. They explained that the leaders of Israel didn’t believe Jesus was sent from God to tell us the truth about God. That is why the best man who ever lived on earth ended up being killed as the worst man on earth.

The reason this man and woman had placed Jesus in the centre of the pictures was that he was actually the King of kings and the Lord over all leaders in the world. He was the greatest leader ever because instead of ruling over people like every other leader did, he gave himself in love for his Father to die for all the wrongs everyone else had done. I was correct that great wrong had been done to be punished like Jesus in the picture, but I was not correct to think that Jesus was the one who had done wrong.

I was shocked as I looked at the picture with new understanding. My little heart and mind said, “The true God should be very different than all my father’s gods. Don’t reject what they are saying from the Holy Book just because the true God is so different from what other people think about the gods. The LORD they speak about is a holy, pure and all-powerful God. If Jesus is the Son of God who came to die as the punishment for all the wrongs of all people, then the LORD is also an extremely loving God, not at all like other gods.

As I sat there, my little heart cried out, “I want to know the true God! I want to know you, LORD! I believe everything these people have said from the Holy Book! I believe Jesus is the Son of the one true God! I believe Jesus died because of the wrongs I have done. I believe what these people say from the Book, that Jesus will save me if I ask Him. LORD, save me. I want you!”

In the next few years, my father, mother and brother came to believe in Jesus like I did. My father got rid of his idols. Now when my father had big needs and asked for help from the LORD, he got help! The LORD showed that He was the living God.

Today, I have moved far up north in India because millions and millions of Indian people up north are deceived and going to hell. It has been a great challenge to learn another language so I can tell people about the true God and his amazing Son. Some people don’t like what I tell them, but others do and believe in Jesus. The LORD powerfully taught me when he called me to go north, “Saving people is my work. Your concern is to properly tell them the truth from my Holy Book about Me and my Son.”