My name is Pushpa and I was born in a Punjabi family residing in Faridabad. Our family had migrated in 1947 partition of India from Multan in Pakistan to Faridabad in Haryana, India.
From the beginning I was of a religious nature and used to keep fasts. It was in 1984 when I was in class 8th, I had gone to meet a friend of mine but she was not at home. My friend’s mother asked me to come and be with her for some time with the intention to share about Lord Jesus with me. She asked me if she could pray with me, and I consented. Her prayer seemed odd to me because she was praying with her eyes closed and had nothing in front of her to pray to, I found this very difficult to understand. But all that she told me about Lord Jesus I believed with a simple faith. When I came home, I shared all of this with my elder sister, since being the youngest in the family I used to share everything with her.
One Sunday morning, my friend’s mother took me and my two sisters to God’s house for worship. There we heard about the love of Lord Jesus from a servant of God, that day itself me and my two sisters accepted the Lord Jesus as our personal savior and from then on we also started to read God’s Word. In the neighborhood where we resided, some Believer sisters used to gather once a week for prayer and we also got the opportunity to go there. In that prayer meeting, all of the ladies would open their Bibles and share what God had spoken to them. But I could not understand how God talks with them? When I asked a lady about this, she explained to me what it meant and how God talks, so I also started to pray, “Lord please talk with me too and forgive all my sins.” Once, while I was reading God’s Word, I came across a verse – Isaiah 44:22 – “I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, And like a cloud, your sins. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” I felt very good after reading this and for the first time I realized God had spoken to me. Since then I started to live in the fear of God every day of my life. I was now certain that my sins had been forgiven and I was afraid of doing anything sinful in Lord’s sight.
I remember an incidence; there used to be a fair in our locality. I had gone to the fair and I stole a mirror from one of the shops put up there. When I reached home, I became very restless within and I realized that I should not have stolen, so I decided to return that mirror back to the shop-owner. But what worried me was that when I return the mirror, the shop-owner will give me a thrashing for stealing from his shop. So I thought that like I had slyly picked it up, similarly I will also put it back in the shop. But the Lord did not allow it to happen so, and I went and confessed to the shop-owner what I had done, apologized to him and returned the mirror. He was very happy to learn that there are children in the world today who come to return what they have stolen. On another occasion, I had a quarrel with a lady. Though I was not at fault, I still went and apologized to her. Seeing all this, my parents did not prevent us from going to the worship meetings on Sundays, since they realized that their children were not doing any wrong things in their lives.
So I kept attending the fellowship of Lord’s people and we also started to understand some of the things that we learnt there. There we had been told that if we fasted and prayed for something to the Lord, He surely listens and answers the prayers. In another incidence, my class 9th results were due to come and I knew that I had not answered one question paper well and I was afraid that I might fail. So I decided, I will not go to the school to collect my report card till the Lord assured me of my result and I sat at the Lord’s feet in fasting for this. I kept on fasting and praying to the Lord about it, and the Lord one day assured me of my success through a verse from the Psalms. Believing and trusting through that verse that the Lord will give me success, I left home to go to the school to collect my report card. While I was on my way to the school, I came to know that not only have I passed, but passed with very good marks. Then and there I thanked the Lord. Similarly through many other little-little things the Lord continued to increase my faith.
After this, my faith began to be actually tested by my family. When I refused to participate in the traditions and practices of our family, my father who was very stern by nature imposed many restrictions upon me. He felt that since my elder sister was no longer under his control, he will in no way allow me – the younger to do the same. Since my other sister and my brother did not want to offend my parents, so they stopped going to the Sunday worship and other meetings of the assembly. Since my elder sister was working, so after her days work she would directly go to the meetings from the workplace itself, but my going was being prevented. I was always on the lookout for occasions and whenever there was an opportunity to go to the market, I would go to the meetings from the market; while doing this I was caught many a times, but my Lord never forsook me. Whenever there was a festival, knowing that our father would try to force us to fulfill the religious obligations, myself and my sister would both go and hide in the toilets. Many times I was even thrashed for my stand. One day, while thrashing me, my father asked, “Will you still follow your sister’s footsteps?” I don’t know how I did it, but I answered, “I will not follow my sister but will follow my Lord.”
After that came the issue of my sister’s marriage. She was determined to marry only a believer but my father was not willing for this. We kept on praying and somehow after some time he agreed to her marrying a believer. This was a unique event for our family and my father had to face the ire of the community for his consenting to do so. Though with an unwilling heart, yet he married off my sister to a believer. Her husband had a very friendly nature and because of this my father’s behavior towards me also softened. After four years of marriage, my sister’s husband passed away, my father was very dejected. He asked me to go and be with my sister and help her over the weekends. This also provided me the opportunity to go the Sunday worship services in the Lord’s house.
After this my father started to ask my sister about my marriage, and thanks be to the Lord that I too could marry a believer in 1997. My husband is always committed to the Lord’s work at all times even at odd times. After my marriage, the Lord has blessed me not only with spiritual blessings, but all kinds of blessings. The Lord has given us a daughter and a son as His blessings and I thank the Lord for all that He has done for me. Despite all this, if ever I feel myself to be alone, the assuring presence of the Lord and His peace, which is beyond words, fills me. Many times I have doubted my Lord, but He has never left me alone. He has always remained good to me. The Lord be thanked, that I who was not His daughter, he picked me out of this world and made me His daughter.
- Pushpa, Faridabad, Haryana.
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