On February 14th evening, I met a 24-year-old boy named Shridhar who is very passionate for ministry.
He comes from a poor family. He lives with his mother who is not a believer. He father, who lives in a separate house, has regular contact with and is a believer in Christ.
4 years back Shridhar was addicted to drugs and alcohol. He was also very active politically. He was struggling to get started in life, so his father got him an opportunity with his friend who owned a business. His father’s pastor would often come to the business and share the Gospel with Shridhar. Due to his lifestyle, he would smoke even when around the pastor and often strongly argued with him.
During one discussion, the pastor asked Sridhar to explain about the gods of Hinduism. He said if he could make a convincing argument for Hinduism, that he would convert from Christianity.
Sridhar started by saying they have 33 crores (330 million) of gods. He was stopped in his tracks when the pastor made one simple statement, “How can you possibly please that many gods?” The pastor’s question made him think and he was up the whole night think about it. Though he was shaken to the core, he still couldn’t accept Christ.
He continued in his sinful ways and continued arguing with the pastor. One day the pastor gave him a video to watch which starts with a Sanskrit slogan ‘asthoma satgamaya…’. This is the first line of a commonly recited prayer/mantra and translates to “lead me from illusion to reality”. This immediately got his attention since this is exactly what he was searching for. After watching the video, he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.
Now he is actively sharing Jesus Christ while he works as a Zomato delivery boy (a food delivery business like DoorDash, Uber Eats, or GrubHub). He is also taking responsibility to take care of his past financial debts.
Pastor Amzi
MI Youth for Truth National Coordinator
Below Photos – Training the youth to become more like Christ