My Testimony

It started innocently enough. My friend Tetch, who is a Baptist Christian invited me to go to church with her. By going to church she meant attending a Born Again Christian Service. At that time, I was suffering from lack of spiritual nourishment as a Catholic. If you are in the UAE, a Filipino, and a Catholic, you would know what I'm talking about it. There is a serious lack of good Catholic priests here. For the longest time, I was attending church with my mind flying elsewhere, far from the confines of the church, understanding nothing the priest was saying, even criticizing the priest for not trying harder to get the message across. I look at the person next to me, i see him/her looking at the priest, but by the blank look on his/her face, i think he/she is in no better situation than I was.

Of course, the situation is really not much better back home, where I normally sit through a mass counting the minutes and eagerly awaiting the communion, which means the mass is nearing its end, but at least in the Philippines, there were a number of really good Catholic priests.

And so the main reasons I went with Tetch were 1) because i was in really desperate for some good preaching, and 2) I didn't want to turn Tetch down. Not to mention the fact that Tetch is a pretty persistent person you know, so i could really hardly say no to her even if i wanted to...I said to myself, one service... If i liked it, then perhaps i'll go once every month, and for the remaining three weeks i'll try to keep on going to the catholic church. I was thinking that time, that would be a pretty good division of devotional time, after all i was still catholic! So perhaps i could get value-for- time preaching from the born agains, and then still fulfill my catholic obligation for the remaining 75% of the time! =)

But I wasn't really planning on being a Born Again Christian. Primarily because aside from a select born agains i know, i didn't really like their lot. From my limited encounters with their "type", i have come to believe they are people who think they're holier than thou, above everybody else. Always trying to pretend to act good, but at the end of the day, acting more unchristianlike than people who didn't belive in God. I didn't want the way they say "praying over" like it was some statement that made them holier, like they had a pass to heaven or something.

Little did I know what was going to happen next, and how my life was going to be changed drastically. I never expected that that one service in January 2007 would lead to two, three...and before i realized it, i was attending service at EBCI (Emirates Baptist Church) for months, and eventually became a member. I am now Born Again.

The process was slow, and there were times when I had my doubts...big time! I was thinking of how it would affect my life, my family, my husband, his family, my friends. What would they say? They would surely laugh, or at least smile, thinking it was a joke. Me, a born again? Why, a year ago, i would have laughed myself about the idea of me being a Christian. I am not a bad person per se, but let's just say I didn't really fit the bill :P

I realize now that this reaction is generally because of misconceptions, misconceptions i shared before as a Catholic, of what is and what is not a Christian. And there is a whole gamut of things I have learned and continue to learn, being a new Christian myself, of these misconceptions. But the most important thing I have learned is that there are no holiness prerequisites to being a Christian. There are no tests to pass. I didn't even have to know a single passage in the bible. And no, I should not act holier than thou, like I have an exclusive claim to salvation because I'm as much as a sinner as anyone else.

The only thing I needed to realize is that I needed God - in the real sense that I needed HIM - just HIM...that you want to know HIM and have a relationship with HIM - and that the only way to have that is through HIS SON Jesus Christ, and not through any other means. That I am a sinner, not worthy of being saved, but by God's grace, through faith, I am saved.

As a Catholic, I used to think I was not any different from a Born Again Christian. I figured we believed and worshipped the same God - the difference just comes in the interpretation as to how to reach GOd. I thought that didn't really matter. I realize now how wrong that was because it does matter. There is no other way to God but through Jesus Christ - that cannot be overemphasized.

Now, I just feel at peace and excited! Peace because I feel I finally found home. Excited at the same time because my Christian journey has just begun :)