Experiencing God's Love

Ali's testimony upon his recent baptism 

I am from Iran. I was born into a practising Islamic family, with a very religious father who made sure we all observed the faith. He behaved harshly towards my mother and told her off if she was wearing too much makeup, for example. Even when I was a child, I couldn’t understand why my mum shouldn’t wear makeup or dress in a way that she liked. How could her dress or makeup upset God?

I also learnt that I needed to worship God in another language which was  not my mother tongue. When I asked why, my father told me that Arabic was spoken by our prophet and it’s God’s language. That made me think that God favoured Arabs over us, and I concluded that if I prayed in Persian, God probably wouldn’t understand or answer me.

When I was ten, I started attending the mosque and participating in the activities there, including the reading and reciting of the Qur’an. I was also in charge of the call to prayer. In the Qur'anic classes, I was told that no one can go to heaven unless they believe in Islam, especially Shi’a Islam. That made me think about the millions of people who were not Muslim but were good people who worshipped God in their own way.

Being  an inquisitive teenager, I struggled with many issues in Islam, and I talked to my friends about them. One of my friends had a relative who could answer some of our questions from a different perspective as he was a Christian. When he spoke, it was very clear that the way he described God and his relationship with Him was very different to what we had learnt in Islam. For example, he described God as his father and talked about human sinfulness and the provision of salvation through Jesus Christ. I hardly understood what he was talking about! It made me curious, though, to know how God could be a loving father. When I came to Britain, while living in Brighton, I went to an English-speaking church to find out more, but I couldn’t understand much. Upon coming to West London  I started attending English classes, a local church and I started going to a Farsi Bible study. I also joined a House Group. The first thing that struck me was the love and care everyone showed me. Why were these people so kind to me? Did they just want to convert me, or was their love genuine? I asked one of the church leaders about this: he replied that no person can make you a Christian. When you become a Christian, it is God Himself who shows you mercy and opens your heart. I started helping in the church, but I didn’t feel that much of a change. I was trying to do good in order to please God, but I felt something was missing; I had no peace.

Slowly, I learnt that those around me loved me because they had experienced God’s love personally and they were showing mercy because they had received mercy through Christ. I learnt that I was a sinner, and it didn’t matter how much good work I did; I would never be able to please God because my good works were not good enough to wash away my sin and make me right with God. But God, out of His love, sent Jesus to do that, to pay for my sin by the shedding of His blood.

I am so grateful to God for this gift of eternal life.