Like I said, there was no lightning, or a choir of angels that I heard. Just the fact that I  became happier. I knew that he (Jesus) was in my life somehow…and I never could figure out how he did it. I just got this awareness that he was with me and I liked it. Sometimes though, I felt like he had left me.

The times when I goofed or went back to my old ways.

I would feel this terrible uneasiness in my heart.

Grief is more like it.

But,

This was stuff I used to do before and it was okay back then.

Grief. Where did that come from? It made me miserable and I somehow decided that Jesus had left my heart because for some reason, whatever it was I did, made him sad. So,

I asked him into my life again.

And I would feel happy again.

Was he back?

This was an experience that I would learn to deal with later on.

Friends Noticed

And they had a field day on me about how I wasn’t a sinner and did not need to be “a born again”. Some of them ranked themselves on an imaginary scale and challenged me to list my sins and see if I would outweigh them.

“If someone needs to be born again, it’s not you Sunga. There are worse people among us. I’ll give you two months, you will leave all that stuff”

But I was just beginning. It has not been an easy road (over 19 years later), but it has been worth it. Yes there were times I felt like quitting.

What Didn’t Change

My parent’s marriage didn’t change. In fact, it got worse. For eleven years. Initially I was disappointed but later got to learn to put that into perspective too.

My body didn’t change. It’s the same body I got before I became born again. My mind didn’t change immediately. I was to learn that it’s an ongoing exercise to have a mind that thinks the way God wants you to.

Changes in Me

I have seen a lot of changes over the years and I will share just a few for now.

I felt cleansed. Remember I talked of becoming nasty? I should have added dirty and all its synonyms.

I used to speak what I call “beep language”. You know, when you watch TV and they “beep” some swear words (amazingly, these words include Jesus Christ!). That was my way of talking. It took me close to a year to stop using swear words. Not that I can’t swear if I wanted to even now, but I have power/ability to chose not to swear and carry it through.

That’s what Jesus can do.

I began reading the Bible a lot because there just seemed to be a Person behind those words talking to me. The more I read, the hungrier for it I got. That Book became more than Bible Knowledge for me. It represented (still does) the words of Jesus Christ. How? That’s for a later post as my journey continues.

My White South African Biology Teacher Noticed

When I look back the book she had lent me, she wanted to know what I thought about it. I told her what had happened to me and she wanted to meet with me right after school that day.  I always talk about the fact that she was white and South African because back in the day, it was as close as I could get to apartheid and God used that woman I was supposed to hate to reach out to me with his love. She had another one up her sleeves but that is for next time.