From Searching to Surrender: How I met Jesus Christ

I look back on a life marked by an unrelenting desire to know the living loving God; a journey that took me from Catholicism to Islam and finally ended with the discovery of a Savior and an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I was born into a Roman Catholic family and from an early age, I longed to be close to God. As a schoolboy, I would attend Mass alone before classes, seeking answers—but walked away each time with the same emptiness.

I grew up in Cochin, Kerala, India and later in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where my father worked as an architect with Aramco. Though we lived in a largely Westernized expat community, the rigid presence of the Islamic religious police and the harsh religious climate around us left a deep-rooted prejudice against Islam. The hypocrisy I witnessed bred cynicism in my heart.

After the 9th grade in Dhahran, I moved to Wisconsin to attend High School. America made me who I am—but it also introduced me to a reckless lifestyle where weekends blurred into wild parties; surrounded by girls, clouded by alcohol, and other distractions.

While I was in the 11th grade, my father passed away. My family left Saudi Arabia. I graduated High School in the U.S. and went on to college in Switzerland.

In the meantime, my mother got married again. Later I accepted a job in Saudi Arabia, a place I never wanted to return to.  Things started going wrong for me when I broke up with my girlfriend from college. I missed everything; I was away from all my friends and in a country I detested.

Loneliness aggravated by a sense of isolation that the culture created almost drove me mad. My search for God had led me to the Hindu Gita before I was a teenager, Parapsychology, Hypnotism, and even black magic during my teens, but none of that helped me handle the bleak darkness I was facing. I somehow managed to find some comfort by hiding myself in the daily routines of work.

Eventually, life took a turn for the better. I met Anupama, now my wife. I found companionship and friendship again. Among my circle was Junaid (whom we lost to COVID in 2021), a fellow musician and my brother Joe’s old classmate.

I met a lot of Muslims through Junaid. I was intrigued by their openness to me and felt uneasy about my prejudices towards Islam. Though I did not set out to find God in the Quran, that set me on a course to find out what it said about God and how that made life in Saudi Arabia so rigid and miserable.

One evening while sitting with a Bible on one side, the Quran on the other, and a bottle of bootleg liquor in front of me, I realized something: Christianity that I knew of seemed to permit drinking alcohol. Islam didn’t. And for the first time, I sensed that the latter might be telling me something true. I emptied the liquor bottle into the sink.

The Quran started making sense to my intellect. I felt that the Islamic system of prayers was more assuring and concrete than anything I had experienced in Christianity till then. I began to believe the Quran was a correction to the distortions in the Bible. Although Muslims may claim similarities in their beliefs in Christ and the Bible, they believe that only those who bear witness that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammed is his prophet, obey Allah and his prophet can enter into “paradise”. All others will be sent to Hell.

I had no intention of doing something so “uncool” as becoming a Muslim but at that point in my life, I believed that I had found the truth and that God had called me to it. This meant that I had to make a commitment and I became a Muslim.

I did not expect much opposition from my family or Anupama’s, and got none. I returned to India, got married and was a practicing Muslim.

In 1996, my life began to fall apart. My stepfather deserted us for his secretary and took all our money, and my stepbrother, his son, died in a motorcycle accident. This led to my wife Anu and my sister Preethy having a life-changing encounter with Jesus at a Christian retreat that they attended.

I was skeptical—defensive, even. I argued that they had been misled by errors in translation and theological misinterpretations. Anu didn’t debate back. She claimed to have personally met Jesus Christ. She was talking about a person, and I was talking about errors in a book. She said that Jesus had touched her and changed her life completely. She kept on talking about the Holy Spirit. I did not know Him then, so it went totally over my head. So when she explained the deliverance session at the retreat, I was convinced that this was black magic. I did all I could to stop her from going to further ‘prayer’ meetings.

Life went on but it bothered me that I had not become a better person after becoming a Muslim, but on the contrary, there were new deeper and darker volatile prejudices that seem to consume me. My outlook towards the world had changed completely.

I longed for a personal relationship with God. I could not reach out to Allah as I thought I should be able to do by now. The contentment I once had when I became a Muslim had turned into frustration, and I was seeing through the people whom I once thought was guileless. Though I was successful outwardly, that gnawing emptiness returned.  I was getting fed up with a great many things, but I still believed that Allah would get me through.

In 1997, my mother asked me to attend a Christian retreat. I refused at first, until I saw her cry for the first time since my father’s death and through all the mess with my stepfather. I went, intending to challenge the preachers and prove Christianity wrong.

When it became known that there was a Muslim attending the retreat refusing to believe in Jesus, Pastor Rajesh of the Joshua Generation (now Cornerstone Church) wanted to speak with me. I told him the reason I refused to believe in what was being preached. He quoted Romans 10:9 from the Bible "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved".

I thought to myself, "Why would I confess Jesus as "Lord" when I did not believe it to be true?" This contradicted what the Quran said about who God is and about who Jesus is.

According to Islam, Jesus is a prophet in line with many other prophets. Claiming He did not die and rise again, it claims He was taken to heaven alive because God does not have true prophets killed. What Islam excludes and denies is the very purpose that Jesus came for, which is to die for the sin of the world and our healing. (John 1:29 NKJV - The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”)

At the retreat, I still intensely believed that the Quran was God’s answer to all the mistakes made in the interpretations and translations of the Bible, and therefore the only true word of God. I did not want to end up in hell for denying the authenticity of the Quran and denying that Allah was God by assigning Godhood to Jesus.

I asked Pastor Rajesh if he really believed in all that he preaches, and he said that he did. For reasons unknown to me, I was convinced that he was not lying, but it did not matter because I thought he was deceived and therefore wrong. Then I thought of the emptiness growling inside of me, and from the depth of my heart I cried out to God to help me and to show me the truth.

I wanted to believe that God was loving, and from childhood I knew that the God who created me was gentle and fair. I knew He could fix broken cords in my life. I knew He could take away the darkness and the despair, and I knew that He alone could give me true peace that lasts. I do not know how I knew all this, but this was part of the concept I had of who God should be.

Now here in front of me was Pastor Rajesh telling me that God was all that and much more, but all this is available to me only through Jesus Christ.

It was too good to be true, except for the Jesus bit.

At the risk of going to hell, I thought to myself, “My Creator should be able to understand the intention of my heart, and know that I only want to know Him and serve Him, and be accepted and be loved by Him. So, He should be able to understand if I make a mistake now.” With this in mind, I agreed to take a chance and say that Jesus is Lord.

The rest of the retreat did not go well for me. I felt deeply disturbed and to make things worse, when I asked the Holy Spirit to fill me later during the retreat, all I felt was the urgent need to vomit. I imagined that God would make Himself known to me, so that I would know that I’ve made the correct decision by choosing Jesus. The retreat was over and that did not happen. It was all very disappointing.

Therefore, I decided that I was wrong to think that Jesus was anything more than a prophet like Moses was. I felt condemned for denying Islam and was going to set things right again.

When I got home, I confronted Preethy and Anu. This was just before dinner, we were sitting around the dining table. I told them I could not accept their Jesus as Lord. I remember being very angry when I said that, and Preethy said something like “He who was sinless took upon Himself your sins”, at least that was all I heard when I felt something powerful go through me. Suddenly, I was gently pushed back into my chair, my arms flung wide open, my eyes shut and I saw a cross in front of me!!!

She had quoted 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says; For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Those words hit me like thunder and reverberated deep within me. It was as if a veil had lifted from the eyes of my heart and instantly, I knew that Jesus had died and risen for me.

My heart melted when I felt the pain He felt, not because of what He suffered, but because of my unbelief in Him and my hard-hearted stubbornness in resisting His hand that was reaching out to me. I could do nothing but surrender to His love. I gave up struggling and just believed in Jesus.

I then felt a hand reach into my heart and tear out something dark and burdensome. I instantly felt the compassion that Abba Father had for me. For the first time in my life, I became aware of my heavenly Father’s presence and love through the cross of Jesus Christ. Every cell in my body was convinced that Jesus is indeed God and my risen Lord. I did not have to depend on any rituals, deeds or sacrifices, nor worry about tipping the scales favorably for me to even have a hope of going to Heaven when I die; Christ had been there and done that.

That evening in 1997, Jesus became real to me, and I gave my life to Him. The one whom I was trying to reach out to had reached out to me. All I had to do was believe in my Father’s love for me that put Jesus on the cross to save me from my sins. Jesus did not stay dead, in fact, there is an empty grave in Israel. The Holy Spirit of God raised Him up to life again!

My search for the real God was finally over. My walk with Him had begun.

Earlier, while still ‘languishing’ in Saudi Arabia, I had written in a song “the years have gone by leaving me with only memories.” That is no longer true. God has been good to me. I have tasted and seen that He is a good Father. I have found that every word of God in the Bible is true, and that His faithfulness exceeds and overpowers our unfaithfulness.

As declared in Acts 16:31, my whole household is now saved. In 1998, the doctor’s report said that we could not have children, but my heavenly Father said otherwise through Isaiah 54:13: “All your children shall be taught by the Lord and great shall be their peace”. Samuel was born to us in 2001, Daniel in 2003 and Joel in 2005.

In 2003, God set me free from the demonic strongholds which had plagued me even after I got saved. Immediately I experienced freedom in every area of my life. I continue to see His deliverance daily as He takes me from strength to strength. More than once, through word of knowledge and forewarning, He has saved my life. The list goes on, and too numerous are His wonders I see daily.

In 2009, I was ordained as a Pastor at The Father’s House AG Church in Bahrain. Today, I serve at The Cochin Lampstand Church in Kerala.

In 2018, I survived multiple heart attacks and a stroke—when even the doctors had given up. I was told my family had begun making funeral arrangements. But God intervened. Though physically limited, He has allowed me to pastor, record music, direct films, and share the Gospel—every day is a miracle.

Nearly three decades since meeting Christ, in my late 50’s now, I have found Him to be faithful beyond words.

To anyone still searching, I say this: Don’t stop until you find the One who made you. Because He’s already looking for you. He is near. He knows your heart. He knows your pain. He sent His Son not to condemn you, but to love and save you.

Hope has a name, His name is Jesus, He is the Christ of God.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,

and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:33

John S. Kodiyil.

Pastor, The Cochin Lampstand

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Jesus Christ is Lord