Asutosh Regulagadda   TO GOD BE THE GLORY Early years I come from Hyderabad, India where I was both born and raised. I spent the first 21 years of my life there and once I finished my undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering from Osmania University in 1998, I moved to the US with the intention of pursuing graduate studies in Computer Science which I eventually did from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). After graduating in 2000 from UTD, I landed a job as a software engineer in the telecom industry and that's where I've been ever since. So, all in all, life has been...well, good. Crisis Things seemed to be going okay for me by all external appearances. Or so it seemed. Because, unseen by anyone and unknown to anyone but me, there was a great conflict going on in my mind regarding matters of personal ethics and morals, belief in the existence of a God, my purpose in life and things of that nature. I had actually come to a crisis of sorts. This was around the year 2002. It had been about 4 years since I came to US. I had lived away from my family and with the new found freedom of not having anyone to check on me, I simply dove into this freedom casting off all restraints that I felt had burdened me down when I was in India and which I thought were keeping me from enjoying life. I had stopped going to church, stopped reading my bible, stopped praying, picked up some new sinful habits along the way and confirmed and hardened myself in my old sinful habits even more. All in all, I was spiralling downwards rapidly, morally speaking. I was beginning to lose esteem for myself in my own eyes, feeling terribly bad that I was letting down my family who had such high hopes for me and had all along thought of me as a good individual. But, above all of this, the one thing that had started gaining on me was the conviction that I was actually sinning against a Holy God. On the one hand, not having gone to the church or read my bible or prayed for about two years had it's effects on me in weakening my faith in God to the point that I had actually started to doubt the very existence of God. But, on the other hand, it was as if all of a sudden my all along sleeping conscience had suddenly awakened and started assaulting me day and night. As much as I tried to suppress it, I couldn't. I pictured myself as a guilty sinner before a God who was very very angry with me and was just waiting to fling me into hell any moment. It was a terribly dreadful feeling. It was a battle of my mind challenging the very existence of God versus my conscience accusing me of my guilt before that very God day and night. Search for answers At this point, I had started to search for answers and I came across some websites like http://www.christiananswers.net and others, the links for which have been provided under the "Christian Apologetics" section in the "Christian Links" page on my web-site. These provided answers to some of my questions. No, they did not prove the existence of God in an empirical fashion, but provided a reasonable and coherent explanation for the possibility of God's existence. I thought that it was not only possible for God to exist, but quite frankly some of the arguments presented by the atheistic community simply seemed much more incredulous. For example, with the risk of perhaps oversimplifying things a bit, yet trying to keep the bottom line intact, I will tell you what I found incredulous. The fact that things could have simply popped into existence by themselves, notwithstanding the incredibly large period of time and chance simply required much more "faith" to accept than believing in a God who created all things, especially considering the extremely complicated and intricate design involved in even a single protein molecule, the fundamental unit of all biological life. But all this still did nothing to assuage my guilt. If at all, it made it even worse. Now the thought that God did exist was even more reason for me to get right with him. I tried to reform myself. But the more I tried, the harder I fell back into the same sinful patterns until I was thoroughly convinced that I was very much unable to liberate myself. If anyone reading this thinks that I only deluded myself with what the religion of my upbringing taught me, then let me offer you a very simple challenge. Jesus said that even if anyone looks upon someone to lust after that person has already committed adultery with that person in his or her heart. He also said that if anyone is angry without a cause (without a righteous cause that leads to harboring a grudge and bitterness and unforgiveness) with someone, he or she is guilty or murder in his or her heart. Try to follow these two to a tee. What God wants from us is an inward change of the heart, not mere cosmetic, external reforming of ourselves. This is where I found myself to be the most rebellious. I felt like the little boy who said to his father who ordered him to sit down and behave himself, that though he sat down, he was still standing on the inside. Get the point? What I needed was a thorough inward transformation of the heart and mind. The Answer Around this time, one day, strangely enough I had a desire and a thought in me to maybe buy a good study bible and read it. I had never had this kind of a thought before. I did have a bible with me already, but it wasn't a good translation (there are many english language translations). So, I went to Barnes and Nobles and bought a good study bible. But the strange new thoughts didn't stop there. Now, I had a desire and thought in me to start reading the bible everyday and not just once in a while. Prior to that I did read the bible every now and then in a very routine way, not even bothering to understand or make sense of what I read, only to soothe my guilt feeling that I had stopped reading the bible for nearly two years after I came to US. But now, there was this new, fresh desire to read it. Not a guilt feeling prompting me, but a genuine desire and want in me prompting me and I had begun to read it everyday. Soon, all those passages in the bible which I had read so many times but never made much sense before were starting to come out alive as it were. They started making sense to me. It was as if suddenly the curtain of my mind was opened to this grand new vision, very beautiful to behold. Moreover, the desire to read and actually study the bible grew in me by leaps and bounds. It wasn't a passing feeling. It stayed with me for days and weeks and months without ever letting up. I just couldn't have it enough. I began to devour it. I began to see the light. The answer to my guilt stricken conscience was JESUS CHRIST. He alone was the perfectly sinless lamb (the ultimate sacrifice for sins) of God to take away my sins. I saw that He was (and is) the Almighty God who came down to this world to take my sins upon himself that I shouldn't be punished anymore for my sins. Because God is an infinitely Holy God who will not tolerate sin in any form, He also requires His creation, you and me to be perfectly holy as He is holy. The only standard of righteousness acceptable with Him is His standard and that is perfect holiness and righteousness, but man is essentially sinful, born in sin and committing sins all his life. Here's the conflict. Also, God is not only infinitely holy and righteous, He is also infinitely just and has to punish offenses. That means, He has to punish sin. An offense (for sin is an offense) against an infinitely holy God requires an infinitely great punishment, for in any just court, the punishment is always commensurate with the offense. That punishment is the eternal fires of hell, not a literal material fire as on earth, albeit an infinitely worse fire that burns into the very soul, yet never extinguishing it. Hell is the grabage dump of the universe where the fires and the remorse of conscience of opportunities (to put your faith in Christ and to be saved) lost are eternal. There is no escape. The bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Which means that everyone, you and me deserves hell. But there is a third aspect of God. God is infinitely holy, infinitely just AND God is also infinitely merciful. Which is why He sent His Son (not a biological son as being born to someone, but in the sense of eternally proceeding from, just as light eternally proceeds from the Sun and there never was a moment when the Sun was and it's light wasn't) Jesus Christ (God the Son, being the second person of the Godhead, one and only God existing in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this is a mystery) into this world to live a perfectly sinless life and hence to offer himself as the only perfect substitute in our place to take our guilt and our punishment upon himself so that we could be forgiven and accepted into His kingdom, heaven. This offer of the gift of pardon of sins and eternal life that was offered to me in Jesus Christ I accepted with thanks when I believed that Jesus did die on the cross for my sins. That was the greatest decision of my life. Because I've been a new person ever since. The old sinful patterns in my life were gradually done away with, there is this continually growing desire in me to please God in all my ways and the supernatural joy of fellowship and communion with God everyday, of walking with Him and talking with Him. Can I see God? Not with my physical eyes, but in my spirit, in my inner man, God has revealed Himself abundantly to me (He promises to do so to everyone who seeks Him with a sincere and a pure heart) and continues to do so everyday. So much so that I know beyond a shadow of doubt that He is there and the assurance that I will one day see Him, when I die and leave this world, for man's soul is eternal and it does not die. It either lives with God in eternal bliss in heaven or perishes eternally in hell. The decision is yours where you will spend eternity. It all depends on what you do with Christ. Whether you will accept Him as your savior and Lord or whether you will reject Him.