During Ramadan I felt that I was the holiest man in the world. I wore the Muslim garb and I spent hour after hour praising Allah. I wanted to obey Allah as the prophets obeyed him.

My life was dominated by a fear of incurring his wrath on the great day of judgment. I tried to do everything that was expected of a devout Muslim. Fasting, praying, almsgiving, the repetition of the kalima, and the hope of making a pilgrimage to Mecca - these were the central concerns of my life. I even became a muezzin and called people to prayer day after day. The mosque was like my second home, so often was I within its precincts and in its minarets.

I thought I was holy when I was performing the religious duties of Islam, but I had no true joy. The holiness I had achieved was, in reality, self-righteousness. I was proud of my religious accomplishments and legalistic virtue. But my life was devoid of real knowledge of God. I had no genuine fellowship with him and I sensed his absence and distance from me.

In the Quran, Allah is depicted as the Creator who is not only far above the world he has made but is also far from every human being. He is the one who keeps an accurate record of our deeds so that he can recompense us with final rewards or ultimate punishment on the last day. This filled my heart with terror and dread, for I knew I had often fallen short of the requirements of true virtue and righteousness.

According to the belief of many Muslims, when we die an angel stands ready to assist us. But each one of us has to face judgment alone, on the basis of his own achievements and failures. At the judgment there is a bridge over which everyone must walk. It is only one-seventh of the thickness of a hair. If one's good deeds are greater than his evil deeds, the bridge widens to enable him to go across to heaven. Otherwise, he will fall into hell below.

Islam has many adherents in Java, where I have lived all my life. At the age of twelve, I made a conscious resolve to follow Islam with wholehearted determination. I went to the mosque almost every day, and I received instruction in Islam with great eagerness. Of course, I memorized long passages from the Quran and I learned all of the prescribed ritual prayers. I tried to obey Allah as faithfully as Muhammad did. Nothing was more important to me than preparation for the final judgment. My constant preoccupation was the fulfillment of the will of Allah in my daily affairs.

At the age of sixteen I had such a strong desire to become a teacher that I decided to leave home. I was even willing to attend a Christian teachers college in Jakarta. There was an opening for me there - and besides, I was so well-established in my Islamic convictions that I had no fear that anything could deflect me from them.

When I arrived at the college and was assigned a room in one of the dormitories, I continued to pray five times a day. This annoyed the other students, especially since I was the only one who did it. Profound dissatisfaction in my heart could not be expelled by such means, however. I knew there was something missing at the very root of my being.

One evening a man came to the dormitory to talk to all the students about Christ. He had a warm and genuine smile that radiated an undeniable inner joy. I hated Christians, and so I concealed my feelings of envy at his peace and happiness. Instead of listening with respect and sincerity, I mocked him. He was a fellow Indonesian, but that was not as important as the fact that he was not a Muslim. To me he was an unclean heathen. My resistance was intense, and my questions were designed to provoke him to anger. But he never lost his composure. He continued to smile and patiently answer my questions. I tried to do everything possible to upset him, however, and eventually he left with obvious regret over my belligerent attitude.

After that encounter with a radiant Christian, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I could not shake the image of his kind and happy face from my mind. I knew that he had something in his life that I didn't have. And yet, on the other hand, I was confident that he was a purveyor of error and an enemy of God. I was especially disturbed by his quotation from the Bible: "Jesus answered, `I am the way - and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'" (John 14:6). The claim that Christ is the only way angered me more than anything. But it also made me uncertain about my own beliefs. This confusion was increased by the fact that the students who were sincere Christians lived good lives. They were different from all the rest of us. There was one in the dormitory whose life greatly attracted me to the Christian faith. My doubts concerning Islam began to increase.

My friend in the dormitory kept the Christian faith before me, not only in words but in his character and actions. He had joy in his life, and I did not. I was a very religious man, but I was not happy. Even when I did what was expected of me by Islam, I still did not have joy. When I saw Christians smiling and happy, I knew that there must be something good and true in the Christian faith. I tried to act as though I were indifferent and hostile. But my excuses and defenses were slowly crumbling. I couldn't forget what I had heard that evening. That Christian man made it very clear that the Bible teaches that every human being is a sinner, and yet God loves us and through Christ he can forgive and save us.

There was so much I did not understand about Jesus. I had heard that "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23), but I did not know what it meant. My Christian classmate told me that his joy came from trusting in Jesus as his Savior and Lord. He not only told me about God's holiness and justice in judging sin, he also told me about God's love. When he told me that God demonstrated his love by coming in the person of Christ to give his life on the cross for our sins, I was amazed. I had never heard anything like that before. It was wonderful, even overwhelming, to think that God is like that and that by trusting in Jesus Christ one could have all of his sins forgiven. Now I could begin to understand why my Christian friend had so much joy. He did not need to fear the judgment of God. He had his sins forgiven because Christ took those sins on himself when he died on the cross.

I wondered if all of this could be true. I thought about it very much - in fact, I thought about it for three months. I then decided to go to church with my classmate I went with him because he was a real friend, and his sincere interest in me touched me very much. At that church meeting I was more impressed by what I saw than what I heard. What affected me most of all was the attitude of the Christians. They had joyful faces and they were loving people. They were so kind to me that I was astonished. It was difficult for me to believe that they would be that way with a person of another religion.

My friend showed such love and kindness to me that I could not understand why. I continued to go to church because of the great joy and sincerity I saw in the people there. One day my friend could not go with me, so he told me to take from his wallet whatever money I needed to go there. He wanted me to have enough money for transportation and he did not care whether I ever repaid him. I took some money because I had no doubt that he was sincere and that he wanted to help me. He trusted me implicitly. By his gracious and generous life I saw the love of Christ made real before my eyes. My friend was a true friend and the first one to demonstrate God's love toward me. It was this and the wonderful fellowship I saw at the church that affected me most deeply. After several months of inner turmoil over the question of the truth of the Christian faith, I finally concluded that I must forsake Islam and put my entire trust in Christ as my Savior and Lord.

It is impossible for me to describe the change that Christ brought in my life when I turned from everything else and put my faith in him. I felt that a great burden had been removed from my heart. I experienced the same joy that other Christians had. It became a personal reality to me and no longer something I only saw and envied in others. Jesus said that he came that we might have life and have it in all of its fulness (John 10:10). Now I discovered what he meant. He also gave me the desire and power to do what was right. Before I trusted in him, I frequently told lies. When I would make mistakes, I would try to cover them up because I was afraid of the consequences. After I believed in Christ, I did not care what would happen to me. I had to tell the truth, and only the truth.

I also discovered that I was no longer afraid to die and meet God. Even though I had been a faithful Muslim, I never lost my fear of death. But when I believed that Christ loved me and died for my sins and conquered death by his resurrection, the fear of death was taken away. Now I know that "to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), for to depart from this life is to be with Christ which is far better. But I also came to learn that God left me in this world because he has something special for me to do. His loving purpose for my life became my main motivation and goal.

My heart had previously been dominated by fear and hate, but Christ cleansed me of these base and corrupt attitudes and replaced them with assurance and love. I found that I had a great desire to tell my people about the wonderful Savior whom I had met. I went home and told my adoptive parents about my faith in Christ. My father had died when I was four years of age, and while I was still young I was adopted by another family. When they learned that I was sincere about my commitment to Christ, they used a variety of pressures to reclaim me for Islam. They were very fearful that the rest of the children in the family would be influenced by me. They denounced the Christian faith as evil and foolish.

Every Sunday my mother tried to keep me from going to church by asking me to do something for her at home. So Saturday night I would ask her what she wanted me to do the following day. And when she would tell me what task I was to perform on Sunday, I would arise early in the morning and finish it in time for me to go to church. My mother became very angry one day and said, "Son, you have to choose between me and Jesus Christ."

I replied, "I am sorry, Mother, I have to follow Christ. It does not mean that I hate you; I love you, but I must put Christ first in my life."

She kept silent. Then I told her that I was going to become a Christian preacher. My father and mother both stood against my decision. He was the ambassador to a European country and he could give me many advantages. The choice before me was clear. They said that I must choose them or Christ. They warned me that I would lose all the privileges and opportunities that they could give me: a European university education, a car, travel in the West.