A Voice in an Empty Room: How a Hindu Boy Found the True God

Sermon outline

If God could take a poor Hindu boy full of questions, speak to him in an audible voice and lead him to Jesus, He can raise and help anyone who obeys His voice and hungers for His Word.

1. A Hindu boy with a curious mind

   His father's family and his mother's family followed different Hindu traditions, with different prayers and deities, and as a child he sat near the priest at rituals at home and at the temple and was taught to respect the priest. With so many gods, he wondered which was greater, but when he asked the elders they told him to keep quiet, because they had no answers themselves. One ritual he saw as a small boy troubled him deeply: he could not see a just God who watches over people wanting them to act that way, though he stresses that he respects everyone's beliefs.

   Illustration: When calamity struck, the family would consult a medium, who would blame a relative, and every illness meant being taken for prayers that never helped.

   “But still deep in my heart, I wanted to know who was this true God.”

2. Stark poverty and a mother who was both mom and dad

   Unlike Pastor Zubeda, who grew up in an affluent home, he grew up in a broken home in stark poverty. His mother, a domestic worker with little schooling, raised five children in one rented room, and she and his older sister washed clothes for the community to feed the family. As a small child he survived a serious accident that nearly took his life, and he believes that when God has an assignment for a person, the devil has an assignment to wipe them off the map.

   Illustration: His mother was given two slices of toast for lunch at work; she went hungry all day and brought them home in her bag, and he and his sister ran to the bus stop to meet her so that they could each have a slice.

   “When God has an assignment, the devil equally has an assignment.”

3. The only way out was to study

   From 12 or 13 he worked while at school, selling newspapers, working in shops and cleaning ships from 5 in the morning to 10 at night with nothing to eat. He represented Natal in athletics, and on the athletics team at high school he met Pastor Zubeda; a Hindu and a Muslim courting was taboo, and both families opposed it. At 18 he joined the police, became a detective for about 19 of his 20 years, and studied on his rest days to get out of poverty.

   Illustration: Their wedding was so humble that he could not afford a ring: a prisoner at work cut and polished a piece of copper pipe into a wedding band, and he borrowed his uncle's suit and shoes.

   “The only way I knew that you could get out was to study.”

4. An audible voice: go and find a pastor

   He admits he had chauvinistically made Pastor Zubeda follow his Hindu faith, with a God lamp in their home. One day, studying alone in their garage converted into a home, he heard an audible voice telling him to go and find a pastor who would tell him the true way of God, an encounter like Paul's on the Damascus road. Not knowing any churches, he drove around asking until he found a man up the road who had become an evangelist, and in his home that man led him to the Lord.

   Illustration: When Pastor Zubeda came home from work he told her they were getting rid of the God lamp and starting to go to church, which shocked her: she had come from Islam into Hinduism, and now he wanted them to become Christians.

   “It was so audible that I had to actually look around to see if someone was in the room.”

   • Acts 9:3-6

5. Filled with the Holy Spirit and hungry for the Word

   A police colleague took him to a Methodist church, and then a relative introduced them to an Assemblies of God pastor who gave them six weeks of foundational teaching at home. Both families turned against them for becoming Christians. Pastor Zubeda was born again and filled with the Spirit first, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit at a Reinhard Bonnke meeting, where the fear of death left him and he was set free from a habit; afterwards he could sense the Holy Spirit's fellowship as he prayed.

   Illustration: At the altar call people threw their cigarettes and lighters onto the stage. Out of respect he had left his in the car, so he acted out throwing them away in his heart, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

   “One of the things that I experienced at that time, I remember that fear completely left me.”

6. Healing in a tent, and a choice between Australia and Johannesburg

   Helping at small tent crusades, he prayed for a blind person who began to see and a deaf woman who began to hear, and knew he had a gift of healing. In 1988 they held residence visas for Australia just as he was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Johannesburg; for family reasons they chose Johannesburg. There they drove 50 km to Rhema in Randburg, he studied part time at the Bible school, mostly Kenneth Hagin's books, and took leave to attend every conference session.

   Illustration: Pastor Wesley says growth takes hunger, because 'it's not McDonald's'. Dr Sing agrees that someone will offend you at church, even in the car park, because the devil wants you to stop going, praying and reading, so you must be a fighter, not sit on the fence.

   “There are some men of God that I've not met but I've been mentored by them.”

   • Ephesians 6:12

7. Preserved for a purpose

   As a detective commander in Johannesburg, driving home alone, he heard the Holy Spirit tell him not to take his only route home, and he turned around. Days later the woman behind a truck-robbery syndicate his unit was investigating told him that four men with AK-47s had been waiting to ambush him at that stop street. He also walked away from about eight serious car crashes without a hospital stay, and then, in the car, heard the same audible voice tell him he was earmarked for the ministry.

   Illustration: The woman told him he was a very lucky man; he says he doesn't like that word, because it was God preserving him.

   “So it was the voice of the Holy Spirit that saved my life.”