Originally Published: September 16, 2019
Today, for the second installment of our My Walk with Christ series, it’s my pleasure to introduce Joshua Chacko. I met Joshua at Urbana 2018, specifically in a South Asian lounge they’d set up for the conference. I got to share my story of faith with him and he got to share his experience and testimony with me. A couple weeks ago, I asked if he would be able to share his story, and I’m so glad he’s willing to do so (and to be our first non-Canadian guest writer)! Without further ado, here’s Joshua!
My testimony is just like any other—a story of some ordinary person transformed by an extraordinary God, and how the Jesus I thought I knew, entered into my life, surprised me, and transformed me. It’s not the radical outward transformation some may expect, but a slow progressive one leading to a complete change of my heart, soul, and mind, possible only through Jesus Christ working in my life and leading me every step of the way.
I was born and brought up in a Christian household and went to church like many others. I knew about Jesus from a very young age, always attended Sunday school, and accepted Jesus into my life as my Savior and my King somewhere between seven and ten. To answer the question you’re probably asking, no, it wasn’t just a prayer that I repeated; it was something I understood and meant. I confessed my sins, declared my belief in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and accepted Jesus as my Savior and my God. In no other moment up to that point do I remember experiencing such peace and joy.
After that I followed Christ, and learned a little more about Him, but like most of us, I began to wander. I pretty much forgetting about Jesus except on Sundays. That lasted for the majority of middle school and high school. For most of this time I was just content to “saved,” but didn’t feel like that needed to impact the rest of my life. The one exception to this was the summer of my junior year of high school where I learned about my own faith and how to properly share the good news of Jesus Christ to strangers. Little did I know how much that would help me out in the future.
It wasn’t until college and joined a Christian fellowship at Stony Brook University in New York called InterVarsity, that I really began to grow in my walk and knowledge of God again. At the time, I had absolutely no clue how God would use this fellowship to help me grow spiritually and even change the course of my whole life for the better.
Entering freshman year of college, I had a mentality somewhere along these lines: “I grew up going to church so focused on the Bible, knowing it, following it, preaching it, and even memorizing it. I’ve probably learned everything that I need to spiritually. There may not be a lot to grow in my faith in college, but there may be many things I can share with others.” I can’t even begin to explain how wrong and judgmental I was. Yet God worked through many of the students I met at InterVarsity, who eventually became my close friends and mentors, and I was challenged in my faith to grow and change to be more like Jesus.
Much of my spiritual growth was through a small group I was challenged to co-lead. Through that God helped not only to grow in love for Him but also for people around me, especially those who weren’t Christian. By the end of my time at Stony Brook, I’d had conversations with students who were agnostics, atheists, and even anti-theists. Through all of these encounters, I realized that I was not only able to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, but also do so in a way that tangibly shared Jesus’ Love to others as well. This was most strongly seen with how God used my life and friendship to change my anti-theist friend’s opinion about both Jesus and Christianity. This made me think for the first time that my mission field, if I had any, may not be around the world somewhere but right here in the U.S.
Soon after that, I transferred colleges to SUNY Polytechnic in Upstate NY. Though I was a little bit depressed about the transfer and became reclusive for a while, I eventually made a friend who was involved and connected me to the Christian group there called Students of Christ. Then over the course of my time there I eventually came into leadership, and we were led to affiliate with InterVarsity since we share the same vision as them to see students transformed. campuses renewed, and world changers developed at SUNY Poly.
During my time in leadership, from January 2017 to January 2019, God was working strongly in me placing a few passages in my heart that he spoke to me about all throughout that year. These were passages that I struggled with, learned from, and guided me. They were Mathew 7 about relationship, Ephesians 6 about putting on the whole armor of God, and pretty much the whole book of James—particularly about me being an unstable man. It was these words that followed me that whole year no matter where I was, who I was with, or who I was talking to. I knew God had a reason for all that he was showing and working in me, but I didn’t discover that reason until January 2018.
That January I was invited to a National South-Asian Leadership retreat in Florida held by InterVarsity. At this point my mentality was that though I want to serve God and His people in some way, I wanted the ten years to establish myself in my engineering career first. But, it was here that I finally understood what God was trying to show me. It was the realization that I never truly loved God! Even after 23 years of life!
This was shocking to me. If I was comparing myself to other Christians my age at that time, I would say that I was the president of a Christian club, that I was actively studying the Bible and seeking a closer relationship with God, and that I had even shared the gospel openly at Time Square. Surely, I loved God a lot, right? No. I realized I didn’t. That I didn’t love Him above myself and my selfish desires, what my community around me thought about me, and especially my plans for my future. I placed all these things far above God in my love and I didn’t want to live a life in which God wasn’t first any longer.
That same day, I decided to love God above everything else in my life. Doing so meant that if I truly loved God, I would obey Him like the Good Father that He is, placing His plans over my plans. It seemed clear that his plans were for me to go into full time ministry on the College campuses, at the mission field I felt I was called to years before!
How God truly affirmed this was through one of the leaders who prayed for me that night. After we prayed, he started telling me what he received from God in prayer, quoting passages from Mathew 7, and Ephesians 6, and even James 5 about all the things that I’ve mentioned earlier! It was really a full-circle moment where everything just came together, confirming the way He wants me to go.
The last day, one of the other retreat leaders was giving me advice on my next steps and told me I should make 3 commitments.
1) Tell my parents about my desire and intention into going into full-time ministry on college campuses
2) Host an outreach program to reach the proportionally large South Asian population at SUNY Poly
3) Apply to both a full-time job in my field of civil engineering and to InterVarsity staff right after I graduate
For the last one He specifically suggested that I start off with engineering full time while I maybe start off part time as staff in a nearby college for maybe 10 hrs/week and use that first year as a time to discern where God really wanted me.
After that, I saw all three commitments fulfilled through God’s grace in amazing ways. I would love to share more about all the ways I saw God work in this. But in short, my Indian parents were miraculously accepting of this decision, we held an event to reach the South Asian community that turned out to be a huge success, and I even got accepted to both positions exactly as set beforehand (on the same day on August 6th, 2018 too). Then on top of that, our leadership saw much of our vision for SUNY Poly that year accomplished!
Since then I’ve been ministering on Ramapo college and raising partners in the ministry so that I can continue into full-time campus ministry, and God willing, I’ll officially be starting full-time ministry this fall semester. God has led my path every step of the way and He still is doing so now. There’s still so much to share but let me leave you with this one reminder that God has reinforced in throughout my life: God is always faithfully working even when we aren’t, and His plans are so much better than our own.
Hi there—Cricket again! I hope you appreciated Joshua’s story; I know I did. Just quickly, I wanted to take a moment to speak to any believers among you who, like Joshua, have been raised in Christian families. I’ve often found that when you tell your stories, you can downplay the importance of it, but I’d like to encourage you to, just like Joshua, appreciate the ways that God has been working in your lives in big ways, even when they’re not dramatic. Our stories are unique to each and every one of us, and whether you can point to one big moment of transformation, or a hundred thousand little ones, God is still at work, and He still values you just as much. There was a plan in place, God was fulfilling that plan, and no matter how you got here, you’re running the race, and that’s what counts.
Confessions from Crickets 