Sabtu, 11 Juli 2009

looking for the truth about god

Looking for the Truth About God A Puerto Rican-American Man Finds Islam (Part 1) By Wesley Lebron I commenced thinking within myself that God had to be something greater than another human being like myself. I commenced thinking within myself that God had to be something greater than another human being like myself. Related Links * Could I Deal with God Directly? * Looking for the Truth Since the Age of Eight * Through Patience and Understanding * My Quest for Truth, Power, and Purpose In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Beneficent. We begin by sending salutations of blessing and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), upon his family, upon his companions and upon all who follow his guidance until the Day of Judgment. My name is Wesley Lebron. I am presently known amongst my Muslim brethren as AbdurRazzaq (the slave of the Provider) or Abu Sumayyah (the father of Sumayyah). I am of Puerto Rican decent and I was born in Passaic, NJ. I currently reside in Rockford, Illinois and I have lived here for about 3 years now. I will proceed to share my story of conversion with you and the process by which I became a Muslim after being Christian for 21 years. I will share how I lived a life that was in need of change and if that change would not have arrived, then only Allah (God) knows if I would have still been alive today. I was raised in a Christian household- Pentecostal to be more specific. My parents were not very religious. They rarely attended church and on the odd occasion practiced the Christian faith. I was taught about the Christian faith via my grandmother (father's mother) who played a very important and vital role in my life. My aunt (father's sister) always picked up my cousins and I on Sunday mornings in order to take us to Sunday school since our parents did not attend church. Growing up I was taught to believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he was God as well. We were taught to pray to Jesus, to turn to him in times of need, to believe that he had died for all of humanity. Once I reached the age of ten I became a little more disconnected from the church. I rarely attended church at this point in life due to my commitment and love for baseball. I would dedicate my Sundays to playing and practicing for upcoming baseball games, while spending much time with cousins and friends. The years to follow were crucial in my development toward the main belief system in Christianity, which was to accept Jesus Christ as ones savior and Lord. For the next eleven years I removed myself from Sunday school and church in general and I did not want to attend or partake any longer. I began to think much in times of need about whom I should call upon for help. I started finding myself questioning the teachings that were taught to me by my grandmother and the church that we used to attend. I started to have doubt about worshiping and calling on Jesus whom at this stage in life I considered to be a man who walked the earth, a man who lived and died, and a man who ate and slept. I commenced thinking within myself that God had to be something greater than another human being like myself. I then started re-directing my prayers and my asking toward God alone. I would say, "O God, help me," instead of "Jesus help me." Within these next eleven years my thoughts regarding God remained firm; I continued to seek from Him solely and from none other than Him. I regarded Jesus as a Prophet of God and I did not raise him above this standing. I prayed in a similar fashion using similar words and that was something that I had become steadfast upon. Since I was now removed from faith in general, and I had no faith guidelines to live by, I began indulging in and trying many different things. By the eighth grade I had tried drinking alcohol and that seemed to become more frequent the older I got, especially in my high school years. I was pretty good at concealing my newly founded hobby of drinking from my parents since most of the time my friends and I drank on the weekends in my room while my parents were downstairs asleep in their bedroom. When I became a freshman in high school I began to go beyond drinking and I tried smoking marijuana and taking tabs (little purple pills that made you hallucinate and laugh.) I lost my virginity this same year and I found that this had become a new addiction that I was willing to continue exploring. Marijuana for a while became the drug of choice since it was easier to conceal from my parents. I also began to sell marijuana inside and outside of school. By the time I reached my junior year in high school I was frequently drinking alcohol, smoking weed and selling it. I was making what I considered to be good money selling marijuana and the money made from selling it allowed me to buy things I desired, e.g. clothing, sneakers, taking girlfriends out to do things, etc. My parents would ask me, "How did you buy that shirt" and I would say, "my friend bought it for me; I sold a Nintendo game, etc." This same year, my junior year of high school, I decided to drop out of school and begin to work. I was uninterested in education and I was more interested in having girlfriends, partying, and making money. I was totally enveloped by the idea of making money both legally and illegally and I was caught up in this false sense of security. I used to think that I could make more than a college graduate if I continued to sell drugs and work full-time. I thought selling drugs would be safe since I knew my entire drug clientele and I was not from those individuals who sold drugs on a street corner. If I did not know you, I would not sell anything to you and that was the motto I lived by. My cousin and I also tried selling marijuana wholesale to all of the drug dealers whom we knew, and we figured that this would keep us off the streets and it would be safer. I lived this life style up until I was 20 years old, selling drugs, smoking weed; and consuming more alcohol after dropping out of school then I had in the years that preceded it. I found that I was drinking everyday and that most weekends I would not even know how I arrived at home and sometimes awake not knowing where I was for the first five to ten minutes. I began drinking and driving and this became a regular practice. I had my first kid when I was 20 and my second at 21 years of age. The two children were from different mothers and I was not with either of them. I began paying child support for both children. At this point I had stopped selling drugs, but I did not stop consuming them. I started to drink more; the stress of having children and paying child support was something that I found to be heavy on my soul. It was around this time that I had an unforgettable moment. I met a friend whom I had not seen in years and I went to visit him with two cases of coronas. I went to his home and along with two of his friends we drank the coronas mixed with some other forms of hard liquor. We then proceeded to go to a club around 12 am and continued to drink and party. Upon leaving the club I fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed into a light pole at a main intersection in Hackensack, NJ. Thank God that we both survived, but after recuperating from the intoxication and being spared that night by a cop who was a friend of my friend, I then saw just how bad the car was and how we should have been dead. This was a moment that began a small change in my life. I still drank alcohol, but I tried not to drink as much when I was the responsible driver. It was not to long after all of this that I was introduced to one of my mother's new foster children. He was around 17 years old and he had lived a rough life in NY City where he was raised. He and I became close friends and he introduced me to an organization that was called Zulu Nation. He took me and another friend of my mine to their meetings which were held in Harlem, NY once a month. The leader of this organization was a man by the name of Africa Bambada. He would come to teach about various things that contained faith, government conspiracies, etc. The two of us joined the organization while my friend who was the foster child was just reacquainting himself with the organization that he was once a part of when he lived in NY. It was at these meetings that we were introduced to the concept of Islam. To be continued…

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