Rowshni Ahmed with co-announcer Harrison Cable on air in Darwin

The divine scales of justice loomed in Rowshni’s mind

One only goes to heaven if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds — so Rowshni Ahmed was taught as a young girl growing up in Zimbabwe.

Motivated by duty and fear, Rowshni made every effort to follow the traditional religious life of her family and escape future judgement.

“When I was 12, I decided to increase my daily prayers from one to five, but I found this too difficult to do and within days I was feeling miserable,” Rowshni remembers.

This lead to her becoming disillusioned with religion for a time.

“With my academic mind I was fascinated by the vastness of the universe: Is God or life real? What purpose is there to anything?”

A year later, in her second year of high school, Rowshni recalls she encountered a “mini-revolution” of bold Christianity among many of her previously quiet classmates.

“I found these Christians very annoying and got into debates with them, such as why Jesus could not be worshipped, because I believed he was just a man.”

In time, these Christians became Rowshni’s friends. But their intellectual arguments did not faze her, until a classmate read a Christian pamphlet to the class that spoke very clearly to her conscience.

Her classmate read, “Have you ever told a white lie? Have you ever held a grudge against someone? How about other ‘small’ sins? Even these sins are unacceptable to a perfect God, who cannot abide by a person with any sin. Therefore, we need Jesus Christ to take the punishment for our sin.”

Rowshni continues: “I realised that I had committed most of those little wrongs and I was reminded of the weight of bad deeds on my shoulders. I could not shake off the guilt and I felt quite hopeless.”

She continued to speak with her friends, and even asked them for a Bible, which they happily obliged.

“I listened to my Christian friends more than before, quietly trying to understand what had caused them to change and be so assured of their faith. I was also purposefully trying to find a way for myself out of hell.”

A few weeks later, alone in her bedroom one night, Rowshni read an illustrated Christian pamphlet.

“The first illustration showed a man carrying a heavy bag on his back; he ‘carried his sins with sorrow’. This I could identify with.

“It then explained that Christ removed that burden by dying in my place. I was due to pay for my sins by going to hell, but Christ paid that debt for me.

“Finally, it clicked: I allowed myself to accept that Jesus Christ was God on earth. He is God the Son, holy and capable of taking my sin and disposing of it. And He wanted to do it for me.”

That night, Rowshni uttered the prayer at the end of the pamphlet, in which she confessed Jesus as King of her life and that He died for her sin.

“Immediately, a joyful feeling surged up my chest and I wanted to scream for joy — I did, silently, trying not to alert my family, and jumped up and down on my bed,” Rowshni says with a chuckle.

“It really was like I had been blind, and now could see. I couldn’t believe how blind I had been. I was released, the guilt was gone, the joy was real and I knew that God cared for me.”

Not wanting to upset her parents, for the next three years, Rowshni continued reading her Bible at night and listened to Transworld Radio, a shortwave Christian radio station that she says had become “like a family”.

“For the next two years, my relationship with my mother improved. I applied Jesus’ principle of ‘if someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other one to them as well’.”

At age 17, Rowshni moved to Australia to study engineering at university, where a girl from Kenya befriended and mentored her.

“It was through her friendship that I realised more of my worth towards God — I was someone very valuable. She and others encouraged me to be more honest with my parents.”

That Christmas, five years after trusting in Jesus, Rowshni returned to her parents in Zimbabwe and told them about her new direction.

“God preserved me and showed me a different side to my parents. They showed me love and acceptance and asked me not to turn my back on Islam.

“However, I knew with all my life’s strength that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6John 14:6). He offers grace, which is the only answer to the natural human condition. I would never have accumulated enough good works to get into heaven on my own merit.”

Now living in Darwin, Rowshni announces on a local Christian radio station in her spare time.

“I feel privileged to be able to bring God’s love into people’s lives the same way it was brought into mine,” she says.

“God is healing me of my low self-esteem and insecurities, as I know I am his beloved child. He is helping me to be a woman who is both comfortable with her femininity and committed to wholesome relationships.

“Without God I would never have recognised problems in my life or overcome them as He has enabled me to.”