Nikki Kingsley was a devout Muslim for 40 years. But when she prayed for a deeper relationship with Allah, she hit a wall.
“I would see this wall in front of me, in silence and darkness,” she said. She spent hours on her prayer mat “begging Allah to reveal himself. I knew there was more, but I didn’t know how to get to it.”
She finally got to it — through Jesus. She identifies with his words in John 10:16: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”
Kingsley, author of “Thirst for Truth: From Mohammad to Jesus,” will share the story of her spiritual journey and conversion March 11 at the annual diocesan Women’s Conference at St. Joseph Church in Herndon.
“It is a conversion from Islam, but it really is a love story from God, and how deeply he loves us and walks with us,” she said. “My calling is not to talk about what’s wrong with Islam. I want to talk about the love of Christ and the love of the Father, and how he can transform your life.”
She shares intimate details of her journey, from a happy childhood in a liberal Muslim family to an arranged marriage that damaged her self-esteem and threw her into a deep depression. That marriage ended after a harrowing escape to America with her two children, where she stayed with relatives and started building a new life.
She was still a devout Muslim, but her prayer changed from desperate pleas for rescue to a longing to know Allah.
Studying the Quran, she developed a devotion to the Virgin Mary — known in Islam as Mariam. “She’s the only woman that has a chapter dedicated to her and gets that respect. I started to read that every day,” Kingsley said.
Kingsley started dreaming about Mariam and her son. Jesus is a respected figure to Muslims, but is seen as a human prophet, not the son of God, a concept that is “blasphemy in Islam,” Kingsley said. But in her dream, “this Jesus was powerful, more than a prophet.”
Eventually she found her way to the church of a Catholic co-worker, where Kingsley said she felt God’s presence, but still resisted. She began visiting every morning to “argue with the crucifix,” and tell Jesus “he was not the son of God.” This went on for months, she said, until one day he answered her.
“Who are you to tell me who I can be or cannot be?” he said. “If you really want to know the truth, go — and come back like a child.”
“I just wanted to know the truth about God,” she said, so she had to go back. She tried to empty her mind of everything she’d been taught “and sat like a child, who didn’t know anything and was willing to listen.”
Suddenly, she said, “a bolt of light from the crucifix shot through my body,” and she collapsed on her knees, from what felt like “an infusion of truth.” She began crying and said, “I believe you are the son of God.”
And she saw the wall coming down. “It crumbled,” she said, and on the other side was the love of God the father. “There was no way to get past that wall without Jesus.”
“I felt like I had gotten a treasure that not many people have: I know the truth. I experienced it.”
Fifteen years later, the message she wants to share is that being a Christian is “not just about believing in Christ, it’s about recognizing he’s going to be a companion throughout your life, in a relationship that gets deeper and deeper.
“When you have that relationship, your life is transformed.”
Find out more
Register for the women’s conference at arlingtondiocese.org/women
