Personal Testimonies
 Why Our Faith is in Jesus Christ

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It's truly a blessing to be able to bring our requests to God

When I was in high school, some friends asked me to go to church with them, but I always found excuses not to go. After a couple times, I couldn’t say no anymore, so I went. I also went to the winter retreat, which was nice. Gradually, I began to believe in God as I got to know Him more. I got baptized when I was eighteen.

At first, my parents (especially my mom) were against me going to church. So, I could only go without them knowing. I never thought that they could one day become Christian. But God truly blessed my family. A few years ago, our neighbor led my mom to Christ. And not long after, my dad also believed in Jesus.  They both got baptized.  One of my older brothers became a Christian recently.  It was hard for me to share the Gospel with my family or for my family members to witness to each other because we don’t have open communication.  Even though I love my family dearly, it was just too weird/embarrassing to talk to them about these things.  I’m glad that somebody else did the job.

My spiritual growth has been extremely slow because for almost ten years, I only attended Sunday worship.  I didn’t think I had time to attend other church activities.  About four or five years ago, I suddenly felt fatigue.  I was so weak that I could not get through a day without taking a nap in the afternoon.  When I fell asleep at night, it was like falling into a deep hole in a second.  It felt like my soul was coming out of my body—it was a strange feeling.

I forgot which event happened first, but during that time, I was also suffering from hair loss.  I went to the doctor to find out the cause and to get treatment.  But something unexpected came from the blood test report--I was ANA (AntiNuclear Antibody) positive.  My doctor told me that I may have SLE (Lupus).  I was shocked and was very afraid.  I remember that I cried going to bed and had nightmare almost every day.  My life was miserable.  I didn’t tell anybody except some people at church.  People in the prayer group started praying for me on a daily basis.  I went in for more exams; they all came back negative; I was relieved.  Within a couple of weeks, my fatigue went away without any medication.  To this day, I’m still ANA positive.  But I never got ill again.  Praise the Lord!

I started going to the prayer meetings, at first out of obligation.  But now, I feel that it's truly a blessing to be able to bring our requests to God.  I’m too shy to say prayers aloud, and I don’t pray well, so I just listen to other people pray and pray with them quietly.  And I would gain inner peace.  I’m also slowly reading the entire Bible once through (I usually read a few chapters on the weekend).  It has taken me about four years already.  I figure that in another one and a half year, I can have it done.  May God continue to draw me closer to Him.



The day God opened my heart

When I was in high school, I was very mad at Christianity.  I was mad at church pastors because I believed all they wanted was money, and they were telling lies as their way of making a living.  Also, those who claimed to believe in Christianity simply had weak minds.  They sadly and blindly trusted in something that was fake and fictional.  It was OK to treat Jesus as a fairy tale, as a part of Christmas tradition; but to treat Him as real?

That was dumb! With me, God never had a chance. However, at the time, I had to go to church.  I did not want to, but my mother forced me to.  She was the first Christian in my family and she insisted that I went to church every Sunday.  Well, I was angry, and on top of that, I was very angry.  I was not only angry inside; I also acted out my anger.

I picked on my Sunday school teachers.  I remember all of them were women. I took advantage of their good-natured character and picked on them.  I asked difficult questions.  I purposely made fun of whatever the Bible had to say during class.  A few times, I made them cry and I was proud of that accomplishment.

I also had a following.  A group of teenagers believed in me because I dared to taunt the "establishment".  I truly believed in myself.  I believed that with hard work I could make it anywhere.  Every Sunday, we sat together and critiqued sermons.  If we found something that sounded ridiculous, we then laughed out loud just to show that we were not willing to conform. Some in the church called me the Hopeless One.  This title stayed with me for about three years.

One December in 1973, a few days before Christmas, I was by my desk studying the Bible passages for the coming week, hoping to find "ammunitions" to use them to attack my Sunday school teacher.  This time, the Bible reading was different.  It began to give me a very personal sense of sin.  I began to sense that I was a sinner.  How could it be?  I paced back and forth.  I talked to myself saying this could not be.  I reminded myself that this Bible talks about myth and fairy tales.  Nothing helped.  This sense of sin grew and grew, and I was very much in agony.  My sins were everywhere.  The big ones, the little ones, the sins of arrogance, lust, and hypocrisy, they all came from no where and parked on my back at the same time.  I was sitting by my desk at home in a cold December day in New York City, but I was breathing heavily and I was hot and my shirt was all wet from my perspiration.

I wanted to resist but every time I tried I felt that I was about to explode from within.  It was finally the time to believe.  I remember I said to myself, "I donıt know what is going on.  But, I really did it this time." There was really this Jesus God.  The immediate urge was to tell the world that I now believe.  No, how could I do that?  It would be most embarrassing.  It would be renouncing what I had espoused for the last three years.  Besides, I was the Hopeless One and I had a following.  What about just being a secret believer? So that no one would know about my true belief?  No, that was not good enough.  God wanted more. Finally, I picked up the telephone and dialed the number

"Hello"

"Hello, Reverend Kang, this is _____"

"Hi, ____, nice to hear from you, whatıs up?"

"Hi! this is ___ ..I'd like to ask you something"

"Sure, what is it?"

"Would you tell me how does one believe in Jesus?"

With that last word uttered, I knew that I had crossed the point of no return. 

"Well you believe in Jesus, died on the cross for your sins, and lived again on the third day. Do you want to believe in Jesus?"

"Yes, but, what do I do?"

"Letıs pray together. You repeat after me. OK?"

 "OK"

Long time ago, I did not give God a chance.  I intentionally shut God out of my life.  Yet, God still elected to open my heart and to save me.  Now, 26 years later, emotions have long subsided, yet I have gained much more confidence in my Jesus God and have never regretted my 1973 decision because the Bible does make sense.  Whenever some of my friends mockingly suggest that the Bible does not make sense.  I would typically smile and pray that one day God might open their hearts as He did mine one December day in 1973. 

Believe onto Jesus and you shall be saved!

Why do I believe?

My spiritual pilgrimage began when the Spirit of the Lord softened my heart through my wife’s submission and reached the launching pad when He opened my spiritual eyes by helping me establish my faith upon Jesus’ resurrection.

“Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.”  (1 Peter 3:1-2)

After 13 years of marriage, my wife put her faith in the Lord.  At that time, I was glad she had finally settled for her clutch.  I was perplexed by her search of the meaning of life given that we were living the American dream with her position as a high level R&D executive and my second career in financial software development.  Although we occasionally had disagreements on how to raise up our son, he was actually a delightful boy.  I knew my wife had always been very independent and strong will; however, with patience, I could win her over to my point of view. Since college, I believed that meaning of life was completely defined by oneself, and for me it is the pursue of success.

The change in my wife’s attitude and behavior after her conversion was the harbinger of things to come.  She began to attend church meetings and various Bible studies with the same zeal she had for her work.  I warned her one day, “You used to be a workaholic now you are a ‘churchaholic’.  You used to put your work at a higher priority to our son and myself, now you just put your church activities above us.  Now not only you don’t get pay, you actually increase expenses by donating to church.  What are you buying anyway?  Are you in a cult?”

To my surprise, my wife took my words to heart and negotiated a compromise with me.  She agreed to reduce her “offering” and church activities; and promised to spend more time with my son and me.  As a reward for her, I agreed to accompany her to church on Sundays.  Secretly, I wanted to check out the church for myself to make sure she was not misled by a cult.

After some time, I began to realize that her change was genuine.  My observation of the church members also led me to a book called the Bible, which Christians claimed as the Word of God.  To me it contained just legends and fairy tales.  Some of the tales was not half as exciting as the Chinese Classics novels I read as a youngster.  Yet, I wondered whether the book really had something to do with her change.  Chinese has a proverb, “Rivers and Mountains are easier to change than one’s true nature.”  If it does contain this mythical power, I like to know what it is.

During a sabbatical vacation, I read the narratives in Bible, tracing the story line from Genesis to Revelation.  Afterwards, I pondered whether any of the stories were true.  I thought if I had witnessed any of the miracles myself, then I could believe.  However, since I was not there when those events were claimed to have happened, how could I verify those claims?

I decided to read books that would help me to clarify my thinking.  In my quest, I read Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that demands a verdict.”  Among the issues of faith that McDowell brought to my attention, I identified the resurrection of Jesus to be the central issue for us who were born after the crucifixion.

Truly as Paul stated in 1 Corinthian 15:14 – 20 “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead…  But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…  For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” But how could one believe in the resurrection?  The claimed witnesses had been long dead.  How could anyone be convinced that Jesus was indeed raised?

After pondering this question for a while, I thought the best supporting evidence is the changed attitudes of the 11 disciples, especially that of Peter and John.  When Judas betrayed Jesus, every one of Jesus’ disciples abandoned Him.  Even Peter who vowed to stand by Jesus had fallen away and denied him three times.  But what a change in their attitude and action after they claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus.  If Jesus had not been raised, how could we explain the boldness of the disciples as they preached the resurrection in the midst of Jesus’ murderers?

In Acts 4:13, when the Sanhedrin was trying Peter and John, “they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

I believe that the testimonies of Peter and John are true.  If Jesus did not appear to them after His burial, why would they risk their lives for a lie?  If they acted cowardly before His death, what caused them to transform into courageous preachers proclaiming His resurrection and be full of conviction and purpose after He died?

True to the words of Gamaliel, the reputable Pharisee teacher, “Leave these men alone!  Let them go!  For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”  (Acts 5:38-39)  Based on Peter and John’s boldly stated testimonies, the church of Christ was established to our present time.

The existence of the church of Christ testifies that “Jesus lives.”  Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God.  And on this rock He is building His church (Matthew 16:15-18) and my faith.  At that time, even though I had not fully understood all the implications of being a Christian, I was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and the meaning of my life is defined by God.  I admitted I was a sinner in God’s eyes.  I needed His salvation.  I accepted Jesus as the Lord of my life and I was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

After I place my faith in God through Jesus, my life have changed.  It started slowly.  But now looking back, I have enjoyed my life with a deep sense of joy that I had never known before. The problems in my life did not go away.  It is the new perspective on life that help me to deal with the difficulties.  Things may be out of control in my own eyes, but I know God is the one who has the absolute control over everything.  This is what gives me the peace that surpasses all understanding.

I wish you may come to know this peace as well.  I believe it is God's good intention for every one of us.  But it requires your open mind and heart, for no one could force your will.  If you need some help in your search for truth, please contact our church and our brothers and sisters will gladly make ourselves available to you.

 



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