My Journey to Knowing Christ

Since young, I am a very a logical and inquisitive person. I had always wondered about the meaning of life and the existence of God. I have read all kinds of books on religion and am familiar with most major religions. However, I did not have any breakthrough or know God. There were times when I had contemplated whether there really is a God or not. However, logic told me that there should be one, but which one?

When I was in secondary school, there is a Christian revival in my school where a few of my classmates were constantly going around trying to share the gospel. During those days, I relished engaging them and I felt very proud that I was able to out reasoned them. Without my knowing, those constant exchanges with my Christian classmates had planted the first seed to knowing Jesus in me.

I was always 'fascinated' with Christians as I'd always wonder why they were so nice people and at the same time, I find them 'spoil sport' as their clean living meant that I had always need to be careful with my speech and action in front of them. Weren't they missing out on a big piece of the worldly pleasures? I had also come across many so called Christians who utter God's name but behave in sinful ways. With these encounters, my view of Christians then was that they were hypocrites.

Somehow God didn't give up on me. Through out my growing up years, from schooling through army to working life, God put genuine Christians into my life. Through these Christians, I see the character of God. I see genuine love and concern for fellow man and most of all a genuine love for this God that I had yet to know. I still banter with my Christian friends about their beliefs. I used to have a whole list of 'killer' questions which would stump many Christians. Somehow, as I banter with my Christian friends, throwing them the difficult questions, the answers just came and my killer question lists got shorter and shorter.

Another turning point was how I have seen my mother turned to Jesus. My mother was illiterate and at that point in her life, I think she was searching for God. She had tried many religions, Taoism, Buddhism and even Shinto Zen Buddhism, which was popular then. Somehow, she could find no peace. Then Billy Graham visited Singapore (in 1977, I think) and someone invited my mother to attend his rally. To the surprise of the whole family, she accepted Christ on that day. And within the next day, she had asked the pastor to come and removed all the idols from our house. This is indeed a miracle as my mother was quite superstitious then. She later told the family that she had been going around praying to all kind of Gods but it was at the Billy Graham rally that she somehow sensed God and sensed the peace of God. I was indeed very intrigued by my mom's conversion. How can an illiterate superstitious Chinese lady be touched by an "Ang Mo" God? Well, my mom has been a Christian since that day and had never turned back till she went back to Jesus.

Even though, my mom had made a deep impression on me about this God called Jesus, I have never been able to bring myself to take the next step to go to church to find out more… until I started dating my wife. She was a new believer then and had started to follow her sister to the Church of Singapore (then at the Jurong Town Hall) every Sunday. In order to date her, I also followed her to Church. It was through going to Church that I began to learn more about Jesus. I remembered the first time I acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Saviour was when I was lying on my bed reading a Christian book called "Chasing the Wind". I believe God spoke to me through this book, it broke down all my arguments against Jesus Christ the Son of God. The book, like the title "Chasing the Wind", talks about many seekers of God are like people trying to chase and catch the wind to prove that wind is real…even though they can feel the wind and the wind is everywhere around us…like we can feel God and God is always with us. The book ends with a call to pray the sinner's prayer which I did in the privacy of my bed.

[The sinner's prayer is a prayer a person prays to God when they understand that they are a sinner and in need of a Savior. Saying a sinner's prayer will not accomplish anything on its own. A sinner's prayer is only effective if it genuinely represents what a person knows, understands, and believes about their sinfulness and need for salvation.

You too can pray the sinner's prayer:
"Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Please forgive my sins and give me the gift of eternal life. I ask you into my life and heart to be my Lord and Savior. I want to serve you always. Amen"]

Eventually my wife and I got baptized. However, there was not much changes in my life. Perhaps my knowledge of God is still head knowledge and my pride had prevented me from establishing a closer relationship with God. Both my wife and I still attended church services every Sunday but we did not progress beyond being "Sunday Christians". After our children came, we stopped going to Church altogether.

I have learnt my lesson that once you have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour, He will not forsake you even as I have forsaken Him. God moves in ways we do not understand.

I had a very successful career as a project manager in a government organisation. This was my first job and I was promoted after one and half years to project manager, managing a team of six. I felt that I could never fail and pride overtook me. I wanted to go out to the private sector, to expand my wings and soar. I joined a reputed US computer company as a system engineer in July 1990. I was baptized on the Easter of 1991. After my first son was born in 1992, both my wife and I slackened in our church attendance due to the busyness of being first time parents. When my second son was born, we stopped going to church all together. As a result of my diminished enthusiasm for God, I believed God put me through 7 years of trial. Somehow, I was not able to duplicate my career success in my first job. From 1991 to 1999, I have been through 3 job changes. Each change was worst than the previous one. God put problematic supervisors in all my jobs. The worst was when I started my third job in a large pharmaceutical company. The boss who hired me resigned 1 week after I've joined and told me horror stories about the company and said that whatever he had promised me would not be realized. I started to look for another job on my second week of work. And very strangely, for 4 years, I had attended countless interviews and yet I could not land a single job. Throughout these 4 years, God put, in my view, a grossly incompetent boss on top of me. I had a very miserable time there. Nevertheless, throughout 'my ordeal' God also put good Christians as my colleagues and keep reminding me to go back to Him. Finally, I told my wife that we need to go back to church. We started to attend my mom's church, KYC. We were attending the Cantonese worship then. I was previously a very proud person, God has knocked down my pride through years of putting me down in my career. Thinking back I really thank God for this. I wonder what kind of person I would be if God allowed me to succeed on my own efforts. At one of the worship, there was a call by the pastor for those who are troubled to stand up and be prayed for. Previously my pride would've prevented me from standing up, but that day, for the first time I stood up to be prayed for.

After that day, I received a call from a company to attend an interview. This was for the post of Regional IT Manager. I actually wrote in sometime back without much hope of getting a reply as my qualifications were not an exact match. Through God's grace, I was offered the position. This job turned out to be a dream job for me. I was highly rated by my US boss.

Looking back, I think God knew that He needs to knock down my pride before I could establish a relationship with Him, so He put me through 7 years of 'suffering' until I came running back to Him and humbly submit to His authority. He then blesses me. Now, I've learnt how to humble myself and follow Jesus. It's no turning back.

Thank you Jesus…for not forsaking me and loving me.