Handing Over Control
Shauna, 2nd Congregation
Shauna
Before coming to know Christ, I was very in control. I believed that I was in control of my life, and whatever wins and losses that occurred throughout my life. The wins, I attributed to my hard work and abilities. The losses, I attributed to my incapability and faults. There was this huge baggage on my shoulders that whatever happened in my life was all on me. I remember having this idea of a good life – a peaceful family, achieving good grades and being good and everything I was interested in. Anytime I felt I was losing these aspects of my life, I started to blame myself, and eventually blaming others around me. My life was filling up with hate, towards myself, towards my family, towards the people around me.
I began to constantly be dissatisfied with myself and the people around me, I succumbed to anorexia and depression throughout my secondary and junior college education and struggled with family issues back home. Many of my Christian friends tried to reach out to me at that time, inviting me to their churches, inviting me for bible study sessions but I was very resistant and skeptical. Further, I studied Knowledge and Inquiry in JC, where we learnt epistemology, or the philosophy of knowledge. It gave us 17 year olds the power to question any piece of information that came our way, and being very bad philosophers, we became pretty skeptical about things like religion and theology.
However, God works in very interesting ways. Seemingly knowing that I was gonna fight every piece of theological argument that was coming my way, He came into my life, experience after experience to make me unable to deny that He is a true living God. From unknowingly serving at a Christian orphanage in Batam back in 2012, to being rejected from my choice of university, my brother’s conversion, to forging strong friendships with the Christian girls in my school - seeing in them, what it means to live out life grounded in Christ and the bible. They never failed to treat me with love and kindness, even when I was at my worst. They prayed for me, even when I least deserved prayer. They shared the gospel with me and brought me to Christianity Explored classes. God was working, slowly but surely. He made me realise that I was not in control of anything, and things happened truly by His grace, and not by our own strength.
I started coming to RHC and hearing His Word every Sunday. It was amazing how God really changed my heart. As said in Galatians 3:22, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe”. I realised how different Christianity was from all other religions or faiths, that it was not about working to achieve an end goal, it was not a means to an end, but it was literally the good news. It was based on faith in Christ even when we were sinful and broken, as said in Romans 5:8, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. I looked at myself and saw how fallen I was. And yet, in the most undeserving circumstances, God sent down His only Son to save me, this wretched child, from my sins. During the recent CE class on discipleship, Jacob was sharing with us what it meant to be a Christian. He shared that being a Christian is to have both repentance and faith. As the lesson went by, I was affirmed and was proud that yes, I am sinful, yes I am fallen, but I will constantly repent and have faith in God’s promises and in the gospel. As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come”. I believe that it is by God’s grace that He has changed my heart, and I know that my journey in faith will not always be smooth, as with most of us there are bound to be ups and downs, and I hope that we can all remind ourselves, as said in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect”.