The One Evening that Changed My Life
Paul, 3rd Congregation
Paul
I was born into a Christian family and was blessed to grow up knowing the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostle’s Creed. For even though I did not fully understand what I was learning, subconsciously my character was being sharpened by the values the Bible taught. Though I could not even think clearly about what faith was, God was already pursuing me.
I attended a Christian secondary school. You would think being in a mission school would pretty much ensure that I continued to grow spiritually but no such think happened. We had weekly chapel services that became an excuse to enjoy the air-con in the hall. We had daily devotions during assembly that became opportunities to nap. As Christ put it very pointedly: these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, and that describes who I was.
Romans 1:29-32 lists a long list of sinful deeds and dispositions that summarise my life from 13-17 years of age. Especially this: arrogant and boastful. My academic strength has been a deep-set source of pride over since secondary three; always assuming I’m right, always assuming the others are wrong not just in studies, but in all other areas of life too. Verse 32 speaks clearly here that even though I knew the law of God, I continued to do these things anyway. I knew the Bible, but I was sinning anyway.
God works in wonderful ways. God saw it fitting that I taste some deep emotional pain at the start of 2013. A girl was involved; but no I won’t bore you all with the details. Suffice it to say that all that started an unlikely chain of events that led me to a couch in a hotel lobby in Leipzig with Aik Keong. That evening, God used him to reshape everything I thought I knew about God and the Bible. He asked questions such as, “How do you know you’re saved?” and “Why do you want to get married anyway?” Through these questions and his follow-up, God opened my eyes to see the glory of Christ. I actually wanted to pray. After that trip, I listened to all the sermons on Romans by John Piper over a few months, though whom God revealed from His word the riches of His grace in salvation and the depravity of my soul. It was during this time of listening to Romans that I truly came to conviction of sin, repentance, and faith in Christ alone. Today, I was baptised as a public profession that I want to follow Jesus all my life and become a member of RHC.
For mercy’s sake, the Gentiles lived in sin while God worked with Israel – Romans 11:30. Similarly, I don’t know why God allowed my years of falling away, but now I know more fully the depth of Hid mercy. Therefore, I exult with Paul at the end of Romans 11: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How inscrutable His ways and unsearchable His judgments. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen.