I Laughed at the Church, and now I'm a Christian!

This is Minh Ly's story.

In this short testimony I want to share how I became a Christian, and how Jesus Christ has changed my life, forever! In the time before I knew Christ I was a very destructive young man. My sin was spiralling out of control and I was hurting everyone around me, including my parents, my friends, and myself. My sin was spiralling to the point of addictions and certain dangerous habits, and also, physical harm towards other people.

Some of these addictions included alcohol abuse and gambling. One day I even remember my friend asking me to attend church with him to ease the pain of losing a really large sum of money at the casino. He told me he wanted to pray and maybe God would ease his pain. I laughed at him for suggesting something so ludicrous and told him that God was a powerless figure.

I few months later, I gradually came to a very low point in the life. Probably the lowest and darkest period of my entire life. Nothing I planned or wanted was working out. I lost all confidence in my own abilities and felt like a helpless and lost person. I was utterly collapsing in despair. One night, lying in my bed, feeling a hot rage running through my body, I poured out my anger towards God. I thought to myself that whoever He was, why He would ever let me suffer like this? I challenged him, yelling and asking if He existed, and brought Him down to a level with my blasphemy and profanity that I would not even lay on the person I hated most. I had no one else to blame, so I blamed God.

A few weeks had past, and while still living in despair, my anger towards God had somehow escaped. Late one night or early morning, lying in my bed again, I wept in desperation and with a strong tone and determination in my voice, demanding that God help me and cause my suffering to stop. I pleaded and begged Him to deliver me. I had never been a religious person in my life and had no previous religious exposure or knowledge. In desperation, I just felt I needed to turn to someone ‘higher’. Something compelled me to turn to God because I realised that no one could ever help me except Him.

What happened after that? Not much initially, because I still feeling hopeless and in despair. Then late one evening, while drinking and being noisy with a group of friends in a quiet park, a group of Christians approached us and offered us some cake they had leftover from a BBQ. They had used this as an opening to talk to us about Christianity. One guy from their group invited me to attend their church on Friday the following week. I then made up my mind in the next few days to attend, feeling I had nothing to lose.

Ever since that time, my life changed drastically. I couldn’t believe that my former bad habits no longer had control over me. I had tried to give them up in times before I knew God, but it had always ended in failure. God slowly started to give me new desires in other areas of my life too. I cannot explain what happened in a natural sense, because it was supernatural.

Looking back on the last few years as a Christian I am really thankful now for the assurance He has given me that I am His child. The biggest evidence of this for me is whenever I have steered off-course, from His righteousness and purpose to live my life in my own selfish way; He has always come for me and put me back on the path he wants me to be. Numerous times when I lost my interest for spiritual things, I thought I would never be able to regain my love for doing the things which pleased God. Every time, He has led me back to Himself.
God will always finish the work He has started in a converted soul. A true believer will always bear evidence that He has been changed by God. If God had the power to save your soul from eternal hell, he surely has the power to change you too.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that God is REAL now. When I first believed, I used to only believe that there may be a God. I would never have imagined it was possible for God to bring me to this point where I know that He truly exists. God is amazing, He can do all things, even things we think are impossible from our limited human imagination.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us – Ephesians 3:20.

Testimony of Minh Ly

Believing to knowing God

This is Adrian Cheng's story.

Ever since I was young I have been going to Church. It was more something that I did out of routine and saw it almost like an extension from school. I struggled with the lack of guidance, always feeling as if I made the wrong decision at every turn. Also, I feared death, the death of my parents and those around me. As a child, I wouldn’t be able to sleep - sometimes in despair, I would run out crying to my parents, but not wanting to explain to them why I was crying.

It was at a teens camp that I remember something significant happened. Though I have never doubted God existed, it was when I watched a movie, “A Thief in the Night” about the rapture that I realized I wasn’t sure if I was really saved. This incident was probably one of many times where I prayed the sinner’s prayer (just in case I wasn’t serious about it the other times).

My faith in God has gone from believing him, to knowing him. This was through many incidents where I wanted to find out whether God was really real. For example, I would give offering to God based on something I learnt, that you can never out-give God. Somehow more than what I gave God would come back to me during that week! Not convinced, I continued to pray to God about small things and as he answered, the evidence of His existence mounted. After proving himself many times, there were just too many “coincidences” to deny that God was at work. Now I have the assurance that when I live for God, he is in control. I know where I am going when I die and I have joy in sharing the truth with those that I encounter, hoping that they will also experience the life that I now live as a Christian.

Adrian