It's been 3 months since I made my promise.
First 4 comments of this post were responses to the 1st part above before I posted the 2nd part below.
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(I have recounted my testimony quite a number of times throughout the years. My narration is often a little bit different each time I tell it. As I get to know God more day by day, my cumulative spiritual experience shapes my interpretation of past events. And thus, even though the events are the same, I look at some of them differently.)
Here is an account written in 09/2004:
I was born in Hong Kong and raised in a Christian family, which was consisted of my paternal grandma, dad, mom, my elder sister, and me. We attended a church of about 50-60 people. And the elementary and secondary schools that I attended were also Christian schools. Though I had gone to many evangelistic meetings since kindergarten and had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior many times, I didn't really understand much except that He is God, He loves me; I wanted to be "saved" and to go to heaven.
During my high school years (form 3-form 4 in HK, ~9 and 10 grade in the U.S. school system), I started to think about death and fear what comes after death. Some Christian friends helped me process some Biblical knowledge that I had accumulated from my childhood; but I was still uncertain where I would end up after death.
My family migrated to the U.S. about that time and we attended a church in Eagle Rock. I was more or less operating on the rational level to believe that I was a sinner, confess my sins to God, and trust Jesus as the Lord of my life, when I got baptized in autumn that same year.
In retrospect, I think a large part of my spiritual struggle and uncertainty was that I didn't have a dramatic conversion experience due to the fact that I was raised in a Christian family. I've always believed in Jesus Christ; it was naturally a gradual process for me to experience God. As a result, there wasn't a point in time that I could specify as the moment I received Christ, and I didn't have a "before" and "after" receiving Christ experience, at least not like most of the conversion testimonies I heard. Furthermore, I couldn't quite yet grasp the idea of myself as a sinner and, as a result, I couldn't comprehend the greatness of God's love and Christ's forgiveness. I prayed that God would grant me some kind of "dramatic" experience.
It was in my college years when I read C.S. Lewis's
Mere Christianity. Coupled with some growing-up experience, what Lewis wrote about the sinful nature in each and every one of us struck me -- that I would be capable of much evil if given the "right" opportunity and setting. It was like God opened my eyes to see my dark side. Not that I committed every sin when given the opportunity, but that seeing my potential already shocked me. I began to see the very sinful nature embedded within the core of my being and felt the horror of it.
Sometime after that, I experienced the Holy Spirit's conviction of my sin twice. In one of these two occasions, I woke up in the middle of my sleep and all of a sudden, the many sins and wrongdoings I committed in the past floated in my mind one by one. I was overwhelmed by the ugliness of my real self while, at the same time, the meaning of God's unconditional love and acceptance became more clear to me. Remembering 1 John 1:9, I confessed my sins to God--this time not only from the faculty of reason but from my entire being--and I prayed wholeheartedly to be washed clean by the blood of Jesus.
From that experience I understood that there's nothing I could possibly do to save myself from my sin except through Christ Jesus. It was only in my most desperate state that God could show me the meaning of redemption and salvation, and the priceless hope that He has offered me. As it says in Ephesians 1:18, "...the eyes of my heart may be enlightened in order that I may know the hope to which he has called me, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints."
These're the beginning steps of my walk with Jesus. May He get all glory.
