Into the Glorious Light
I am Dingjie, and I am 22 years old this year. I am the nephew of Siew Chiong and brother of Yanning and Yingxuan. I am currently a fourth year student in NUS. I am privileged to be given this opportunity to testify of my coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I grew up with many opportunities to come to Bethany. I still remember coming for Sunday School at Ah Hood Road back in the transition period between Bethany II & III, but I cried and never came back because it was yet another day of school on my rest day. I came with my aunt for many of the Easter and Anniversary concerts and lunches as well. To be honest, what kept me coming then was more of the good food. In addition, my aunt bought me a children’s Bible and read Bible stories to me week after week. I enjoyed reading the stories and looking at the colourful illustrations very much. Deep down, I was moved, yet particularly puzzled about this faith that she so fervently shares, that was different from the rest of my family.
The rest of us engaged in Buddhism and Taoism worship. We lived with a lot of superstitions. I remember being brought to mediums when I misbehaved or fell ill, to cast out the influences of some evil spirit in me. There was a great fear of offending these lurking spirits, and my family and I often stuck to rituals to ward off these spirits.
It was in early primary school that I started to wonder if these things were really true. I remember reading in my Chinese textbook about Confucius, how he was a man of great wisdom and moral character. Soon after, I went to the temple near my house to pray with my grandmother. I saw an idol of Confucius within the temple and people praying to him. It was the same Confucius! Nowhere in my textbook did anyone nor Confucius himself claim to be god, yet people made him a god and started worshipping him after his death. I realised how easily the human mind can be deceived and assumed this to be true of all religions. I thereby renounced all of the supernatural.
In Secondary School, I joined the Boys’ Brigade. The Boys’ Brigade has a programme called Christian Education, where teachers and a chaplain taught us from the Bible almost every week. This way, I increased in knowledge about the Bible and even went for national Bible quizzes. The Bible stories were interesting, but at that point they were no more than mere stories to me. God speaking to Abraham, the ten plagues that struck Egypt, Moses parting the Red Sea, these to me were too incredulous to be true. These miracles could not have happened, for it defied the laws of science that I learnt about. I grew to learn and trust in more ‘scientific’ theories such as the Big Bang Theory and Evolution. However, I was convinced that if there were ever a true religion, it would be Christianity.
In 2010, one of my close friends, the late Brandon Low, was diagnosed with brain cancer. For two years he fought valiantly with the cancer. He came to know of Bethany in 2012 through my aunt and I vividly remember the time when he first came to Bethany, cachectic and masked, sitting in a wheelchair. To my surprise, many young people came forward to relate to him, even though he was a total stranger. Bethany rallied to help in him and his family in their time of need. When he passed on, Bethany held a vigil service for him, for which many of my schoolmates came down for. The tremendous love outpoured by Bethany to my friend left a deep impression in my heart.
During my A level period, I fell ill with a chronic cough that would not go away ever since my prelims. I coughed till I got bouts of headache, and because of that I could not study as I used to. I did not dare to take the full dose of cough mixture, as it made me drowsy and affected my concentration. This went on from a few days after my prelims all through my A levels, nearly two months in total! This made me very stressed and anxious.
At that time, my BB Chaplain held a cell group for some of us in school every week. My aunt also sent me verses to encourage me. In my desperation, I realised that God was my only hope. I cried out to God to help me during those sleepless nights, if He is real. To my surprise, after I prayed, I felt a sense of unexplainable peace surrounding me. It was only later on at YPG that I came across Philippians 4:6-7, which has been precious to me ever since:
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Throughout Secondary School and Junior College, I was invited to many churches. But I decided to come to Bethany for I could sense the genuine love of people here, and the dedication and oneness with which the congregation sang. I could see that many people here lived lives that bore testimony of their faith. I began to come for Sunday School every week since December 2014. At first, I did not know anyone of my age, but it turned out that my ex-physics teacher, Teacher YC, was my Sunday School teacher. He helped me to settle in well.
For my first year in Bethany, I tried to find out more about God and this Christian faith. I wanted to believe that God is real, but was afraid that I could be deceiving myself. Moreover, there were still many intellectual doubts in the way. I earnestly sought to find out if this faith was real and to clear my doubts. I spoke to many people in church, read many books and went for talks that delved into the apologetics. This way, I soon came to believe in the existence of God. However, I could not speak of a personal relationship with God and I did not really understand what salvation really means.
As I kept coming to Bethany and continued to grow in knowledge of the Word, I began to see how sinful my life really is. I tried my best to rid myself of these sins through personal discipline, to make myself ‘good enough’ for God to accept, but I eventually came to the conclusion that this is impossible. I felt really depressed that I could not live up to these expectations. I struggled with thoughts about whether I have truly been saved, and how God might not have chosen me after all.
One day, Pastor Mitch explained Jesus’ interactions with the Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10:17. He took the wrong approach of wanting to earn his salvation through works. Instead of trying to earn by ourselves what we could not earn, it is about believing, trusting and receiving the gift of salvation, given to us out of God’s grace and love, as we read in Ephesians 2:4-5.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)”
At that point it dawned on me that God sent His Son to die for a sinner like me, to do what I very well proved that I could not do on my own. What a blessed thought! I finally understood and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. I felt the tremendous love of God outpoured into my heart. Since then, I have been seeking to walk with the Lord. Today, I seek to be baptized as a public declaration of my faith in the Lord. I seek to be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, to walk out of a life of sin and darkness, into the glorious light.
Written by Ong Dingjie