Yuen Kwong
Hi, my name is Yuen Kwong and I have the privilege of sharing my testimony of God's grace and mercy in my life with all of you tonight. It is through God's grace alone that He reached out to me time and time again, so that I can come to know of my salvation from my sins through faith in Jesus Christ. In God's perfect timing, He slowly exposed Himself to me, slowly softening my hardened heart so that I would be ready to hear the gospel in college.
Looking back at my life now, I can see how God has used the people and circumstances in my life to lead me closer and closer to Him each step of the way. Although I grew up in an atheistic home, He used my parents efforts in preparing me for a successful life in the worldly sense to draw me closer to Him, which ultimately led me to the greatest thing I can ever hope for—salvation from my sins through faith in Jesus Christ. For example, I was placed in Sunday school at a church by my parents when I was young, around when I was 4 or 5, in their efforts to develop my social skills and independence by interacting with other people. Then during my elementary and middle school years, I was exposed to some children's bible stories here and there from going to Chinese school. As I grew older, God exposed Himself to me even more. During middle school and high school, I joined a children's and youth choir. Although the choir was not affliated with the church, we practiced in a church sanctuary every Friday night, and sang for the congregation to thank them for the use of their facilities one Sunday per month. At that time, although I was singing songs which worshipped God, they were nothing but lyrics of a song to me. But slowly not only did I enjoy the melodious tunes of the songs; I felt comforted by the words that praised of such a great God and I began becoming curious about the God that these worship sets praised so much about. In high school, I remember reading parts of the bible for an AP Lit assignment, which really confused me but it also made me even more curious, but I never actively pursued to learn more about God. Finally, coming into college, God really softened my heart to allow me to seek after Him. He graciously placed people in my life to pray for my salvation and to encourage me to seek after Him. I joined a fellowship on campus and after attending a couple large groups and bible studies, I decided that I wanted to become Christian and asked for God's help. It was around a year later, after learning a lot from listening to sermons at Lighthouse, that I realized that I was not Christian that whole freshman year. I had heard the gospel being preached and served in various ministries within the parachurch ministry that I was a part of, but it took me a whole year to finally realize that I did not repent from my sins-- I had not viewed myself as a sinner or a bad person. Though I was serving, it was only to the extent of the comforts of my life and it was rooted in self-glorification. Everything I was learning was just head knowledge. I was blind to the sins of my heart, prideful to think that I was a good person, and failed to understand the holiness of God and that the weight of sin against a holy God is death.
Thank God for opening my eyes to see the sins of my life, and to understand what a wretched sinner I truly am. It took me a while for everything to finally get through my dense little head. But praise God for His love, grace, mercy, and patience; I finally repented for my sins against God and truly asked Him to help me to fully submit my life to the Lordship of Christ and to only desire to do all things for His glory alone.
After eveything finally clicked in my head, I could then see a transformation in my attitude, in my thinking process, and in my motives behind the things that I do. So it was another "ahhhh" (I see) moment, so that's what they meant about seeing a genuine change from the old self to the new self. Sigh...I'm a pretty slow learner. Well, that's the gist of my testimony. Thanks for listening.
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