How Love Found Me

Like everyone who has come to faith in Christ, my testimony is a miracle of God.

In my previous life, I was extremely cynical, hard hearted, and was even a professing atheist for many years. I thought I just wasn’t a spiritual person. In fact, I thought spirituality and even believing in God was impossible for me for most of my life.

I gave my life to the Lord in early November 2022. I didn’t know much about theology and doctrine, I didn’t know what it meant to be "born again", I didn’t know much about the Holy Spirit, and I didn’t know we can actually know God through a real, dynamic, and tangible relationship based on respect and true love.

I thought Christianity was about being a 'good person' and doing my 'best'. I thought believing in Jesus meant having blind faith. But after surrendering to God, I know with certainty Jesus is real and only He can set us free and give us the peace we seek.

I am incredibly blessed to have been brought up in a Christian household by two amazing parents with two younger brothers. But, it wasn't until I was 32 that I actually began reading the Bible for myself and came to the knowledge of the truth.

God has always gone above and beyond to take care of me and my family my entire life. I've never felt like I’ve lacked anything and I've always felt a safe presence with me even in times of really crushing despair. I even remember moments in the car when I was younger, wondering to myself why everything in my life was so good. I wish I could say I didn’t take this for granted, but I have. Despite always having my physical needs met, I found it very hard to understand our spiritual need.

I didn’t understand our need for communication with God growing up. We went to church every Sunday when I was young, but I just didn't get it. Even though I read and enjoyed some of the Bible stories, I considered them as if they were any other fictional book. The older I became, I felt more uncomfortable calling myself Christian because I knew deep down I didn’t truly believe.

I tried praying to God most nights when I was younger. My prayers were very simple but I thought it might help. Every time people asked me to pray at church, I felt like I had to put on a show because I didn't know how to pray. There was still that wall of hostility between God and I because of sin, but I didn't understand a whole lot and I think my inability to say the right words made me quite insecure.

I had a small Gideon's Bible and I barely read a page of it, but at the back was the Romans Road to salvation. I remember reading it one night, and not really understanding it but I wrote down a prayer anyway, perhaps to help me pray better next time at church (the details are fuzzy). I folded and kept that prayer in that Bible for many years, forgetting all about it. God did not forget though (you must read to the end to find out what happened with that)!

During high school I constantly wondered how the people that surrounded me could have the strong faith that they did. I'm a deeply romantic person, so I idealised love stories but I just didn't understand the way God loved us. I longed to know what love is without really knowing what I was looking for. I simply thought love was based on physical attraction and lust. It was clearly the wrong place to be looking, but I didn't know any better. I wanted what I wanted on my own terms.

I gave up on praying to God once I was convinced the Bible was a myth and couldn't reconcile it with dinosaurs and evolution. There was a moment when I was a young teenager, watching a story on the news about a supposed asteroid millions of years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs, and I consider it one of those defining moments in time that led to me abandoning my faith because I knew either the Bible or science had to be wrong at this point - and naturally, it was quite easy to give up on God and believing the Bible to be true.

All concepts of right and wrong eventually went out the window and I made the decision to stop going to church after I left high school because I just knew I didn't believe. I didn't trust the Bible was true, and God's guardrails quickly came off.

As an Australian born Chinese, I've often felt like I don't really belong anywhere in this world. I was either too "asian", or too "white" and I never really felt like I fit in anywhere I happened to be. School felt depressingly lonely at times and my experiences over the years made me desperate for acceptance and validation. With my insecurity amplified by me being a naturally introverted and shy person, I wanted to experience life as a 'normal' person.

The more stubborn I became about conforming to the world, the more I think God let me go- although I do remember a moment in time in bed at night where I believe the Holy Spirit was pleading with me to hold on to my faith. I often felt so lonely and friendless especially when I was reviewing the day at night- but I was also too stubborn and lost to trust in Him.

I did an Arts degree in Mass Communications after high school which demanded a study of pop culture, media, and everything worldly. We were studying critical thinking skills and the power media and culture has over society, and I didn't realise I was being deceived myself by the lies of the world. I'd never really been interested in music or movies, but I began consuming so much pop culture that it began influencing how I thought, spoke, and acted.

I considered myself an “agnostic” at this point, but it didn’t take long for me to get caught up with the wrong people. I'd often came home very late at night, drunk or involved in debauchery and sexual immorality, and it would result in awful screaming matches with my parents.

Atheism had taken root in my life and it had a profound impact on my actions. I thought I had life all figured out by the time I was 21, but I was self righteous, prideful, and stubborn. I did whatever I wanted because I didn’t want to believe in accountability or right and wrong. The more I fell into sin, the easier it became to lie to everyone, especially to myself.

I started seeing a guy I worked with when I was around 19, and he was a habitual user of weed. I've never been interested in drugs, but he was my first sexual partner, and it crushed every notion I had about love or romance completely. It had such a profoundly negative impact on me that I suppressed the thought of it and couldn't even bring myself to have a proper conversation with my next boyfriend about it.

I desperately wanted to know I was worthy of love, and I thought having sexual experience was how I could get the validation and acceptance that I was looking for. Instead, it affected me in a way I don't even know how to express in words. The way society treats sex so casually made me think sex was simple recreational fun. I thought it meant nothing, maybe because I considered humans 'evolved animals'. It took me years to realise that sex affects us in such a profound way that with the wrong person it goes from something beautiful to something violent.

I met my next boyfriend through a mutual friend, and we were together for around six years. He was a staunch atheist, and he looked up to people like Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. Science and maths were his biggest interests and ironically, he also seemed to know more about Christianity than I did.

His atheism had a big influence on me, my outlook on life, my interests, and my time. I revelled in gossip and complaining, and we even made a blog together about all the things that we disliked, including the shortcomings of the mutual friend who introduced us, which she later read, and I deeply regretted writing.

My view on love and the purpose of marriage and sex was compromised and this made it very hard for me to be honest and vulnerable with my then boyfriend which I regret and know was incredibly selfish. My mindset was of someone who lived for the moment with barely a thought about the future, and I wish I had the courage to stand up for myself more. I wish I had loved myself more.

Pornography became a normalised part of my life as our relationship progressed. I wish I'd never watched any of it, but it became a habit that held immense power over how my ex-boyfriend and I interacted with each other. The more it became a part of our relationship, the more it truly scared me.

We had sex education in school, but it was more technical rather than about the personal and emotional implications. My generation grew up with the internet, and I think the availability and normalisation of pornography conditioned us to view sex as meaningless fun.

It absolutely disgusts me to think about this chapter of my life now, but I never really understood the depths of human depravity until I started watching porn. It affected how I understood relationships and marriage and I would often wonder why people even bothered with the notion of love when we're all so messed up in our hearts.

A lot of people like to say your 20’s are the best years of your life but I think for me, that was the total opposite. I wanted to experience everything the world promoted yet everything felt so meaningless. I tried to fill my days with anything and everything like video games, binge watching shows and movies the entire day, random outings, events, festivals, travel... but at the end of the day I still felt so empty and alone.

It became very easy to push everyone away and for people to stay away from me. I isolated myself, and bottled things up to the point where I suppressed a lot of frustration and anger to the detriment of the people around me. My attitude towards everyone and everything became unbearable that sometimes I would wonder to myself how I became such a depressing person.

It didn’t matter what joy experienced, I slowly progressed to a point where I felt like everything in life was utterly meaningless. I remember one moment in time I was hanging out my laundry, and even though it was a mostly sunny day, the patio felt cold and dark. As I was hanging out my clothes I had a moment of clarity, thinking, 'I can't believe people live like this, in a cycle of work, sleep, laundry, and death. I can't believe this is life. Is this really all there is to it...?' Thinking about this moment still makes me so sad because I know there must be other people out there who feel the same way but maybe don't know how to express it.

Whatever path I envisioned for myself, deep down I knew it was all futile. Even if I had moments of joy, I knew that it would eventually end. My friends and family began asking me if I was ok, and if I needed to talk. I was in such a pit of despair at that point I really needed divine intervention.

During my 20’s I graduated from uni, worked a few jobs, completed a graphic design diploma, and had begun working at a design studio called Monk. This became a significant chapter of my life because I finally broke up with my atheist boyfriend about a year into working there.

My colleagues quickly became very good friends, and although our relationship over the years has had its highs and lows, I often saw the love of Christ in their words and actions regardless of how our relationship was tested. They are Catholic but I know God brought us together in this season of my life for a reason.

Being around them was a very refreshing change to the intense atheism I had experienced, and they helped me to confront myself about what I truly wanted out of life. I even started dating one of my colleagues for a time, and even though we didn't talk about our beliefs too much, he helped me realise love is more than lust and feelings. It's about forgiveness and commitment, something I had never wanted to think about before. Even though our relationship didn't work out, I truly believe God used it to test both of us to reveal our heart's intent.

I’d often occupy myself by obsessing over my favourite video games, many of which were demonic and ironically inspired by the Bible. One game I was particularly obsessed with was Dragon Age, mainly because I was heavily invested in the lore. I spent hours drawing fan art and coming up with theories about the various prophecies in the game, but I'd often have a recurring thought in my head: "What would I uncover if I put this much effort into studying the Bible instead of man-made fiction?" This was around the time of COVID, and watching conspiracy videos helped to fuel my curiosity. I found myself thinking about the Bible so much so during this time I eventually put 'read the Bible' on my to-do list in my head, not realising that the day would come sooner than I thought.

Near the end of my time at Monk, I was 31 and I knew something in my life had to change because I was so incredibly unhappy. I had a falling out with one of my good friends since university, and we had been through a lot of ups and downs together over the years so it affected me a lot. Our friendship began to fall apart a few months into living together, and even though I have many good memories with her, I was so self absorbed that I didn't really care about what was going on around me, much less the people I was affecting. I didn't really care about much at all.

It felt like a dark cloud of sadness would come over me at times, and I've never been diagnosed with depression but there were many times that I wondered what was wrong with me but I didn't want to seek help out of fear. There were days I would wake up at past 2pm and some days I wouldn't go outside at all.

I began looking for a new job, and when one arose, it came pretty quickly. I was offered a position and salary without any negotiation, and it was almost like it was meant to be. But with the history and friendship I had with my boss, I felt very uncomfortable accepting without talking to him first. My parents knew immediately it wasn’t right for me, but the decision was stressing me out so much, that I began venting to my friends about it. My dear friend Celeste messaged me saying that she would pray for me that night.

And that changed everything, because it was the first time in years that I considered Jesus and the possibility that He might even want to help me, even after I had turned my back on Him, denied Him to my friends and just about forgotten him entirely. As soon as I saw her message, I just broke down crying. For the first time in over a decade I prayed to God for help. I know He was there in that moment, because I felt tangible relief for the first time in a very long time.

I was living on my own at this point, and I had saved some old Christmas and birthday cards, which were stuffed in a plastic bag full underneath a stack of drawers. I’d forgotten I had even kept them, but something prompted me to dig out these cards and read them in that moment. Among these was a card that my parents had written me for my 21st birthday, and inside it was a Bible verse; Galatians 5:19-23.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

God's words cut through to my heart. I still remember that moment, cards strewn on the floor, and looking at that passage on the screen which I had to Google because I didn't think I owned a Bible at that point.

The next day I turned down the job offer and scheduled a meeting with my boss. The next week, I quit my job, which was so hard to bring myself to do because I love my colleagues and the memories we shared. I had a few hours long heart to heart with my boss and it was hard but also necessary. He was very gracious and kind to me, and he even let me cry on his shirt because I got so emotional. I didn’t have anything lined up or any plans for the future, but I also knew I had to close this chapter of my life to make progress in my life.

I used to cycle to work every day, and sometimes I would go through a route that passed by a Christian bookstore. One morning I stopped by and bought a Bible, deciding that it was finally time for me to seriously consider for myself if it is actually true.

Coming to faith wasn’t an overnight process for me. I was listening to demonic music, playing demonic video games, reading horoscopes, and even sometimes watching tarot card readings on Youtube. I remember the moment I first opened the page to Genesis though. It made sense to me to read the Bible like every other historical book I've read, so that is what I began to do. I really wanted to take God at his word, and I think He helped me to understand it because as I was reading I knew the words were true.

Around the same time I began reading the Bible, my boss and my mum randomly began talking to me about martial arts. I’d never talked to them about martial arts before but I was looking for something new to try. I did a quick Google search, and messaged the first business that came up. I did a trial class the next week, and I remember feeling like this was where I was supposed to be.

My motivation for learning martial arts wasn’t simply fitness, but out of what I considered a need for self defence. I feared and distrusted people a lot, and I had a sense of impending doom in my life which scared me. When I began learning martial arts, I felt some semblance of control over my life and the desire for self-sufficiency fuelled my new hobby. I loved the intensity and the rush of adrenaline doing martial arts, and it quickly became an obsession. But what I thought as a useful hobby, God used to make my faith real.

I had been training for a few months, and had started training five days a week when one day, one of my senior instructors passed away unexpectedly. Although I didn’t get to know him very well, he had a big impact on me and my training, and made me question my mortality and where I was headed.

The martial arts I had been learning at this school was a mixture of different disciplines, but it was through this event that I learned the school also taught a separate stream of study to senior belts, called Jishukan. Their philosophy sounded very noble on the surface, but their motto was to 'be the master of yourself'. They had this motto embroidered on their jackets and I would always notice it when they had it on.

I’ve always been a very introspective person so learning about this art excited me. Now that I was reading more of the Bible though, I felt an uneasiness in the back of my mind because the further I progressed, the further it felt from God.

While I was struggling to reconcile the Bible and my newfound obsession with martial arts, I was also wrestling with the remnants of atheism. I never realised how many unanswered questions I actually had until God began revealing all of the answers to me in a way that I would understand, even with things I'd never really thought to research myself.

It was a video on mathematics that made me realise for certain there is a Creator God, and I probably would have passed it off as clickbait if it wasn't for the fractal art in the thumbnail. My ex-boyfriend had studied maths at uni, and he tried to explain the concept to me years before, but I couldn't understand the significance of it. He even drew me a fractal. It was only when numbers were explained from a Christian perspective that it finally made sense.

I knew God was presenting me with all the evidence I needed to know that He is real, but my sins and my weaknesses made it very hard to wholeheartedly follow Him. I wrestled with God for months, and it seems trivial in hindsight, but committing to His way instead of my way felt like the hardest decision in the world at the time. I had a lot of bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness in my heart, and I was scared of giving up what I thought was control over my life. I think I was facing a lot of spiritual warfare at the time as well, because not only was I was I being faced with a myriad of personal weaknesses like pride, lust, and temptation in my day to day life, I also felt unredeemable. I knew I was going down the wrong path in life, but I didn't have the power of the Holy Spirit to think I could overcome that darkness in my life.

Perhaps it was through the adrenaline, the pride, the jealousy, and observing how other people try to take control of their life that I slowly began to realise I could never find safety, strength, or fulfilment in myself or other people, as appealing as it seemed at the time.

By this time, I had found a job working at a start-up, and I would often listen to sermons while I was working. Despite my intent on reading the Bible chronologically, God eventually led me to Job, then Romans, then passages from Luke and Matthew. I remember Romans was especially difficult for me to read at first because of how much it confronted me with myself. Passages about counting the cost of following Jesus and taking up our cross daily also stayed on my mind a lot, and I think He really wanted me to consider these things before committing to Him.

In God's timing, I had to have minor surgery to take out a cyst in my back so I took a few weeks off training to recover. At this point I was reading the Bible every day, watching sermons for hours, and believed the Bible to be true. I prayed constantly to Him for guidance during this time because I knew deep down I couldn’t save myself, but I also didn't really know how to surrender to Him. I never thought I could be vulnerable to myself, much less another person.

One night I was back to reading through the Old Testament and I think I was either in Jeremiah or Ezekiel. I remember that night I was in bed feeling very overcome with a genuine love for God, and how He always shows up for us even in our stubbornness. I know the love I felt felt so real and powerful. I can't remember my long-winded prayer, other these two words: I’m yours. And I fell asleep very quickly after that.

The next day when I woke up I remember feeling different. I was looking at myself in the mirror and wondering why I felt so melancholy. I sat down to eat breakfast when I began thinking about Jesus and the cross and I started crying. I didn’t know what had happened at the time but I just knew in my heart Jesus is real, and that He died for me on the cross to pay for my sins. God made me very aware later in the day what had happened, and I think I used up a few boxes of tissues at work in the following weeks because of the testimony I received. The realisation that He is real and He's always cared, and always loved me, even when I was at my worst, still makes me emotional today thinking about it all.

It was only through Christ that I had the power to walk away from martial arts and the wrong path. It’s funny because my coach always told really strange jokes, and all throughout the year he would ask, 'what are you waiting for, Christmas?' whenever I was dillydallying as usual. He called me Christmas the day that I walked into the gym and told them later I was leaving.

I did change my my mind though after a moment of weakness. Instead at the end of that session I sprained one of my toes and I couldn’t walk properly for at least a week. At the end of that week I had a Christmas party with some work colleagues, and I think it was also around a week after I had come to Christ. It was raining, and I was late. I was praying in my car because I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had to leave martial arts and it just felt very overwhelming and scary to step into an unknown future.

A few minutes after I walked into the restaurant and sat down, one of my colleagues began looking at me in wonderment from across the table. He began saying 'the skies have parted!' 'you're so radiant' 'you're like a ray of sunshine'! I am paraphrasing, but the way he was acting was strange because I said thank you the first time, but he kept on going. He eventually gestured towards me and I realised that light was coming in through the window at just the right angle and time to create a glorious rainbow across my chest. I was so caught up in my own thoughts and the people around me I don’t think I even realised how significant that moment was until later. I’ve always loved rainbows and I think God gave me that sign to help me do what I needed to do.