Testimony

Church was amazing yesterday. I led worship, with Kennard on the drums. Kennard is a good friend who left for studies in UK a couple of years ago. It's great to have him back with us now and the coming weeks. I gave a testimony, a song presentation and a video presentation. I was glad that quite a few came to me after that with really encouraging words, support and some volunteered to fight alongside with us! This was the sharing on Sunday....

I grew up in a church. When I was 5 or 6, towards the end of my kindergarden life, my beloved and now belated teacher, Miss Foo asked my mum what I’ll be doing on every Sunday morning. My mom told me that I’m free and usually I’ll be sleeping most of the time on that day. That’s how I actually got invited and start attending church in First Baptist. When I was in church, I often hear God’s word, be it from the Youth Pastor or the Sunday School teachers or my fellow Christian friends. But still I don’t really know who God truly is. All I knew was He was the creator of all things and we must submit to Him for He is our master. So to be in church on a Sunday was more like a routine rather than coming because of passion for God. And I grew up well in these years, blessed with such a loving and caring mom.

When I was 12, First Baptist had a renovation and has shifted to Subang for about 2 years. At that time, I didn’t want to go to Subang and I was churchless for about a year plus. During this period, my grand aunty has brought my grandma and mom to Emmanuel Baptist and later on extended the invite to me and my brothers. I didn’t like being here initially. It was rather boring to listen to the long winded sermons, strangers everywhere, and all my friends that I used to mix were no longer around. Almost everytime when I make my visits to EBC, there will be this young man coming to me, putting his hands on my shoulders like I’m his best friend, telling me, hey what you do on Sundays mostly? Very free right? COME TO EMMANUEL BAPTIST. And each time I see him, I’ll try to move further because he will tell me the same thing and it scares me away because I don’t really know him and it sounds like some church advertising or sales approach to me, like trying to sell your church with a more aggressive manner. And that man is Pastor Joshua Tan. He was just an ordinary church member or probably an intern in church during that time. This is how my journey in Emmanuel Baptist Church actually started.

Strangely I never see Joshua anymore for a long period of time when I was in church. He was just missing in action and I only realized it months later because… no one actually came to me to ask me every week without failure to COME TO EMMANUEL BAPTIST. Few years later, one Sunday I saw Joshua attending church, dressed with a nice suit, tie walking to the parsonage and I went to him “Hi Joshua”. He replied me, “Hi, I’m gonna be your pastor”. *My heart stops beating* I was shocked and couldn’t believe it because almost all the Pastors I’ve seen were at least 40 years old or older. Many things happened in that few years till today. I didn’t quite put all my trust in Him. I hold on to every other thing besides God. I tried to find my purpose of life thru studies. However it only satisfies me for a moment, when I get good results and everyone would praise me, after that I don’t feel anything great. I tried to find my purpose of life thru friends. However it doesn’t make me happy all the time no matter how great or close the friends are to me. Even close or best friends will argue, mistreat you or betray your trust. I tried to find my purpose of life thru love. Yeah, at that age love was just finding a girl and go on dates and live happily ever after. And I have failed in 3 relationships miserably. I tried to find my purpose in life thru every other way besides God. And I failed miserably. I wanted control in my life. I wanted to be the God of my own life.

Jesus has unconsciously shaped me and changed me thru out the years slowly. I was put as a backup into a worship team, later on I’m here today, serving the Lord as a worship leader and I had many experience with God. In this recent camp that I went to, God actually revealed to me that the youths in our church are lost. The numbers in our church are decreasing and many leaders had left. Who is there to actually guide the youths? Who is there to grow and take care of the youths? Who is actually there to teach and empower the youths? It kept me thinking and even right now, look at our attendance today, where are all the youths we used to have in church? That truly upsets me and I went to Pastor Joshua, I think God wants our church to have our Youth Service.

One Sunday, Joshua shared to us that if the adults and members of this church, fail to successfully pass the baton to the youths someday to lead the church, there will be no tomorrow for Emmanuel Baptist Church, there will be no tomorrow. I personally couldn’t agree more on that because people have to grow old one day, they have to die and meet God one day, and who will actually take over their role and place in the church? It’s the future adults in church, the young people, the youths. It’s okay if we start small, but I hope and I pray that all the youths and members of this church will give us full support and come back to God if you have strayed away from Him and help the church to grow. Right now we are still in the planning phase and I’m constantly praying that the members of the church will be blessed by God and the youths to come back and serve and have a great time in this church. We need a lot of young people to actually come before God and give their best for God. If everything goes according to plan, perhaps we can successfully start the Youth Service next year, and of course we are not disconnecting the youths to the Main Service. We want to reach out to the young people with a different approach and connect to them. We want to train future leaders or the church, we want to teach them how to honour God, how to love your parents, to excel academically and in their spiritual walk, we want to have a community where the young people can turn to during their trouble times, we want them to not forget about God during their high and low times in their life. No matter how successful you are in the future, you will be lost and empty without God. I would like to ask all of us here today to keep in Youths of this church in your daily prayers and end this sharing session with a song, Amazing Grace(My Chains Are Gone) and later with a video presentation of the camp I recently attended. Thank you.

p/s: There a lot of other names I would like to mention, like Lilian Ang, Wendy, Chee Seng, Sally and others but I wasn't give sufficient as it was a normal worship session. And..... Congrats Debbie! She is the runners up for ASQ 2008. You made us really proud.

This is Debbie, me and Wei Leng. I still remember this is our very first meeting that sparkled a friendship couple of years ago. We looked so INNOCENT! xD