Davin is an electrical engineer and loves work. He is terribly introverted and surprisingly talkative. He loves to observe things and blurt out lyrical references. He is kind of weird.
I was born into a Christian family and I went to Church somewhat regularly with my family in Hong Kong. I would have said that I was a Christian, but I didn’t understand what was being preached and I didn’t like going to Church. The whole ordeal felt like a waste of time. Later in secondary school (high school), I learnt to skip out on Church by arriving at Church right before service ended. I would just wait outside the building at my family’s usual meeting spot and pretend I had just walked out. It worked out until I left for college, although I remember my mom testing me once and asked who preached that day. (Un)fortunately, I guessed correctly and my truancy remained hidden.
I loved sin. Even though I went to Church and heard many a scolding and lecture from my parents, I loved sin. I knew what was right, and from time to time I would try to control myself by trying not to swear, or not to lust, or to be kind… but I would always revert back to my sinful habits. Despite my unbelief, God was gracious in restraining me and not giving me up fully to my sinful desires. J.C. Ryle once said, “Sin is the mother of all sorrow, and no sort of sin appears to give a man so much misery and pain as the sins of his youth.” Though I was not spared all the possible sins in my youth, I am thankful that God did not allow me to pursue my sins to great depths.
God continued to lavish His grace on me by teaching me His perfection and holiness through sermons. Knowing this, I tried to earn favor with God by exercising self-control and disciplining myself to become a better person, but I knew that this wasn’t enough. There was nothing I could give to God to impress Him, which he had not gifted me with. My physical abilities, my intellect, and my handiwork all existed solely because God had gifted me with them.
So with these two thoughts in mind, my love for sin and God’s perfect standard, I came to college. I wanted to forsake sin and meet God’s standard, but I did not know how. By the grace of God, I was only admitted to one university and was introduced to the UCLA GOC fellowship. I learnt that salvation was by grace through faith, grace in seeing and understanding the truth of Scripture, and faith in the words of eternal life. I came to understand that Christ paid for my sins at the cost of His own life to reconcile me to God, and that I need only trust in His complete atoning work on the cross to be saved.
My life has never been the same since, as I try to pursue the joy of knowing Christ and being completely satisfied in Him. No longer do I have to serve sin because it was for freedom that Christ set me free. The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God. And as I continue to run this Christian race, I am assured that “all things work together for good,” so that I might be conformed to the image of Christ.
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