I Decided to Follow Jesus

I am a post-doc scholar at UC Davis. I was born in China where Chinese had an ancient tradition of worshiping God but not in recent history. Raised up in a socialist background, I was undoubtedly an atheist like most of Chinese. Yet I do believe miracles when most educated people simply regard them as nonsense. I just reasoned that our human beings are easily very narrow-minded.

After I got my Ph.D and happily married in China, we went to Germany and then to Belgium for some research activities. After staying in Europe for more than 4 years, I and my family with two small kids landed in American 3 years ago. I still remember the weird feeling in the first few days of my being here. One day, a neighbor named Grace, who is a lady from Taiwan, suggested us to visit UCC. But my wife and I did not want to. Anyhow, driven by curiosity we decided to see the church later at the time Grace has already left for Taiwan.

So UCC is the first church I ever visited and sit down to observe what on earth is going on in a church(I had many negative ideas about church). It is that first visit that I was deeply touched in my heart by the pictures of the beautiful earth and vast universe on the screen, the singing and the somehow deep meaning hidden in the lyric. I just unbelievably burst into tears even though I tried hard to suppress it. I was frustrated and also amazed by something that I did not understand. At that time I knew nothing about Bible. I have heard about Jesus but I never thought I would have anything to do with him. I knew nothing about Sin and Save. I was afraid to become crazy or abnormal so I intended to skip many Sunday services.

But I started reading Bible, exploring the deep meaning of God’s words. Since then my soul has been completely agitated like experiencing a non-stop storm. I believed, then I doubted, then I believed… I am a curious person. I have been to almost all churches in Davis. I attended Bible study small group. I have been to Men’s breakfast. I even tried Disciple’s class and prayer meeting. I read a lot of Christian books. I compared the difference between Christian belief and other belief systems like Buddhism, Taoism, Islamic, etc. I also practiced to pray according to some books. You know I just do not want to be misled by only one belief. I must test it by myself.

However, the more I see and compare and think, the more I trust Bible and Jesus’ teaching. Jesus has so wisely and overwhelmingly pointed out human being’s blind and sinful nature and offered an unbelievable solution to it. His teaching is far beyond whatever other ideas, thoughts, imagination, religion, science and philosophy that are generated solely from sinful and selfish human minds. How can a self-centered person standing at a totally wrong position correctly interpret the meaning of life and the outside world, I mean the larger picture? Isn’t it ridiculous? My heart was touched and softened over and over and over again. I experienced the joy but also lots of pain while practicing my belief in my everyday life. How can I explain the deep feeling in my heart that no one including my wife can see? Now I want to honestly and heartedly say that God is so real and Jesus has completely changed my mind, my heart, my whole viewpoint towards life and the world. From Jesus, I learned what true love is. True love has to be sacrificial, what is important and not important. I believe there is no truth in this world except Jesus. Jesus himself is a miracle. I am willing to obedient to God is also a miracle to me.

Looking back, I found myself has been more and more addicted to Jesus that it is hard for me to forget him in everyday life. I have been calling myself Christian for a long time even though I have never been baptized. Baptism did not seem to be important to me because I thought Faith or a truly believing heart is the most important of all. Now I am so happy to go through this baptism because I have realized that the baptism is from God (not from man), and also because I completely trust God’s words and Jesus’ teaching.

Amen!

January 20, 2008