Like many people, I was brought up in a Christian family. However, contrary to what you might be thinking right now, we were the not so uncommon "Sunday Christians". Sunday was our day to go to church and that would be enough for us. We felt that if we fulfilled our duty by claiming ourselves to be Christians and going to church, we would be saved and that was the end of story.
When I was growing up as a kid and going into high school I did not know what being a Christian meant. I thought that as long as I said I was a believer in Christ then everything I did wrong would be forgiven. High school turned out to be a period of little happiness, much sadness, anger, emptiness and bitterness. Swearing, acting tough and bullying others were common strategies I used to look cool and become more popular. Everything I did was only worthwhile if it was to my benefit. I was the center of my life and contrary to what I was striving to obtain the result of this life was not happiness but feelings of insecurity and emptiness. Being Christian was only a label I used for myself in hopes of getting to heaven. It was as if God was on the sidelines, very far from where I was on the playing field.
When I was 16, I moved from Hong Kong to San Francisco. This was one of the biggest changes of my life. It was a depressing first experience arriving in San Francisco, coming to a land I knew little of and being welcomed by a thick gloomy blanket of fog. Within a few weeks my parents had found a church (Cornerstone) and asked me to attend. Now that I was older, I was even more reluctant to go to church and my parents no longer made me go. I remember that I would spend many Sundays sleeping in, always telling my parents that I was too tired to go. I attended church on and off because I was lazy and felt that it was a waste of time.
I arrived in San Francisco in the summer of 2000 and a year later I was invited to go to a camp at church. Being at camp was the first time in a long while where I spent time away from the life of a busy city. The camp area was beautiful, filled with sky scrapping trees and clear streams. I was struck by the awesome beauty of this Earth. As a result, it was the very planet I was livening on that led me to believe that there must be a creator; there must be a God. I could no longer believe the things I learned in school such as the big bang theory. I could not believe that this world and everything in it was here by chance. Just looking at the design of humans and animals around us is evidence that there is a God. It was then that I decided that I wanted to become a Christian and that Christianity was something worth putting my faith into.
The result of this life I have chosen is a hard life but more importantly it is a good life. It is a hard life because you have to surrender yourself and change your ways. It is good because God is good and by following Him you want to do good even if your natural instinct is to sin. With God anything is possible and even a person stuck in his ways of living life can change. I know God is alive in me because He has changed the way I once was and continues to transform my life into something good.
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