Hello! My name is Claire. I am 17 this year and a JC1 student. I grew up in a Christian family and accepted Christ when I was in primary school. However, I never really had a personal, dependent relationship with Christ until the middle of last year. Today I would like to share how God pursued me to have a deeper, more real relationship with Him as well as how He led me to real repentance and faith in Jesus’ finished work on the cross.
Growing up in a Christian environment, things like going to Sunday School and reading the Bible were all common practices that my family did regularly. My parents would lead us in prayer each night. However, back then I did not feel like I was praying to a God who was real and personal, and who understood and cared for me. Rather, He felt like a faraway God whose powerful works I read about in the Bible every Sunday. Sunday School and going to church honestly just felt like a chance to take a break from studying and a time to meet up with friends.
When I reached secondary school and joined the Youth Ministry, the monthly prayer & praise sessions coupled with weekly Bible study did strengthen my faith. I felt closer to God after every youth camp but would lose interest just a few weeks after. I believed that Jesus had died for my sins but although I tried, I could not grasp the significance and the love behind it for a long time. I could not yet see that it was my pride that kept me from seeing how great my sins were and just how much I needed Christ. I lived every day for myself, occasionally praying to God when times got tough. Then when my life felt smooth-sailing, I would return to my old ways of living my life for myself and my ambitions. To me, God was just a God of convenience that I came to worship each Sunday.
There was no single day where everything changed. Rather, God worked in me over a period of time and still works even now. God’s hand was especially evident last year when I was Secondary 4. The year was incredibly hectic from the start, and I was swamped with trying to juggle the heavy school load with competitions and trainings. I was constantly stressed and burnt out, with doubts creeping into my head like ‘What if I have nowhere to go?’ or ‘What if everything I worked for was for nothing?’. It was precisely the fact that I was trying to control and manage all my worldly desires that caused me to feel like nothing was going my way. At the same time, I did not manage to get into a sporting opportunity that I wanted badly. I was disappointed and bitter, yet I did not turn to God.
I think my breaking point was during my O-level prelims where I completely left out the last section of my Chemistry paper. It was only then when I returned home that I cried out to God in desperation for His help. I told Him that I could not do everything by myself anymore and that I needed His strength and presence in my life. Immediately I felt a sense of peace and a weight lifted off my shoulders. It was so comforting to know that I could cast all my worries and burdens on Him. He showed me that all I needed, He would provide. I went through the rest of my O-level papers with a grateful heart dependent on Him and no longer on my own abilities.
Now when I look back, God opened my eyes to the work of His hand in my life, that though I was so far from Him, every struggle and trial I ever faced, He never failed to provide for me. This truth of His faithfulness has and will remain with me for the rest of my life. I know He has a plan no matter the trial, and I commit all my desires to Him. God also revealed what a sinful being I am, leading me to realise how much I needed Jesus’ sacrifice for me on the cross.
To me, baptism is a public declaration of God’s faithfulness and goodness to me. Through baptism, I want to testify that I belong to Jesus, believe in His death and resurrection, and that His grace is what I build my life upon. It symbolises that my old life of pride and self-reliance has died with Christ and I have been washed anew and cleaned, raised with Him to a new life of living for Him and not for myself. I acknowledge that nothing I have done or can do has been able to engineer this new life with God — it is a gift I gratefully receive.
I would like to thank God for my parents, LCG leaders and friends who have mentored and supported me in the faith and most importantly the sovereign God who has saved me not by my own doing but by His grace and mercy.
