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I Have Found My Real Family in the Lord's Recovery
I came to America from Taiwan when I was seventeen years old. Six months after arriving, by God's mercy I got saved and began to know God. Had I remained in Taiwan, I would not have come to know God so quickly. Although my immediate family does not have a particular belief, my grandparents are Buddhist and our culture is saturated with idols and the Buddhist philosophy. I thank God that my family did not object to my conversion. Soon after I received the Lord, I felt everything became brighter and transparent. I realized how dead and sinful my old nature was. My eyes were opened to see that my real goal and destiny is the Lord Jesus Christ, the living God.
Some of the Christians who had helped me come to Christ inspired me through their genuine love toward the Lord. They became a good pattern and a significant base in my early Christian life. My senior year of high school I had a strong desire to save the people around me. When I graduated from high school and was about to begin college at UC Irvine, I prayed that I would know God Himself in a deeper way and that He would guide me to a church. I simply wanted to be where He desired.
Shortly after arriving on campus I met a Christian sister whose genuine and frank attitude attracted me to go to one of her church meetings. Although the meeting did not have beautiful songs and fancy bands, I sensed that the believers there were full of God's Word. I felt that they really knew God and experienced God much more than I did. The focus of the meeting was not psychology and human ethics but the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. After some evaluation I took a small step to participate in the church in Irvine through the help of my new companions. Although I was not used to calling on the name of the Lord Jesus and pray-reading, God used these practices to help me see how short I was in the matter of exercising my spirit. I had done many good works and loved the Lord fervently in my denomination, but never had a strong sense of knowing myself and understanding God's will. I was brought to a higher ground in my Christian life.
The apostle Paul says 1 Corinthians 3:6, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.” I have been helped by many Christians, and have appreciated their planting and watering, but it is God who causes me to grow and leads me on in the Christian race. I have the full assurance that my coming to the Lord's recovery was His answer to my prayer in the summer after my high school graduation. The point is neither Paul nor Apollos' planting and watering, but Christ is the center and focus of the church. There is not any distinction between races, cultures, and languages in the Body of Christ. This has been what I have experienced in the local churches. People from different backgrounds gather together speaking the same divine language regarding the truth in the Scriptures. I am so grateful and happy that I have found my real family in the Lord's recovery.
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