Personal Testimony

I am going on a missions trip soon and I was asked to write my personal testimony as part of the application. I wrote it but I realized that I went beyond the length requirement, so the full version is here.

I started attending church at a very young age, so I started learning about God right from the very start. I knew all of the popular Bible stories, but I didn't understand how these stories related to me aside from defining a set of rules and restrictions I had to follow. At home, I was taught that God knew everything and was ready to strike me with lightning if I ever did something wrong. This image of God led me to believe that He was just another threat to make me behave, that God was someone who wanted to restrict me to act and dress a certain way. I even remember a time where I dreaded Sunday mornings as I knew that I would be forced into wearing a dress and itchy stockings. I hated it because I thought I had to pretend to be someone that I was not so that God would love me at church. I resented God for making me a girl and often wondered why He would do such a cruel thing to me. I always heard about God being someone who loved and cared for me but I didn't see it.

It wasn't until later that I started to learn about who God really was. For one of my assignments in English class, I was told to write a speech to give to my classmates about any topic. At that point, I had grown to know that God wasn't just some being who was always prepared to punish me. From my Sunday school teachers at that time, I started learning about who Jesus was. I had many questions about why he would choose to die on the cross and why God would let such a thing happen to His only son. Since this was something that interested me, I decided to do my speech on Christianity. My Sunday school teachers were very helpful in answering the questions I had and through preparing for my speech, I learned a lot about the relationship between God, His Son, and I. I realized that Jesus didn't really want to suffer, that He also cried out to God, asking why such a horrible thing had to happen to him. I also learned that he still chose to obey and that there was a purpose for his obedience. Jesus was loved by God, but God still let horrible things happen to him. God loved me, but He still made me a girl. Although I still questioned this, I started to believe that there was more to God than what I thought I knew.

In high school, I heard many testimonies from people about how they had encountered God and how they had a relationship with Him. I was envious because I wanted that experience too. I wanted God to show himself to me, to have that sureness in me that He was real and that He was loving. How could I love a God that I didn't know personally? I didn't understand what that was like. So I prayed, asking God to reveal himself to me to show that it is worth believing in Him. I prayed that I too, could have a personal relationship with Him. So He showed me. I started seeing God working around me in ways that filled me with awe. It was then that I decided that I had seen enough of God to convince me that He is real, that He is loving and I knew that I wanted to commit myself to follow Him and find out more.

When I entered university, life changed. I started being more open to making new friends and attended church in the new town I was in. I joined a fellowship on campus and experienced a love from them that could have only come from God. God revealed more about His love for me through these people that I had met and they were very encouraging and supportive of me. I learned a lot about the kind of community that God wanted His children to have. During my last work term, I asked God what He wanted me to do once I got my degree in engineering. I knew from the kind of work I was doing that I wasn't interested in the automotive industry, and I wasn't in the right program to do robotics as I had originally wanted to do. At the end of the term, God gave me a vision. I had heard about Nehemiah the cup bearer from one of the sermons that I had attended at the church in Waterloo, about his wine-stained palm. I saw that same wine-stained palm in my dream, and I awoke to hearing the name Nehemiah ringing in my head. I realized that God was calling me to serve the people in developing countries. He wanted me to go and show them His love to His people through engineering. And I decided that this is something that I want to do. You can read about my experience in detail here.

One weekend, I decided to come back to Toronto for the weekend. That particular Sunday, we had a guest speaker who talked about women and their role in the church. She talked about the differences between men and women and why God made the two different. Through some other things she said, I realized that God had made me the way I am for a reason, that God wanted me to be a girl and that He loved me for it. As I am in the engineering program, my identity as a female was still a thorn in my side. I wondered if it was wrong for me to be in a male-dominated program, and still wondered why God made me this way. Why couldn't I just be a boy and fit in with most of my other classmates? But God really touched my heart when He finally addressed the issue that had followed me since the very start of our relationship. Through this speaker’s sermon, God told me that He had intentionally made me a female and that there was nothing wrong with me wanting to be an engineer (You can read about that experience here). He told me that He loves me just as I am and that He didn't want me to hate myself for not being a boy. I realized that I had been very rude and unappreciative of Him this entire time. God had made me this way, and it was insulting for me to tell Him that I didn't like it. The fact that I constantly rejected the way God had made me and the fact that He still wants to love me was overwhelming. As God has answered one of the deepest questions that had followed me all my life after I had chosen to obey His calling, I am deeply touched by His love and trust in His promise that He wants the best for me and that He loves me. I learned that once you obey and trust in Him, God will make it worth it for you.