TESTIMONIES OF CHRIST - SARAH LEE

I’m here to share with you how God has worked in my life to bring me where I am today. I titled my testimony “what does it mean to be a Christian” because as I was preparing for it I felt like that was the theme God used in my spiritual development.

So what does it mean to be a Christian? As a child I thought being a Christian meant going to church faithfully and having a Christian family because I was born and raised in a Christian home so I learned about Jesus at an early age and I did go to church and Sunday school very faithfully. Even when I lived in Qatar in the Middle East I went to an (sort of) underground church. So I found security as a Christian in the fact that I went to church and had a Christian family.

First step
Then when I came to the States in Jr. high I was in a youth group meeting one night and my youth group leader casually said that just because you go to church, does not mean you are a Christian. She said you had to ask Jesus to come into your life to be your personal Lord and Savior and have a relationship with Him.

I remember that comment really gripping my heart and making me stop and think because it was the first time I ever wondered if I really was a Christian or not because I didn’t remember ever praying that before. So I got scared and when I went home that night I knelt on my bed and prayed that Jesus would enter my heart and life. I even made my younger sister do it because she was too young to be in youth group and I wanted to make sure she was a Christian too.

So that was my first step in understanding what it meant to be a Christian ~ it wasn’t just about going to church or having a Christian family but it was about having a personal relationship with Jesus and having Jesus living in you.

So after that I still led an outwardly evident Christian life all through high school and it wasn’t until college that I took another big step in understanding what it meant to be a Christian. This was a very hard step for me because it involved dying to myself so that Christ could live.

Next step
There were 2 areas of my life that I had to die to because I was so stubbornly holding onto them and it was preventing my spiritual growth. One area was my shyness and the other was my ambition and I’ll explain why these areas were hindering me from experiencing God more.

Shyness
First, my shyness: as a child I was abnormally shy. In kindergarten I had an accident because I was too shy to ask my teacher to go to the bathroom. My teachers told my parents that in all their years of teaching, they had never had a child so quiet. Kids used to tease me and ask if I could talk or if I was mute.

I was one of those students who never raised their hand to ask a question in class. And when I got to college, this really affected my church involvement because I dreaded being in a small group setting where I would have to talk, share, and pray in front of people so I refused to go to small group Bible study.

Ambition
The second area was my ambition, which was to become a doctor. That was my goal in life and the only thing I wanted to do. Everything I did was geared towards achieving this goal so in college God took second place over my ambition.

Becoming a doctor meant more to me that knowing God. I didn’t want to spend the extra time going to Bible study when I could be studying to get into med school. So because of this and because of my shyness, I just went to church on Sundays. That was the only time I wanted to commit to God.

Change
Then it was in my last year of college that things started to change. God used circumstances to start breaking me in these 2 areas of my life. What happened was (this is kind of embarrassing) I had applied to about 20 medical schools thinking I would surely get into one of them but I got rejected by every single one of them. I was very upset and depressed, my pride was hurt and I didn’t know what I was going to do after college.

So I decided to turn to God and the Bible for some help and some answers because I didn’t know what else to do. So I studied the Bible regularly on my own and the verse that transformed my understanding of what a Christian should be was Galatians 2:20.

When I realized that my life was not my own because God bought it at a costly price and that I should no longer live but let Christ live through me, it was like a profound revelation for me. I felt like my eyes had been opened and I could see clearly that being a Christian meant dying to my selfish, self-centered desires and plans and letting Christ take control even if it meant not becoming a doctor.

At the same time this was happening, I heard a Sunday message about being bold and for some reason that really challenged me to maybe try going to small group Bible study and breaking out of my shell. So I got the courage to go to small group and at first it was very uncomfortable.

I joined a women’s group for college seniors and I was so scared that they would ask me to share and pray in front of them but with every meeting, I slowly felt that it wouldn’t be so bad after all. And studying God’s word with fellow Christians was exciting and kept me coming back each week.

I was starting to really enjoy small group but it was time to graduate and leave Boston so I remember regretting that I had not joined a small group sooner but little did I know that God had so much more in store for me because after graduation, God brought me to GCC.

Conclusion
So when I was at the point in my spiritual life where my heart was opening and God was starting to break me I came to GCC and experienced such exponential growth in areas like: understanding who God is, spiritual disciplines, missions, Christ-centered relationships, serving, Biblical examples of Christian living and much more.

I was like a sponge soaking in everything. I felt like when I took that step of faith and died to those 2 areas of my life, God opened a floodgate of blessings.

So that’s where I am today, in my 6th year at GCC, still soaking in God’s blessings and being challenged to live out each day this relationship I have with Jesus. So to conclude, what does it mean to be a Christian? For me, it was a journey of discovering that because Jesus died for me and purchased my life, I could not live for myself any longer.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” ~Galatians 2:20

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