My Journey

It started with a question that I already knew how to answer. If you die tomorrow and end up at the gates of heaven, what will you tell the gatekeeper so that he will let you in? My answer was something like this: I’ll tell him that I have accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died and rose again to pay for my sins. I believe and have accepted this.

It really started with a question I had never considered. How do you know? My answer was something like this: How do I know what? Or maybe it was more like: Ummmm…. What? The question came again. How do you know? How do you know you believe?

The aunties and uncles tell me that I was a very Bad kid at Church. I had known Church every Sunday for as far back as I remember. I remember being in the nursery and eating cheerios. I remember being in the junior worship program and singing songs while Uncle Andrew played the guitar. I remember making crafts. I remember the bible stories with the white bearded Jesus in the white robe. I don’t remember being very bad.

I was comfortable at Church. I was really good friends with Pastor So’s son, Truman, and with Uncle Andrew’s son, Nathaniel. We used to make forts next to the sanctuary and make the younger kids bring us snacks. We used to hide in the closets in the Sunday school room and turn off the lights in the rooms that had people in them. We knocked over book cases and stole food from the kitchen. When I learned how to make water-balloons out of paper I made may of those. We brought gameboys to Church and talked about video games. The first time, and probably the only time I have said the ‘F word’ was in Sunday School. We weren’t bad kids, we were just having fun.

All this aside, I actually did learn a lot about Christianity during Sunday School and during these youthful days at church. I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior early in my Church career. It was during Sunday School. The Sunday School teacher went around asking each person if he or she had accepted Jesus. I said I would like to. I said a prayer and I became a Christian. After that day I knew I was a Christian, but I also said that prayer each time I heard it. I sometimes raised my hand or raised my head when someone would ask if anyone wanted accept Jesus. Maybe I didn’t totally understand everything about my faith. Christianity to me at this time was being unsure if I had really accepted Jesus and making myself feel better by knowing all the answers to the questions in Sunday School (This actually isn’t very hard. The majority of the answers are: Jesus, God, Love, Bible, prayer, Holy Spirit).

In fifth grade I started going to the middle school and high school youth group. I was a tad young, but I was happy to have the chance to quit Chinese school. Youth group was a fun place. Truman and I would win every time we played sardines and hide and seek by hiding inside boxes that were stored inside closets. I actually found group discussions pretty boring and hard to follow. Besides games, the only other part of youth group that I enjoyed was the snacks at the end. Sometimes there wouldn’t be snacks.

My first realization that my concept of Christianity was skewed was on one Friday night at the end of youth group. We had snacks today. I think we had Oreos and even better yet, there was soda. I had a conversation that went something like this:
Snacks are the best part of youth group!
No they aren’t.
(Silent)

In the summer of eighth grade I went to a summer camp and was asked those questions that I started with. During camp I got to know Mark, a quadriplegic white guy. He was one of the only white guys at our predominately Chinese church. He taught me a lot about serving others and about humility and about many other things. I also got to experience something new. I had my brain saturated in Christian stuff and I started to enjoy singing praise songs. Most importantly, the camp left me with those questions and ended with me rededicating my life to Jesus and to living out how I know I believe.

In the following years Mark died, Truman and his family moved away to San Marino, and Nathaniel and his family left and went to a different Church. With my original gang gone, Church became less familiar. Maybe this was done so I could start focusing on God instead of on playing games. As I matured in thought, discussions started making sense. Christianity wasn’t about knowing the answers but instead it is about the Personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I realized that we were created with the purpose of knowing God personally. Pursuing Jesus didn’t mean knowing all the answers. It meant knowing about Jesus.

Maybe this is why I didn’t really know how I knew what I said I believed. If I die tomorrow and I find myself at the gate of heaven being asked why I should be let in, my answer will still be: I’ll tell him that I have accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died and rose again to pay for my sins. I might add that I know that without the sacrifice of Jesus, my Sins leave me unfit to be in the presence of a holy God and I know that I cannot make it to heaven on my own works. The first part is good enough though.

If he asked how I knew… I would smile and begin telling him about my relationship with Jesus Christ. I would tell him about what I know about Jesus, about how I have began a personal relationship with God. I would go on about this Jesus until the gatekeeper smiled, opened the gate, and told me, “Welcome to heaven. Welcome home.”