Baptism Testimony — Jason Ahn

Before receiving Jesus Christ I was more of a lost kid. I was more of a person who:

• Always worked hard on everything
• Very strict on self-reflection
• Always nice to other people
• Very mannered
• Scared of sharing problems I am facing in life (even to my family sometimes)
• Always tried to solve everything on my own
• Didn’t want to bother others or have them think different of me
• Didn’t want others to worry too much
  • Tried to solve everything on my own
• Didn’t want to rely on others

I thought if I rely on others on others too much, I thought I would have harder giving proper self-reflection or become someone who relies too much others However, this led me to become more and more lost, lonely, and demotivated to everything. I was at the point where I was able to do lead to nothing. Nothing was possible, which made me extremely depressed. I did have trouble finding many churches for my salvation of feeling lost in both emotionally and the paths to take in life. Then an 이모 that I know suggested me to this Church. I was very scared and nervous at the same time because: 

• Didn’t have good experience before on other churches
• was left out on any events 
• never welcomed

After attending to Caleb’s house church, I was able to relieve all those fear and nervousness. I was so surprised how welcome the people everyone was and how interested they were to get to know me. When attending to this church for the first time, it was similar. After Sermon, everyone was so interested in me to get to know me. I felt so welcomed and I was able to slowly become more and more on sharing my life and the problems I was facing.

Because of house church, I was able to become more positive, more sharing, and less scared to express about myself.One thing that I really like about house church is having dinner together. All my family members are in South Korea so when it comes to holidays, I always end up celebrating things on my own. As everyone that I know is sometimes pretty busy or far away from where I live during coop, it’s really hard to have dinner with somebody or have a family like situation where people gather up to eat a meal and talk about their lives. I was able to become happier and it gave me a feeling that I feel like home. Every week, I always have different concerns different things that I am going through. When I starting going to house church and after receiving Jesus, I was able to fully share my concerns and put the stress weight down a bit. I was able to kind of organize my thoughts and didn’t felt alone when seeing the same concerns. I was able to know that there are people around me that pray for the concerns and things that I am going through and that there are people who care about it as well.  Around 2 weeks ago I went to the GPS from Caleb’s recommendation and there are some of the verses that came straight to my attention.One of the verses was “1. Salvation is a gift, received by faith. Otherwise, we must qualify for it but no one can because we are all sinners. God sent Jesus to bear our sins and receive the punishment we deserve. Now that God’s justice is satisfied through Jesus’ finished work on the cross, it’s time for God’s love to be satisfied”.  

• Always thought I didn’t deserve Christ
• Wasn’t always perfect in the responsibilities or actions
• Made me realize qualification isn’t important
• Although I am unable to save every single person I see, doesn’t mean I am unable to go to heaven
• I thought for my sins to become forgiven, I need to cover up with the good things that I can do in life, but I realized our sins are already gifted as salvation. 
• I shouldn’t do good things bc to be forgiven, but because it’s the right thing to do

 Another Verse that helped me understand about the purpose of the Gospel was:

• Jesus already wants to come into our heart. His desire to save us is greater than our desire to be saved. That is why if we simply receive him through prayer, he will make us part of his family and take care of our lives.
• Always believed God or Jesus Christ would be too busy helping others
• I always thought Jesus Christ would never have the time to help me or be there for me.
• Christ been trying to come to my heart multiple times already
• Always have been closing the doors on him

 Lastly, this verse organized my thoughts of why I should be receiving faith.We become children of God when we receive Jesus as our Saviour and Lord.When our earthly time is up, if God is our Father then we will go to his home which is Heaven. This is why becoming a child of God is a powerful privilege. Bible is a contract document: If we do our part (receiving Jesus), God will always do his part (making us the children of God).

• Lack of understanding of the Bible and Gospel made me think even if I accept Christ and God wouldn’t mean I would go to heaven
• Bible told me that I am God’s children which means I would go home in eternal life which is heaven
• Always though Heaven is just a place God exist
• Never thought in a way where it is his home and where his children would go to

 Started understanding that the Gospel is much more of a guidance that tells what’s Jesus and God’s intentions are for his children and that a guidance book for us to safely come home in our Eternal Life and prepare for our Life there.
 My life condition before after receiving Christ improved. Before, I was always in an unbalanced state of mind where I always tried to work things on my own and had hard time sharing my thoughts and beliefs to others. After receiving Christ I was able to share the concerns and also become emotionally stable to solve those concerns one by one in my best state. I also got to know that I am not alone as I have Christ with me, so when having situations where I am lost and start panicking, I am able to pray, talk to Christ and come back to my best state.  As an example, in school term, there are times where I am unable to catch up to class. I am a very slow learner myself so when I have a hard time catching up, more and more things to learn get delayed. If those happens, I would try to rush things and learn every single thing I can learn for now and keep moving on. Now although I am not in school term, during my work at coop, I sometimes have things that I do not know or having hard time figuring things out. Instead of panicking and rushing through things, I am able to plan things out, find resources that might support through the concern and issue I am facing and then work on the issue step by step. Things became easier as I started to work on the small things and eventually lead to the bigger ones.