Living Life (11) Testimony - Joseph Yeo
Hi there, a quick little intro for those who may not know me. My name is Joseph and I’ve just completed the 13 week long Living Life course which is the first part of the Life Series offered to the adult members of The Seed.
To give a brief backstory, I took this course back in a very vulnerable and tense setting. I was approaching my final exams for my final year in highschool, a month full of strenuous work at a summer camp, I also live in downtown Toronto which is approximately a 2 hour commute by transit, and the list goes on. I had every reason to back out of this course but something pulled me in.
To preface this, I don’t mean to brag or make myself seem noble for taking this course in the face of some obstructions. And as Casting Crowns said it, “I’m just a nobody, trying to tell everybody, all about Somebody who saved my soul”.
In the midst of some constant existential mid-life crisis I seem to be having like some 40-year-old man, I was sitting on the same black chair that all of you are sitting on right now and asked myself,
“Why do I worry so much?”
I then recalled one of my favorite lines from a book by the name of ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield. It goes something like this, “Fear is an indicator, Fear tells us what we have to do… Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it”. Following this, I proceeded to blindly take a leap of faith and take this course which I felt this apparent Fear from. Others may call it recklessness. I call it faith. Others will call it a waste of time, I call it an investment, an investment into discovering the plentifulness of God’s love and wisdom.
I’m assuming that most of you were brought up in a Christian household like I was too. I stepped into Living Life with an open mind but I also felt like I had this enoughness to my knowledge of Christ and who He was. But boy, was I wrong. I felt like I was starting from base 1, and scratching the pinnacle of some immense iceberg.
Learning about the Word taught me more about who God was, His Love, His compassion, and His grace. The more I learned, the less I centered my life around myself and centered it around someone who was far greater than what my minute worries and broad fantasies had to offer.
For me, this conjured up a very simple yet complex question that I constantly waver within:
“What’s my purpose?”
****You see, the common response I got from others when I said I wanted to take Living Life was, “You should just focus on taking care of your own life, you are just adding more to your plate”.
But who am I to think that this life was mine to begin with? I learnt that my constant stress and worries were an indicator of my lack of faith in the person who created us all, who wrote every detail of our life in the books before we even began to breathe.
And for whoever may have resonated with this testimony, remember what Pastor Caleb had mentioned the week prior, that adversity is to be expected. For what is faith without tension, resistance, and second guesses? No matter how little you feel like you have to give to God, He will use the tiny seed of faith you offered and create a vast harvest of blessings within your own life.
So how can you experience God’s transforming grace too?
Take the step. As stated in Galatians 5:6, “what matters is faith working through love”. And what are we without love? Nothing. Making the decision to step faithfully will show God that you chose to love him. And what will He then do? He will bring light on this dark and unforeseeable path that lies ahead of you in proportion to your willingness to practice faith.
Thank You for listening.
