Unanswered Questions, Sophia Hong

In my senior year in high school, I went through what I would term a real “identity crisis”. I had grown up in a Christian family, but suddenly I found myself grappling with questions like, “Is God really real?”, and “Why do I go to church every week?” Even though outwardly I tried to behave like a “good Christian”, inwardly I was filled with doubts concerning my faith. At the same time, the world was becoming more and more attractive to me. It was so much easier for me to believe in something I could see. So as the year went on, I became more occupied with friends, having fun, and planning for college. Instead of dealing with by doubts about God, I decided just not to think about it. My feeling was that whether God was real or not didn't matter because even if He was real, He was still someone who was far away and had nothing to do with me.

That same year I attended a young people's conference for all the local churches in the northeast. I went because I had nothing better to do and also because I wanted to see my old friends. In that conference, they spoke about the story of Lot and Abraham. Abraham was one who had the personal, fresh appearing of God, while Lot was someone who just followed his uncle. Lot never saw the Lord's appearing for himself. As a result, he eventually ended up in Sodom. In that conference, I realized that, as a second generation Christian, I was just like Lot. I had been blindly following my parents, but I was never desperate enough to seek the Lord on my own. At the end of that weekend, I went home, and alone in my room, I prayed in tears to the Lord. These were not the usual prayers I always prayed; but for once in my life I was honest with God. I confessed to Him my doubts and my inability to even believe in Him, and demanded, almost angrily, that He had to make Himself real to me. In desperation I cried, “Lord, appear to me!” I knew that without the Lord's appearing, like Lot, I would just end up in Sodom.

In His mercy, the Lord has been faithful to answer my prayer, and He is still answering it even today. Throughout my four years of college, I had experiences of the Lord that convinced me that God indeed is real. I was convinced not just by my personal experiences with the Lord, although they were very sweet, but even more I was convinced by being with the Christians in the local churches. In every local church meeting I went to, I received the fresh appearing of the Lord. Being in the local church was the biggest salvation for me in college. The dear believers in the local church in Franklin Park, NJ were faithful to care for me practically and spiritually.

Now I can finally answer the questions that had plagued me in high school. I know, without a doubt, that God is real, not because someone proved to me His existence, but because I have experienced Him for myself.

Not Just Bible Stories

When I was young, I used to love to read the Bible. To me it was just another storybook. I especially liked the Old Testament. The stories of Joseph, Jacob, Esther, and many others fascinated me. I've always loved history, and to me, the Bible was the best history book. By the time I was in junior high, I had a wealth of Bible knowledge in me. Whenever we played Bible trivia in our Sunday school class, I was the one who always had all the answers.

Little did I realize that in all those times of reading the Bible, I had missed the main point of the book. In essence, the Bible is not just a book of history, teaching, or doctrines, but a book concerning a living person. In reading the Bible, I had appreciated all the stories, but had completely missed God. When I got into college, I started to get into the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Through the ministry of these two brothers, my eyes were opened to see that every word and every verse of the Bible conveys Christ and leads us to Christ. I was amazed when I saw that even in the books of the Old Testament, written before Jesus had come, I could see Christ and even more, a picture of my experience of Christ. All the stories I had read in the Old Testament took on a whole new meaning. Instead of just being objective Bible stories, they became something I could actually apply in my experience of the Lord.

During my sophomore year in college, my roommate and I began to read through the Life- Study of Genesis by Witness Lee together. Reading that really began to revolutionize my Christian life. The life-study showed us how, in the very first chapter of Genesis, God reveals His eternal purpose for man. Then it goes on to talk about how even the whole matter of creation, the stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. are all pictures of our progress in the experience of Christ. Even though I still love the Old Testament, now it's no longer just because I appreciate the stories. I love it because it brings me to love Christ more. I owe this to the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Their ministry has opened the Word to me and has turned the Bible from being just a book of knowledge to me to a book of spirit and life.