Testimony of the Week – Jeremy Tran

Jeremy is a second year statistics major who enjoys reading, napping, playing guitar, wearing sweaters with polos, and trying to understand cultural references.

Before I was saved, I was stuck in a life of pride and selfishness. Even though I grew up in the church and was praised as a good kid who said the best prayers, I did not truly understand the weight of my sin or my need for a savior. Instead, I placed my pride in being spiritually and intellectually superior to my peers, so I had little love for God and for others. At home, where there were no friends to see me, I rebelled against my parents and pursued pleasure above all else. I vainly sought satisfaction in video games, social status, and lusting. But evening in finding their failure to bring me true joy, I still did not want to commit everything to Christ. I “knew” God but did not honor Him as Lord.

Advertisement

Testimony of the Week: Nathan Chau

 

Nathan Chau is a first year Peach player in Smash, second year mechanical engineering student, third year movie actor wannabe, fourth year volleyball fan, and nineteenth year germaphobe.

I grew up attending various Roman Catholic churches near San Francisco that shaped my spiritual beliefs for the first eighteen years of my life. I believed heaven existed, but that it was attainable through my own merit—by my human effort to refrain from wrongdoing. And that was such good news to me because in my own ignorance, I believed that I was a righteous and moral person. I undoubtedly thought that God reserved my spot in heaven because I would never do anything wrong enough to condemn myself to hell. I fed myself this comforting lie so much that nothing I ever did became “wrong enough” in my own eyes, let alone God’s eyes. This pride of mine justified no need for God in my life, and so for eighteen years I shamelessly paraded around as god of my own life. The reality is that my hard and impenitent heart was storing up an unfathomable wrath for myself on the day of God’s righteous judgment (Romans 2:5). I did not know my Creator, much less love and fear Him.

Redemption in Regret

written by Alyssa Lok

You regret procrastinating on your ten-page paper due at midnight.  You regret eating Nutella even though you know very well that you’re allergic to nuts. And you really regret wearing shorts in the rain. Because now you’re sick. And may possibly have bronchitis. The fact of the matter is that life is filled with decisions you regret. It’s easy to look back at our lives and think about all of the impulsive choices we’ve made, careless things we’ve said, and prime opportunities that we’ve passed up. But these types of regrets all point to a worldly grief. We feel pangs of remorse because we lost out or we were hurt in some way. The focus of worldly grief is ourselves—we mourn over the way that our pride has been injured, our image tarnished, and our plan foiled.