KAI’S GRACE STORY

When I spoke to a Christian counselor for the first time, the first question he asked me was, “so, Kai, why are you a Christian?” It was such a simple question, but when I went to answer, I trailed off after just a few jumbled words. “Oh, I’m a Christian because… Well, it’s because… um, well maybe it’s…”. I had to apologize for staring blankly at him through the Zoom screen. When I sat down to write this testimony, the experience was much the same for the first few hours.

To tell you why I became a Christian, after all this thinking I can’t give you a better answer than I just am. The truth is that Jesus didn’t allure me with something I didn’t have before. He didn’t promise me a successful or stress-free  life if I followed him. There were no attractive perks or benefits. No, if anything, the guarantees were that I get to be chaste until marriage, never filthy rich because I ought to give away excess money, and if suffering ever comes the way of anyone I know or even meet, I’m obligated to shoulder their burdens no matter the cost. And as a bonus, Jesus added that I will certainly fail at all of these, and I must lay down any shred of self-reliance or pride, nakedly clinging to only grace and forgiveness. Quite a bargain.

Well, Jesus did promise me one thing materialistically that I didn’t have before. If I believed in Him as my Lord and Savior (that he died for my sins that I deserved to be punished for), He promised me Himself. A relationship with Him, with God. That’s something that never used to matter to me. I grew up not thinking much about whether God existed or not. I never went to church. I attended some Unitarian services growing up but it didn’t really connect with me. I figured that if there was a God out there, it didn’t affect my life much. 

I didn’t know what my life was about then. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I had thought much about the direction of my life or its meaning until I met Jesus. My life was about what pleased me. But during college I hit a point where I couldn’t avoid suffering anymore. Pretty serious mental health issues run in my family, and I found that I was no exception. Riddled with anxiety and depression, I questioned who I was and where the purpose of my life was leading me. It was at this point that my college roommate invited me to church. I was skeptical about Christianity for the first few months I went – I didn’t know why I kept coming on Sundays and going to Wednesday Bible studies, but I did. Then one night, when the anxiety rose and I couldn’t see why I should keep going at life, I prayed that if God was out there He would relieve my pain. And He did. I remember that not only did my anxiety and depression dissipate, but he filled me with such a joy that I had never felt and could not explain. Having been agnostic to God all my life, I couldn’t reject that now-obvious fact that I had encountered Him – that I had seen Him and He had touched me, that he had healed me. He became as real to me as every object and every sound around me.

But not only did I know that our God is real, but that moment showed me that He is good. He had stooped down from His high throne in heaven to heal me – a suffering college sophomore who had never even acknowledged His presence – in a dorm room. He was a God who cared about the lowly, and who dealt gently with those who did not deserve it.