Why would I share my testimony on the internet?! I won’t get too technical (avoid making it too hard to read) so go easy on me. Steven’s Story is my experience of when Jesus found me and I accepted him to be in my life 4 years ago. I want to share this and not keep it to myself even though I’m not the best with written/typed words.

I’m Steven, 20 years old now at York Uni. My life has never been the same since I was 16. I’ve found grace, hope and love which has changed me…yet I’m still Steven. If you knew me before 16, you’d still see that same person today, but only today you’d see a different heart and how that has affected my life.

I grew up in North Manchester, Bolton and South Manchester. True Manc, through and through. I would regard the Chinese/British culture I was raised in to be unbelieving in God. My grandma prayed to Buddha, a man with morals and his own philosophy to life. Other than that, we didn’t pray, it just didn’t go down in our family.

As I grew older, I changed from going to a private Chinese School on Sundays, to one which was Christian run. Unlike before, our education was now free and I have a Chinese GCSE because of it - we only pay for the exams. How lovely of them. After Sunday Chinese class, there was a youth group (still running today) for people who were in year 9 or above.

By the time I hit year 11, a lot of things had gone down. I became very popular (just being honest yeah?) and felt like my social life was sorted, especially since I was a strong-minded person and chose my actions carefully. For example, I avoided smoking, though I have been offered many times. Don’t worry, I’m not judging any of you who choose to smoke (just to make that clear), I’m only trying to show you my character before I chose to follow Jesus.

I thought I was sorted guys! Do you hear me, I did reasonably well at school, minted with friends left, right and centre, I was good at skateboarding for my age, similarly with the piano at a state school and I even had a girlfriend at the time. What more would I want? I thought was happy enough. I thought I was fine without God. I thought I didn’t need him.

[This next paragraph is slightly confusing but it’s just briefly illustrating where my head was sort of at beforehand]

For this was my attitude. A life without Jesus. Being a nice person. I didn’t think I had done much wrong since anyone could say there’s always someone a little bit worse than you. So people always would have problems, because we’re not perfect, but we get by right?! Sometimes situations are tougher for others, but as much as we’d like to help, there’s only a certain amount we could do…for this was my attitude. A life without Jesus.

Easter was fast approaching in 2006. Social life was content. Home was a bit of a struggle (because it is as a teenager at home isn’t it?). I was invited to a youth Christian camp with the youth group. I was extremely reluctant to go. I didn’t even wanna know - not like I knew everything already, but I thought I had made my mind up about all this God business. However, I decided to go as I thought it would be nice to get away from home and my parents (wouldn’t you want to sometimes when you were 16?).

So there I was. Among many Christians and some who weren’t. They sang songs about Jesus, I didn’t really wanna join in. We chilled, had fun, played games, got to know people around our age in our groups, ate food together and had many laughs.

The speaker, Tony Anthony, shared his story with everyone and shared the message of Jesus. Before this camp, I read his book - Taming The Tiger. He made so many things clear about Jesus and just told everyone the truth about him, his purpose and what reason he had to die and rise from the dead after that. He made clear how much God loves everyone and doesn’t want to be separated from us - that God actually cared and it hurt him if we were not reconciled back to him through Jesus.

I heard this message. Yet I didn’t know this message. I kept rejecting it in my thoughts and pushed it away from my heart. I began to realise, though, why people were singing praises to Jesus and what prayer really was. I had never said a genuine prayer in my life still. By the end of this camp, I kept rejecting Jesus away from my heart - though I could honestly feel him and his presence in my life. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in him or trust him. After all, I had chosen to not follow Jesus for the past 16 years of my life - it would have been such a big move to say differently. What about my friends? What about my family? What about my girlfriend? What would they think of me if I told them I had become a Christian?!

For my whole life, it would seem I was admitting that I was actually wrong about God. I would stand so strongly for my views against him. I just couldn’t find it in me to employ this “change of heart”, for this wasn’t what people knew of me or what I knew of myself.

During the camp, the time when people made their own decisions to give their lives to Jesus, I didn’t but I asked my mate what he did about it all. Sounds confusing right, I guess I wasn’t even sure what I was asking. He told me he went to read the Bible and to find out what it says. After returning home from camp, this is exactly what I did.

What I hadn’t explained was that 2 weeks before camp, a man came up to me on the street and he gave me a Bible that day. So when I was home, I actually had a Bible to read from! I believe God made sure that was the case. So I started reading this book called Matthew. It actually started to make some sense in my head! I read some of the teachings and learnt a little bit about the character of Jesus and was reminded of what his personal purpose was for.

That night, I was lying in bed. It was pitch black. I decided to say a prayer to God, my 1st ever genuine prayer. I said to him something like:

“If you’re real, then I’m sorry that I’ve been going against you in my life. I now choose to turn away from that and go your way, follow Jesus.”

Listen up! This felt like the scariest moment of my life! I felt the presence of God so strongly in my own bedroom (wow, there really was no escape then). Even though I was praying to Jesus, I still didn’t clock on that it was Jesus who made me feel like that. The only way I can sort of describe it is if you imagine a burning hot radiator, one that you definitely don’t wanna put your bare back on. When I starting praying that prayer, it was like I gripped onto that burning radiator. What would you do then? You’d normally take your hand away right? In other words, stop praying! No, I couldn’t! I was so drawn in by his love - though I didn’t know it fully at the time. I ended up falling asleep and awoke the next morning - Saturday 22nd April 2006.

Later that afternoon, I rang my youth leader who lead my group at the camp. I told him about my 1st prayer and he asked me if I wanted to pray with him to become a Christian. I agreed and at around 2:30pm, I confessed that Jesus was the one I would live for.

Ever since that day, I have been mocked and put down and angrily questioned by many people I know. That’s how the others reacted anyway. God, on the other hand, has been continually working and speaking to me in so many different ways in my life. He has never disregarded me once and never will. He has given me never-ending 2nd chances, true joy, true peace, freedom though Jesus and shown me that God is love and what love actually is.

Thanks for taking time to read my story. All I’ve done is shared a bit of my experience of the time when I came to know Jesus and let him be in my life. I didn’t go into a lot of detail about what the message of Jesus was or how God has worked in my life since but please don’t hesitate to ask me anything. Please feel free to respond freely with any emotion that you have about my story, whether it be positive, negative or something else.

Please don’t give up. Jesus is with you and loves you. Check out the Bible. Pray to Jesus and find him in your heart.

“Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.”

~James 4:8a

So, this “blog” won’t really have a lot of structure, but just kind of what comes to mind may be posted. Let’s begin!

In the past week or so, I’ve really been drawn closer and closer to God which has helped me to learn so much more about him! Guess what peepz?! You can learn about God but there will be always (shall I repeat that…), yes I mean always, be more of God to be discovered. You may or may not know Jesus in your heart and you may or may not call yourself a Christian, but in both cases, you may know a bit about God - don’t stop there! You may feel comfortable but keep digging deeper into his word (a fantastic foundation to know why you’re choosing to devote time to God) and spending more time with him - there’ll always be more of God which he has yet to reveal to you! I promise ya.

A few “events” have been: ”loveyouruni” when they came to York. Speaking to Muslim friends at James College CU Toasties late on a Tuesday night (or them questioning me in fact!) and being involved in a production within DramaSoc (at York Uni) called “Naked Bible”.

Here’s where the ‘title’ links in. For Naked Bible, we’ve been going through Mark’s Gospel together (TNIV) and acting parts through, expressing it through drama and video. The gospel is filled with so much truth which constantly (yes, I did mean to say constantly) affirms the truth of Jesus who I live for everyday! It’s more than a mere bedtime story, but life-changing, heart-breaking and engaging. Jesus is the hero of the Bible and the climax of our salvation story is reached in the gospels. He didn’t come down as a proud, sinful man, but was sinless and therefore his sacrifice-to-end-all-sacrifices was sufficient enough to die for our sins as he became our sins when he died upon the cross. He rose from the grave, God is powerful to do these things. Resurrected! God’s plan for us and Jesus completed! Jesus was and is the son of God. He didn’t go around splurting that out (that would be carrying pride [sin] - the reason why the Satan fell, and Jesus was without sin) but everyone else around him was convinced, absolutely convinced, that he was the coming Messiah prophesied about in the Old Testament even though they didn’t have faith at times to truly put their full trust in Jesus. We all go through that, even as Christians. Do you see that there is more to life than just the natural an what you physically see in front of you in general? This is just a super-short summary. We haven’t even explored God’s steadfast love for us and how this relates to Jesus’ death!

I’ll leave you with this Mark 1:21-28 (ESV). Jesus never went around saying that he was who he was, but everyone else did. The ‘evil spirits’ even couldn’t hold it in and splurted it out about who Jesus was. Mark 1:24b says”I know who you are - the Holy One of God!” So, they know who Jesus is. Do you know who Jesus is?

So I’ve just started up this blog on my iPod. I want to be able to share aspects of my faith on here with you because what would be the point of keeping it all to myself? Welcome everyone. I hope you enjoy it and that it speaks to you. Peace, over and out!