Dennis' testimony
I grew up a in a very secure and loving family. When I was six (6) living in Australia, my father was in a car accident that left him severely brain damaged. From that point on, he could no longer be the father that a young boy required. My family then, consisted of just my mother and my older twin brother Arthur. I felt the hardship of my mother in raising my brother and me by herself as a single parent. So at age eleven (11) I declared myself the ‘man of the house’ as I fixed clogged toilets and drains, and washed the car with my brother. I also remember that I had declared my independence early as a young boy, frustratingly screaming to my mother that ‘It’s my life!’ in an argument with her. As I grew up, I can remember attending church only a few times.
By the time I attended college at UC Santa Barbara, I remember being very turned off to talking about God. The Christians that I knew at the time were no different than I, smoking and drinking as they went to church every Sunday. I did not want to be a part of that. Eventually, I became very practical in my studies and wanted to come out of the school with knowledge in computers as well as economics. The idea that I hated most was being ‘clueless’ about relevant topics so I always armed myself with knowledge that I knew would be practical and useful to be a success in this world.
When I entered the work world, I was out for blood. I worked very late hours to secure high quality projects at Wind River. I researched the stock market with vengeance and greed that helped pay off school loans and credit card debt. I was an angry young man and remember punching a line of parking meters in my rage when my girlfriend at the time had diminished my ego. However, my dreams of financial security came crashing down with the market in February 2000. Surprisingly I felt alive during this time because I felt a huge burden being lifted off. The truth was that I had been a prisoner of the very things that I thought could save me: money and my own ability
I was introduced to this church through Julie Kim. She talked about not being able to be satisfied in this world through any means. There was nothing that I had suggested that would make her think otherwise and furthermore it had something to do with church. So I suggested to her that I would go to a Friday night bible study. In reality I was very suspicious of religious activities and knew that I would be able to save her from going to these events if I thought they were a danger to her.
So in November 2000, I attended my first bible study. It really was a wonderful time where I walked away thinking that I had just spent time with genuinely happy children in some sort of ‘utopia’. I knew I would come back. I went out to lunch with Jay and he always prayed for me at meals. Jisup Hong spent a great deal of time with me. In his concern, we often went out to lunches and dinners, and he always was able to answer the doubts that I had in God and Jesus. Yet no matter how strong my doubts and cynicism was, he always made his relationship with God personal and I readily saw that. It was so real for him and that always amazed me.
I took a Christian foundations course called Course 101 in Summer 2000 and was so intrigued and excited about the way Pastor Ed presented Christianity. He said two (2) things that really stood out to me. 1) That God has always given us the compliment that our decisions matter. 2) That one of the secrets of life is ‘love’. Being the calculating person that I was, it definitely gave me the assurance that spending time making decisions was important. But now this added the element that someone was watching over each one of my decisions. As with the notion of ‘love’, I had always wanted to believe that love was the answer, but the world had always told me a different story. Randy Oh had been my small group teacher for Course 101 and I again witnessed how personal God was to him.
It was very strange indeed for me during this time that I was so curious about Christianity. I came home each night to struggle through Mere Christianity and the gospel of John by myself. I was so impressed that Jesus’ commandment to His disciples in John15:17 was to ‘love each other’. And after Course 101 it was very strange to me too that I kept thinking about God so much in fact that I often fell asleep talking to Him at night and sometimes crying myself to sleep as we talked. I knew I was slowly being affected in a way I was not so prepared for. Shortly after Course 101 ended in August (2001), I committed to God quietly telling him that I would simply trust him more with my life. Jesus was who He said he was. I now believed that. But I could only tell a few people about this because this was so strange for me. I mean, I was a un-churched, non-gospel hearing person for the first 25 years of my life and now there was this God that I was now so conscious of. I was embarrassed to talk about God to others because in my experience, the world looked weirdly upon Christianity and I was well aware of this. I wanted to take another step towards Him in several of the Lord’s Prayer messages, to declare Him my personal Lord and Savior, but I was just so fearful, so self-conscious of other’s knowing. I realized I was really that weak so I began to pray to God that he protect me as I did.
One of the ways God helped me release my fears and self-consciousness was through last year’s (2001) Christmas Celebration. Not only did I not know how to act, but I also didn’t know how to sing, and was utterly self-conscious acting in front of others. However I also saw my leaders writing and rewriting the script and songs each night. They were tireless and so I watched them and emulated the best I could. And I had never felt God so near as during this time and I kept reminding myself that the celebration was not about my acting and singing abilities which I knew I had none, but that the Christmas Celebration was really about God’s salvation plan for us through the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas day.
On December 23, 2001 during a Sunday Worship Service, Matthew gave a message on Matthew 14:25-33 (Jesus Walks on the Water). He challenged me to trust Jesus, the same Jesus that called His disciples to walk on water with Him. ‘Yes, it is walking on water, a seemingly impossible act, but don’t neglect to see who is calling you to walk on water’, Matthew h said. I responded to the invitation and it was a solid and concrete decision, once again, for me to commit to trusting Jesus and making that commitment public.
After that, there were two (2) concrete events that led me to Jesus in a way that I knew only He was the answer to my brokenness, and that only He could save me from it. 1) A broken heart from a relationship 2) A broken ego from my career
Relationships were a form of security for me, to have that special someone that could understand me fully, and love me just the same. But through this, I only ended up with a broken heart and I only grew very disheartened and dismayed because of it. I had especially prayed to God to lift me out of this. I thought it was crazy how someone could so easily rock your world and throw you off course. I prayed to Jesus non-stop, that He could help soften and strengthen my sometimes angry but mostly sad heart and help me move on. Also during this time, I found it extremely difficult to concentrate at work as my performance was now being affected by my personal life. As a result my manager at work told me she had made the decision to take me off a lead development project at WR that I had been working on. Work was a form of significance, and was once again I was devastated, ego completely shot.
All I could think of during this time was that I had no more energy to do anything. I was completely tired, the world had completely let me down in relationships, in career and I was broken to the core. I remember praying to Jesus in my drive to a Friday night bible study on March 15, 2001, repenting of my wandering heart, repenting of being so far from Him, and praying fervently that He would bring me back to Him, and that He would bring me back to that place right along side Him again. I knew in the deepest part of me I only wanted to be right there.
Matthew gave the bible study on Nicodemus, John 3:1-15. In John 3:3 Jesus says, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ It became so apparent to me that I had held on to earthly things, like security in relationships, and security in my career. John 3:6 says, ‘Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit’ and I saw that I was still of the flesh and not of the Spirit of God. During this time I was thoroughly convicted that there was nothing on earth that was going to satisfy any of my desires and there was nothing that I could do by myself to that endeavor. So during this time, I could only thank God for blessing me with this kind of clarity and for showing me that He was the only answer to my brokenness. And I really saw that I was a sinner. I saw that it was a helpless situation where I just swap in a new person to find security in, or swap in a new job to revive my significance. The same thing would happen again, and my heart would only harden so that I would only be less prone to getting hurt but it wouldn’t solve anything and I knew that. The truth was: my sin had entangled me. It was so clear to me now. And all I could think about was the redeeming power of Jesus, how He talked about being born again in the Spirit and not reconciling myself to the world. With nothing left but an empty heart and a shriveled ego, I came before Jesus that night and made Him Lord and Savior. I made Him Lord of my life because through my sinfulness I had made an utter mess of my life and I knew that Jesus was the only one who could redeem me as a sinner completely, and make me once again His son.
Today with Christ, I have been made completely new. From one that had vowed to save his friend, to one who has now been saved himself. I opened my heart just a bit to let Jesus into my life, only to find that I am now part of His life. I become convicted more and more each day to the fact that I need the cross, and that the cross is the only answer to my brokenness as a person in this world. And I become convicted more and more as time goes on that living in relation to Jesus is living exactly the way I had been designed to do. Through Jesus Christ, I have been named a son to my Father in Heaven. He has led me into the El Sereno house of Christian brothers who encourage me to continue along my journey of faith and my leaders that care not how I perform, but how I grow in my relationship with God. My days are no longer filled researching the stock market, or finding security where I know cannot be found. Rather I am within this magnificent work of Christ, within the body that he has led me into. And I can only be thankful for His hand that guides me forth in holiness and love and can only respond to Him with faithfulness in the way He continues His work through me.