My Walk with Jesus

I grew up in a Roman Catholic household. I went to all-boys Catholic schools. So alot of my growing up years were spent in the Roman Catholic persuasion. I did all the things a good catholic boy would do. Much of my Sundays were spent at The Cathedral of The Good Shepherd at Bras Basah and then later at The Church of the Holy Spirit at Upper Thomson. To me as a kid growing up all of it made little sense and a waste of my precious weekends.

Then round about Primary 6,a close friend brought Leo to her church. It was a little charismatic church in Upper Serangoon, Elim Church. Leo then brought the rest of us to church with him in the weeks that followed. In due time the 3 of us(Leo,Noel and myself) were regulars there. My parents on the other hand started to attend church at St. Andrew's Cathedral. It was a time of change in the Boyd household.

As we grew deeper in the Word, alarm bells started to go off. Being from the catholic faith previously, we got caught up in the comparision between our current faith and how we used to be. Religion was replaced by redemption by faith.

As we grew in the Lord, the devil himself conspired against us. In due time, my dad got retrenched and people we had considered as friends shunned us. All we had was each other and a trust that God would somehow see us through this season of tribulation. It was not easy leaving behind all you knew and believed, and starting out anew. In time things returned to normalcy, although they were never quite the same as they used to be.

At one time Leo and I aspired to be pastors, would you believe it? But life's distractons kind of put paid to those aspirations. Leo became an air steward and that was all that there was to that grand plan. As for myself, I enrolled in the army. I pretty soon stopped going to church altogether once I had finished my NS duties. As is often the case, work and priorities took the place of God as the central thing in our lives.

A few years after that me and Joyce were invited to a little church in River Valley by one of her former classmates. It was then that I started to attend church regularly again. But somehow it did not seem right. Something was amiss. In fact i was rather uncomfortable in that church. It all ended rather spectacularly with me and the senior pastor at that time having a lively debate on the Creation vs Evolution subject. Maybe it was then then I finally understood Grace as found in the bible.It became untenable to stay there after that. I lost a lot of respect for the so-called charismatics after that. Who knew where that road would lead me to.

Joyce and I were now without a church. So we started to look around for a good church in which to attend. We ran the whole gamut from methodists to lutheran to prebytherian to bible-presbytherian to just about every type of church and congregation out there.

After attending church on Sundays, we would sometimes shop at Suntec City. There was this big church above Carrefour. We often saw people going in and out. There were these long, snaking queues. We decided to check out the place...someday.

Finally we plucked the courage to attend that 'big church with the funny rock thing outside'. In the queue, by God's design, was an old friend of mine from the zoo days, April. She gave us a good insight about what this church was about and we finally made our way into the cavernous auditorium.

The praise and worship was awesome. But the best was yet to come. Along came the senior pastor of this church. This half chinese-half indian dude with long hair. The senior pastor indeed. That day he preached a message that resonated deeply with what I knew and what i believed. For the first time in my life everything made sense and all the pieces fit.

That became our home church after that, needless to say. We did venture a few times to other churches, but always came back to NCC in the end. The problem was never about the music and the message, but rather about the long queues and personal issues.

Even after me and Joyce broke up we still continued to attend NCC. And even when I got together with Agnes I still attend New Creation Church regularly.

To me no other church can quite offer to me on a spiritual level what NCC does. No preacher has ever opened my eyes to God's Word quite like Pastor Prince's ministry has done.

I have been there and done that. Been to every church and denomination there is in Singapore. I struggled with the messages I heard every sunday from the pulpits of many great men of God. Somehow the Good News that was to set me free, never quite did. In fact I felt so much in bondage. The same Jesus that came to set me free, somehow always seemed to point an accusing finger at me for all my shortcomings according to these preachers. Somehow the Jesus in the bible that I read, and the Jesus these men preached never quite seemed like the same person. Jesus came and died to save the world, yet I kept being told every sunday that I had to ask that same Jesus to forgive my sins day after day after day. It seemed like a never ending cycle of forgiveness and sin. Then, there was always the 'caring' brothers and sisters who hounded me whenever I missed a sunday service. It seemed to them that my salvation was wrapped up in how many services I attended, how much I tithed to the church and how much of my Bible I read. I was led to believe that it was 'christian' to be poor,sick and miserable. It seemed only sinners seeked to acquire wealth, family and health.

But when I came to NCC, it seemed that the ways of God were never that difficult to follow after all. It is us, mortal men, who take the simple things of God and add our own interpretations to it to make it more unattainable. Jesus Christ came to fulfill all the laws of the Old Covenant and to create a new covenant. A better more superior covenant to the Old one. Under the old covenant men had to obey God and his laws. The reward for obedience was the blessings of God. But more often than not, men found themselves in a quagmire of sin. It seemed that no man could ever live the sinless life. No one single man could love God with all his heart, with all his soul and all his mind. Or so it seemed.

Then along came Jesus, who became our one sacrifice for sin of the entire world. Jesus became our healing, Jesus became our provision, Jesus became our peace, Jesus became our joy. Jesus became our everything!!

The New Covenant was all about how God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in him should not perish but shall have eternal life. But it seemed that no church preached that to me before. It seemed that after all that Jesus had done at Calvary's cross, that there was still a lot of work left to be done. I still had to live a good life, read my bible, attend church every sunday, bring souls to Christ, pray for forgiveness of all my tresspasses, help the poor, feed the hungry, tithed regularly to my church and then maybe...just maybe...I might someday be good enough for God. Salvation was never a sure thing according to these people. Your standing before God was dependant upon how much you did and how much sin was left 'unforgiven' in your life. Woe to anyone who died in his sleep and had forgotten to pray for his forgiveness...

Christianity never was, or is not about religion. But for most of my christian life it was. Religious men who condemned their congregations. Men who used God's word not to set sould free but to bind them to a life of self-condemnation.

Religion is man through his own good works trying to attain God's acceptance. Christianity is God reaching out to man with His acceptance. There is little or nothing for the christian to do but to rest and to behold the great salvation of God. Resting in God's presence should be the easiest thing to do. But we as men, we aspire to be doers. We find it hard that God will accept us if we do...nothing. But all that needed to be done was already done at Calvary's cross two thousand years ago. As the only sinless man who ever lived became sin for us all.

Isaiah 53:5:
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

to be continued....




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