Sunday, January 10, 2016

What A Friend We Have In Jesus

December 23, 2014

You've heard how James and I got married after only three months of dating. We thought we were best friends who would live happily ever after... but life is not that simple!

By 1988, there were times that I thought it was inevitable that we would either go our separate ways or remain miserable living under the same roof. How could we start all over?

Before Christmas, we accepted the invitation from two friends to their church's Christmas celebration. The drama that night compared and contrasted the lives of two women, one with and one without Jesus Christ. Somehow that gave me a glimpse of hope.

On January 1, 1989, I started attending church in Palo Alto. Then on Saturday, January 28, I attended an evangelistic meeting in the evening. The speaker was a medical doctor from Hong Kong. My high-tech career successes seemed small compared to his, yet he had felt the same emptiness I was feeling! Facing terminal illness, he had cried out and God gave him double healings. I sobbed when I heard how God restored his relationship with his wife, and how he had written letters to be mailed to his children as they grew up without him.

Then someone led us in singing a song I had never heard before, "What a Friend we have in Jesus." The verse "Oh, what peace we often forfeit? Oh, what needless pain we bear? All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!" That night, I received Jesus as my personal Savior.

Who could have known I would one day share my story and sing that song with a multi-cultural praise team?

As you gather with family and friends, don't forget Jesus is the reason for the season.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." (Romans 5:6-11 ESV)

Without Jesus, I don't know how to live. Jesus gave me a new life and a new marriage. My story is recorded in my article, "Love, So Amazing" that was published by CCMUSA in the April-June 2011 Edition of Challenger Magazine. You can read it here.

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