At twelve, I received a clear calling to become a missionary and be used by God. Throughout the journey since then, up to this day, I have distinctly sensed God's guidance and refinement in my life.
My academic experiences in South Korea and India exposed me to numerous challenges, cultivating resilience, perseverance, and adaptability while significantly enhancing my proficiency in different languages.
I had assumed that returning to China would mark the end of these trials, but God had other plans. During my two years back in China (2023-2025), He placed me in circumstances unprecedented for me. For the first time, I felt utterly powerless and profoundly small. God severely humbled my pride, making me realize that as someone with a clear calling, merely identifying as His child without embracing the priestly role He entrusted me with was woefully insufficient. If I did not offer true sacrifices—costs—for this faith, things I truly treasured, things I was unwilling to relinquish, things I had invested my deep emotions in, then this faith held no meaning for me. What I previously thought I offered to God—time, money, and such—might seem priestly sacrifices to others, but to me, they were nothing. What I truly clung to, like Isaac to Abraham, God made clear this year through a series of events: I needed to surrender, I needed to offer.
As a cradle Christian who has believed for 25 years, it was only this year that I offered these “firstfruits” for the first time. For the first time, Jesus Christ became tangible to me. He is no longer the Jesus Christ spoken of by my mother, nor the Jesus Christ of the church, but the real Jesus Christ who touches my heart.