Faith Chung - Testimony
Hi everyone. My name is Faith. Just a little bit of background for those of you who don't know me, my parents are Richard and Jackie Chung, and my Grandma is Norma. For pretty much as long as I can remember, they have been serving God, and now I'm pleased to say that I've joined them and we are now serving alongside as a family.
Whether or not you know me personally, what I'm about to share is a testament to God's goodness to me. However, if you do know me personally, then even more so will you realize how big a deal this shift is for me.
I've always been a person with really strong opinions, and I don't know if I want to come under the label of an 'intellectual' though I've been called that before, but basically I just asked a lot of difficult questions, and was rarely able to receive answers that satisfied me.
In fact, when I applied, I asked one of my friends from church to fill out a reference form for me, and it was only later on when I was in the midst of my DTS that one of my staff members told me that when they read the things I said in my application, together with the reference from my friend, I was actually put in the pile "to seriously pray over whether I should be accepted or not" because I sounded like I could make life difficult for them. However, God had evidently already prepared the way for me to him and was just waiting for me because when the leadership team prayed about it they all received an instant yes.
So for those of you who are wondering what exactly a DTS is, it stands for Discipleship Training School or as I personally like to term it, "Spiritual Rehab". DTS is a 6-month course offered at Youth with a Mission (or YWAM for short), and they have many different bases across the world as well as different focus schools. It comprises a 12 week lecture phase at the base, and a 12 week outreach phase, followed by a week of debrief where we all get together and share what God's been doing all over the world.
YWAM's motto is 'to know God and make him known'. The importance of 'knowing god' before 'making him known' was emphasized over and over again during our time there, and this is why we had an intense time of learning about the heart of God and forming a personal relationship with him, before sending us on outreach. When people try to carry out the great commission without intimacy with God, it doesn't work. Non-Christians can see when it's genuine and you're sharing because you have something so good and you want them to have it too because you love them and because god loves them. Otherwise it's just conversion as an exercise, and that has the opposite effect of turning people off to Christianity.
DTS is basically meant to be an opportunity for people to search for God, though in actuality it's not God who needs to be found, but people who need to set aside time, away from the distractions of the world, to truly be able to hear when God's speaking to them.
Of course, God can speak to us in many ways, whether in everyday life or through an encounter while we're at a church camp or during a Christian conference. Those short term things are great as a refresher for those who already are walking closely with the Lord, or if you're not a super stubborn person, but it wasn't enough for someone like me who had pretty much no walk and my only definition of being a Christian at the time was that I knew I was going to heaven when I died. Actually, I wasn't even sure about that because I knew that my religion at the time was just that - a religion that I ticked in a box on paper when I filled out forms, not a way of life. I know that the work that God began in my heart started way before YWAM, but I believe a significant shift came when I made the decision to truly seek after him.
I believe that the Word of God is true, and this is why I think my time in YWAM had such a profound impact on me. Yes, we had incredible speakers who revealed truths that were paradigm shifting, and these played a big part in my understanding of who God is, but it wouldn't have been possible if my heart hadn't been open and genuinely searching.
People have asked me why I chose to go to the main base in Kona, Hawaii. It's really very simple, I just chose the biggest and in my mind, probably the best place with the most people that would be the most fun. Also, if I didn't end up finding God, then at least I'd be in Hawaii on holiday, right?
Seriously though, even before I was asking for direction from God, he obviously guided me to the right path because he saw the deep longing of my heart and wanted to meet it. The base in Kona was the perfect place for me to thrive because of the environment it provided while I was there. I've always been a little 'alternative', not quite your 'girl next door', and I always felt a little out of place in church, like I didn't fit the 'Christian image', much less that of a 'pastor's kid'!
I wasn't sure what to expect, but when I got there, I met all sorts of people. Other pastor's kids who had lived their whole lives looking holy on the outside but knew it wasn't real inside, those who grew up in Christian families but strayed (like myself), and those who were simply hungry for more of God. There were the ones who looked like ‘guai kias’, and others who looked like ‘pai kias’. There were kids who had dropped out of high school and seemingly had no future so their parents sent them there, and families that had quit their jobs and sold their homes to come.
However, there was one thing that tied us all together, regardless of appearance. We were all there for the same reason, to know God.
Living in a community of people who are crazy on-fire Jesus lovers and whose only reason for being there is to seek after God stirs up something in you, pushes you to run harder than you would alone. And these were some of the coolest people I've ever met. It shocked me that actually, the more on fire they were for God, the cooler they got, since I used to think that choosing to give myself up wholly to God meant that I would no longer be able to do things I want, and that I would somehow become a boring person stuck in a little Christian box.
Instead, I discovered that I'm freer than I've ever been before because I’m no longer bound by the rules of the world. My God can do anything, and as long as I'm walking in his will, so can I. And if he loves me and knows best what makes me happy because he made me, then choosing to give my life to his direction was a no-brainer when that finally clicked.
Our DTS split up into 6 Outreach teams, and my team of 15 of us headed to China for 3 months. During that time, it was more of learning how to live for Christ and show that in normal daily life, because unlike the teams in Africa and Brazil that saw miracles like food multiplication and healings, the spiritual atmosphere in China is not one that is out in the open.
In addition to that, 3 guys from my team felt as though they were given a long-term calling to North Korea, and during our time in China our whole team went to the border town Yenji and interceded for the 3 of them while they were North Korea together with others from the YWAM base in a neighboring town Dandong.
During my lecture phase, different opportunities were presented to us to pray into, and from the beginning I felt as though Haiti could be my next step. During debrief week when we returned from outreach, I received confirmation from God and I believe that he's leading me to staff a DTS in Port Au Prince, Haiti.
I am to arrive on the 20th of May, and I firmly believe that if that is where he wants me money is no issue. God has already begun to show his provision, but at the moment I still have to raise another $9000 for plane tickets and living expenses, as staff in YWAM are not paid and need to raise support on their own. I do not believe in those serving the Lord as being seen as having to beg or be pitied, so I have chosen not to ask people personally for donations. However, if anyone feels the Lord speaking to them to support me, or believes in the work that God is doing through me and is interested in partnering with me, or simply has questions, please feel free to come and speak to me when you see me in church, or contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
When I left for DTS 6 months ago, I had dreams but no hopes of ever achieving them, and it still blows my mind when I think about how God's given me his direction and plan for my future, and how it is everything I ever wanted for myself and so much more. If you want to hear more about my next steps after Haiti as well as my long term vision for Singapore (which I don't have time to share here), do come and ask me about it and I'm more than happy to share what the Lord's placed in my heart.
For me, one of the best ways to describe what I went through is that, when a person ‘turns away from the world’, they usually say they have become a different person and have died to their old self. While this is true depending on how you look at it, for me I felt that instead of becoming a different person, I have become more 'me' than I've ever been in my life. There is a very big difference between trying to fight yourself to change into someone you're not, and becoming who you were made to be. I've discovered my original design, and it's incredibly freeing to know my purpose and reason for living.
So, 'The Meaning of Life' is one of those age-old questions that supposedly can't be answered? Well, I've found it. And now I can't help but share it with the world.