Stories of us: Sarah

Hi, I’m Sarah* and I work as a data analyst in Sydney’s CBD. I’m a fan of the Word One-to-One. It was a key in me becoming a Christian.

About 6 years ago, a tragic event occurred in my family. This left me searching for answers: Why am I here? Is there something more to life? The many self-help books I read couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer.

I’d made a few friends who happened to be Christian. I could see there was something different about their lives. I wondered what was so great about their God that inspired such faith and passion. One of them invited me to an Easter talk by Sam Chan. I went along, and what he said about purpose intrigued me further. Later this friend also invited me to a Christianity Explored course at his local church. There I heard of God’s amazing love and forgiveness.

One day I was in a random kitchen conversation with Christian work colleagues. I shared with them how I had started to explore Christianity but had lots of questions. They introduced me to Grace Huang, who works for City Bible Forum. She asked if I would like to read the Bible with her. I found the prospect of reading a biography of Jesus sentence by sentence very appealing.

Grace and I would meet up every Friday morning at a café and work through the Word One-to- One. We always had such interesting discussions – prompted by the text of John’s Gospel, the Word One-to-One notes, and what we shared of our lives. I always had lots of questions. It was not until time after time my questions got answered – and that itself was evidence to me that God was there, helping me, leading me home. The breakthrough moment came when I asked Grace: “What does it mean to believe in God?” She said: “Trust that Jesus died and rose for you, and live for him”. I thought about it for few weeks, talked with friends at the local church I had started attending, and realised I couldn’t walk away from that kind of love. My answer was: “Yes”. It was the best decision of my life.

This has been a transformative experience to me. Life still has ups and downs, but I know that God’s love for me is unchanging. He is in control and has a plan for me. I can see that a life well spent is one that finds joy in knowing God and sharing that joy with others, so that they might experience it too. This is my life’s purpose.

I’ve come full circle – at the end of last year I did the Word One-to-One training. I’d love to be part of the Word One-to-One experience for someone else. I know that I could ask 10 people, only one person may agree to meet up and there might not be any obvious fruit. But I do believe that the seed that gets planted today may grow into something beautiful in 1, 3 or 10 years time.

* A pseudonym has been used at the author's request

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