Brother Xiaobei is currently a freelance preacher, serving with his wife in a city in northern China. He grew up in a single-parent family and never enjoyed maternal love. Poverty made him feel inferior for a long time. When he grew up, he was not satisfied with his job, and his father died in middle age. In despair, he turned to Christ, and his life has changed since then.
The following is the testimony of Brother Xiaobei in first-person narrative.
I grew up in a divorced family. My mother abandoned me and my father when I was very young. Although poor, my grandma always gave me the best she had, including her faith.
As a child, I went to church with my grandmother, who was illiterate. She only knew that it was good to believe in the Lord Jesus, but she did not know why. For a long time, I did not know the Lord Jesus, and I just felt that it was so troublesome to be forbidden from doing many things.
In my third year of college, I was attracted to a fellowship because the believers in it were very caring. However, they were mostly students who had little experience and knowledge of the Bible and did not make clear the salvation of Christ. Me either.
After graduation, I was away from God again because there was no church around my workplace.
After work, I was fully taken away by "the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life." I felt that I was always committing crimes and that God would judge me, so I was full of fear.
When I was a boy, I accidentally saw pornographic videos, and I have been caught up in the lust since I grew up. After every bad deed, I want to escape from God out of shame. Then I would judge myself, thinking that God would not bless me.
I got no success in my career, nor did I get any success in life. I stayed up late for a long time and got weaker. I lost hope for life, the future, and marriage.
I feel inferior due to my poor family conditions. I had no savings to get married after years of work. My parents divorced; my aunt and uncle also divorced, and I felt that marriage was not a good thing. From time to time, I could hear some news about divorce and cheating marriages. So, I thought I might be single for life.
In the Spring Festival of 2018, I went back to my hometown for the New Year and attended the youth gathering of my hometown church. They were caring about us who worked in other cities. At this gathering with the theme "You Are Going Back to Bethel", I realized that I had no feeling in prayer and no strength in life as I had been away from God for a long time.
The gathering awakened my desire for marriage. At the party, a married Christian shared God's leadership in their marriage. Their sharing made me feel the happiness of marriage in Christ, and I hoped to build a family that was as acceptable to God as they were.
At the 2019 Spring Festival, I once again participated in the youth gathering. I drew a psalm: "Put your life in the hands of the Lord; have faith in him, and he will do it." I thought I had many failures by myself, and I tried to trust them to God.
From then on, I started real prayer before God. I committed my faith, work, life, and marriage to God completely. At the same time, I started looking for a church and resumed the Sunday gathering.
A fellowship sister suddenly contacted me through Tencent QQ Messenger and invited me to attend Bible study. She never contacted me before graduating from college. So, during the pandemic in 2020, I continued to participate in online learning. I began to repent. In addition to accepting God's forgiveness and love, I began to meet God's call and mission. Slowly, I began to take the road of service, during which I also actively participated in a class for singles.
After lockdown reopening, I exchanged ideas about marriage with church preachers and his wife, hoping to get help. Sisters and brothers around me also witnessed the change in my life.
I used to attach great importance to physical conditions, but later I changed and wanted to find a sister who believed in the Lord. After the prayer from myself, the preacher, and fellow believers, someone introduced me to a sister who would be serving in another city soon.
She is a preacher who has served for many years and is several years older than me. I worried that she might treat me like a child in the faith. However, I found that she also has weaknesses in communication, and I could help her in some ways.
After understanding faith, personality, and other basic information, we started video chatting. I confessed to her my past sins in lust, and she finally accepted them.
After marriage, I took my wife back to my hometown in the countryside, and many people felt the blessing to me because it seemed that my family got a curse in our lives. My grandparents' three children are all divorced, and my grandfather died early. My father also died of illness in middle age. I was struggling in a distant city, and my grandmother could only live with an elderly uncle with poor conditions.
Holding her great-grandson, my grandmother cooked with her granddaughter-in-law, talking and laughing. She was very happy and grateful because her years of prayer had finally become a reality.
- Translated by Oliver Zuo
