Hui Min, God Really Loves You

Before I accepted Christ, I believed in karma and, under my parents’ guidance, I grew up to be a filial daughter. I was taught that in order to gain success, I need to work hard and be independent. I did achieve success later in life. In my family circle, we occasionally made fun of Christians who say grace for their food. We have always thought that the food on our tables was a result of
human effort and there was no need to give thanks to a divine being for that.

My Christian journey began when my husband and I decided to move to Singapore from London three years ago. Alfred was a nominal Christian. While we were in London, my life as a newly married career woman and a new mother of two children took a toll on our relationship daily. I was neglecting my husband. I had too many expectations of him. We had no help and decided to move
back to Asia for support. I thought I had always been a supportive wife even though I was a busy mother. I also helped to resolve our financial challenges. I thought I did well as an ambitious and driven woman, who was always trying to fix problems.

After we moved to Singapore, he became a different person. He was unhappy, stressed out and he looked lost. Rather than trying to understand what he was going through in adjusting to life in Singapore, I just became angry with him. I made decisions, including threatening divorce, which I thought were for the good of the family. They were actually selfishly motivated. His non-response
affected me badly and I started to question many things in life. Things were intense at home. It got to a stage where my husband felt that moving out of our new home was the right thing to do. Life turned for the worse at that moment.

God came into the picture when He brought my old friend from medical school, Christina, from the UK to Singapore. At that time, Christina had just been married and was settling down. She had plenty of time for me. She supported me and introduced me to St Andrew’s Cathedral. I also read the book, “Prayers to Save your Marriage.” It struck me that I had been too eager to fix problems
and had never allowed God into my life. I read that I needed to listen more and speak less. I have said so many unpleasant things to my husband when I was angry. I made things worse by always wanting to fix our problems without listening.

I later learned to swallow my pride and pray. I decided to let go and allow Jesus to intervene. I prayed every night for wisdom and guidance from His Holy Spirit. I asked Christina how I would know if God was listening to my prayer. She encouraged me to pray the sinners’ prayer and declare that Jesus is my Saviour, and told me I would feel His hug. I did just that and I felt His presence in the room and His love. I even fasted a few times with the help of a new friend I met in church, Winnie.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t an overnight miracle for my marriage. I continued to pray and I could sense a change inside of me. My husband wasn’t aware of what God was doing for me and I didn’t want to tell him. Things were not getting better between us. He later told me he wanted to move out permanently and that he had no feelings for me anymore. He broke the news on Mother’s Day two years ago. I thought it was absurd that a man would leave his wife and young children in a foreign country for the sake of his career. Somehow I managed to hold back my anger and continued to lead my new life in Singapore. During this time, I continued to pray for wisdom and for the Holy Spirit to tame my tongue. Every time there were negative thoughts, I would pray for peace, casting off all the evil thoughts in my mind.

After several months of separation, God intervened and made a drastic change to our life. One evening, Alfred returned home. God had been watching and I realised that He had put me in a difficult situation so that I could become stronger and learn to be a more forgiving person.

My husband and I fell in love once again. God forgave my sin for not believing in Him. He took away the pride that killed me. He had given us challenges to make us stronger. Alfred later told me that he could see how I have changed to be more Christ-like and that in turn changed him.

I was invited to join the Alpha Course at the Cathedral two years ago. After the first video, I was hungry for God’s Word. I watched the whole Alpha Course series by Nicky Gumbel on Youtube over the weekend, before moving on to other Alpha sessions.

One of the sessions showed an image of Jesus knocking and waiting at the door, and that image stayed with me, telling me that Jesus had always been waiting for me to invite Him into my home. It was only then that I realised that Jesus had attempted to get Himself invited into my home, but I had always resisted. Eventually, I realised what love and sacrifice meant. God loves us so much that He was willing to give His Son to die for our sins so that we could have eternal life. In the past, I was clueless about Christ’s death and wondered why Christians took His death so seriously! For a sceptic like myself, the Alpha Course gave me opportunity to explore and ask questions about the Christian faith in a conducive environment. It helped to shed light on the way I had lived in the past and it gave me a foundation on which to build my personal relationship with God.

Despite all these, I still had doubts about God’s healing power. I wasn’t ready to be baptised after the Alpha Course. My husband ministered to and counselled me on what it meant to be a Christian but I just wasn’t ready. I had been to another church and came across Christians who were desperate to be healed by the Holy Spirit but I did not see any miracles. It puzzled me that some ill elderly people would seek healing from miracles and not take their doctors’ advice. As a doctor myself, I believe in evidence- based medicine and not healing based on miracles or luck. God had planned
for me to pick up a book at the airport on the way to a holiday in Phuket. My husband was supposed to join me but his work delayed his departure from Singapore. I went alone and had a day to myself. I read the book, which was about a female orthopaedic surgeon who was pronounced dead and her journey back from heaven. I completed the book within a day, just before my husband arrived after a rainy day. The story touched me but did not move me.

A year later, I was invited to a Jackie Chan charity concert by a family member and I was excited. I jumped into the back of a car and sat next to a lady called Ashley. I spent the evening with her and she shared about some miracles involving her dying husband. Later in the evening, she told me that she and her husband were famous among the Christian community in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. She told me to check them out on YouTube by searching for Ashley and Tony Low and I did that the following day.

They went through a lot in search of healing for Tony’s stage four nasopharyngeal cancer which had metastasised to all parts of his body including his brain. Before undergoing surgery to remove a tumour in his brain, his wife’s pastoral team prayed for him. At that time, as an unbeliever, he said he wouldn’t believe in Jesus unless He appeared in front of him. He did meet Jesus during his coma.

He woke up paralysed as part of his brain was removed. He decided to read the Bible from cover to cover and by the time he finished the last page, he felt a burning sensation creeping up his legs and he stood up and walked!

Tony is my husband’s aunt’s nephew. A miracle has happened in my circle of family. God has planned it so well and arranged for these lovely people to appear in my life, just to let me know He is real!

Another miracle took place again a year after I met Ashley. I was ready to be baptised on the Easter Sunday just passed. The Cathedral invited Tony and Ashley to share their testimony of faith on the day of my baptism. I met Tony for the first time on the day of the baptism and he heard about my story. Tony pointed at me and said “Hui Min, God really loves you”. He is right. God had a plan for me. He also has a plan in allowing me to share my story with you.

There will be many temptations to cling on to my rope coming my way, but I can now trust God to guide me and my family by letting go of the rope. I would like to share a verse from Jeremiah
29:11, which has helped us a lot:

“For I know the plans I have for you,”
declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you
and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).

May you experience His love.