A Seeker of Reality, Debbie Shieh

I arrived in the United States as a foreign student from Taiwan on October 18, 1994. Like a lot of other foreign students coming to the states, I came with high expectations. I wanted not only to get a degree to help me begin a bright career, but also to find out the reality of this universe. Although at that time I was not very clear what I was seeking after, I strongly believed that there must be some meaning for my existence on this earth. In the first two months of school in New Jersey I was excited to see so many new things around me and thought that my entire two years of study would be full of adventures. However, I discovered that just as King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. Before long I got tired of the school I was in and wanted to transfer. One day when I was extremely bored in my dorm, a couple invited me to go to their church meeting. I didn't know them well, but they had always struck me as genuine and caring. Their home, which was near my dorm, was always open for me to go to during the weekend. In that church meeting they sang joyfully, so I was a little bit jealous and wanted to find out why they could be so happy in this boring world. The hymn they sang said that the New Jerusalem (in Revelation) is a city with a foundation. At that time I was looking for an exciting area to transfer to, so I was very touched that there is a place with a foundation and it seemed possible to go there and settle down. I began to study the Bible and asked how I could go to that city which has a foundation. Because of my eagerness to enter into that city, I was baptized on January 1995 and began to know Christ and the church. Two months after I got saved, God spoke to me through my reading of the book of Galatians that Christ is the reality of all the positive things and He also is the One who fills all in all. This short sentence really quenched my thirst for reality and convinced me that I was in the right place. I am no longer wandering around as a foreigner or a stranger in a foreign land. I have found the fountain that never runs dry and that the church is my home.

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After I was baptized in the church in New Jersey, I began to zealously read the Bible and the ministry books of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. At the beginning, I was just totally religious, taking Bible reading and prayer time as a kind of Christian duty. Hence, I forced myself to do it every day. Every morning I tried my best to read the Word of God as many times as possible without knowing what I was reading. This lasted for about one month. Even though I didn't know what the Bible was talking about at that time, I was enjoying the meetings in the church and the time with all the brothers and sisters in all the other informal Bible studies. During spring break I got a chance to go to Disney World with one girl for eight days. During our trip there, every morning I still kept up my Bible reading in the book of Galatians. One day the daily portion was on Gal. 2:20 “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” As usual, I read quickly without any understanding of it. That day we went to a very big souvenir store near our hotel. While I was in that store, a very strange thing happened to me. Every time I picked up something with the intention to buy it, there was this uneasy feeling inside of me bothering me until I put it down. While my friend was enjoying that shopping time, she noticed my unusual behavior. I didn't know how to describe to her what was happening until we went back to the hotel. I opened the page of the Bible I was reading that morning and began to read it again. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me...” This time that verse was like a magnet drawing my whole attention. I couldn't stop but kept repeating it again and again. “It is no longer I who live...” After we went back home, I shared this experience with my roommate who is a sister in the church. She was very happy to hear my experience in Florida and showed me one of Witness Lee's books, the Life Study of Galatians. Through reading that book I got to know that the One into whom I believed and was baptized into is a living person. When I first opened my mouth to confess His name, He had come into me and began to make His home in my heart. What a marvelous fact that God, the One who created everything in this world, not only became a Savior to save me from being a slave of Satan, but is now living inside of me, making His home in me. The distance between heaven and earth has been diminished to naught. I have got the peerless worth in this earth. Christ is now living in me.