Editor's note: A college student found Jesus when she felt heavy and meaningless in pursuit of grades. Spending much time on many unnecessary things, she was helpless to do the right thing. Intending to drop out of school, she encountered the Lord in a campus fellowship and eventually
It has been 12 years since I began to follow Jesus in 2010. In fact, I believe that from the moment I was born, even when I was in my mother's womb, those invisible hands have been guiding me. He had planned my life and had led me step by step to get closer to Him and know Him.
In the fall of 2009, I left Gansu, my hometown in the far northwest of China, for the first time in my life, and came to Shanghai to attend college. What should have been the spring of hope in my life turned into a winter of disappointment. When I was in high school, I was full of longing for university life. I was once a person with lofty ideals, but by chance, I became a brainless dullard.Before college, I only knew that I should study hard and be admitted to a famous university, and then I could change my fate, and make the world a more beautiful place. It was as simple as that. However, the ideal is far away from reality. After I entered university, reality constantly broke all my illusions about life. At school, I used to get the best grades. Although I was always diffident because I was the shortest in the class since childhood, and a little fat, the results could still make up for the pain caused by defects in other aspects. However, in the university, even my grades became the lowest in the class. Looking at my brilliant classmates, I had no confidence, fell to the bottom of the inferiority complex, and could not find a sense of existence.
I lived a miserable life. Waking up early had become very difficult. I spend much time on meaningless things, and I always put off doing the things that were really good for me. At the end of the day, I just felt endless emptiness. I wanted to read more books, I wanted to study hard, and I wanted to exercise regularly, but I was not free to do what I wanted to do. Gradually, I realized that I had no control over my life, and I felt a deep sense of powerlessness about myself. I could not change myself through my own efforts, I was also unable to change society.
There was also a kind of heaviness that I couldn't put my finger on. This feeling of heaviness had been with me ever since I was a child. It was not because I did something that I felt tired. Even if I did nothing, I still felt tired, and that feeling was getting stronger and stronger. I couldn't find a way out. I was lost. I didn't know where my life was going and what was the point of living like this. This was not the life I wanted to live. I was not happy, and my heart was full of anxiety and uneasiness. Reading or learning could not bring peace to my soul or solve the problem in my heart.
After the first semester of my freshman year, I wanted to quit school. I didn't want to go to school anymore. I went home for the winter vacation with a heavy heart. Many times, I planned to tell my parents that I wanted to quit school, but I never said it out loud, because I was burdened with too many expectations from them to let them down. They thought I should be very happy for being admitted to a good university, but no one knew I was actually helpless. In that confused and helpless situation, I thought of God. Though I didn't know God at that time, I just thought to myself that if there was a power in the world that could change me, it would be God.
Maybe there was a divine plan. My mother believed in Jesus when I was in elementary school, and I went to church with her at that time. Even though I didn't understand anything, I liked to listen to their hymns and to go to gatherings because I felt peaceful there. I didn't go to church since I was in junior high school. On the one hand, I was busy with my studies, and on the other hand, my father was very opposed to us going to church and tried to stop us by various means. But it was this little seed of the Gospel that was sown when I was ignorant, and it began to sprout in my heart when I grew up. Thus I opened the Bible in my family, but I realized I couldn't understand it after I turned a few pages. I became a little discouraged and uneasy.
At the beginning of the new term, I returned to school with a tired heart. The only hope for me was to find the church after I went to Shanghai, otherwise, I didn't know how to continue my life. It was about the first week of school, on my way back to the dormitory after class one day, I asked a classmate if she knew where there was a church. Then amazingly she said she knew a church and told me I could go with another classmate on Sunday. So that Sunday I contacted the classmate, and he took me to church. That's how I came to a fellowship in a small church.
On that Sunday, one of the sisters who was in charge of the fellowship got my phone number. Then she contacted me and invited me to study the Bible at school, maybe three or four times a week. I still remember my first class of Bible study. It was about Matthew 11:28-30, entitled “Rest in Peace”. After I attended that, I thought it was a baptism of the soul, a new world was opening up for me, and it was the Lord's gentle call to me, calling me to come to rest in Him. For the first time, I felt how the world could have such words that touched my heart and revealed everything about my soul. I was finally beginning to understand what that heavy burden was that had been weighing me down for as long as I could remember. It was the burden of sin. It was sin that I had been trying to get rid of. It was sin that made me miserable. It was sin that made me anxious and upset. And the heavy burden of sin did not begin to come off until the moment I met the Lord, even though I did not quite understand how God worked in my heart. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." That verse was stuck in my memory. God's word took hold of me, and my soul finally found its home.
In the process of studying the Bible, I kept wondering about life, the world, and myself. I began to have a new understanding, and my heart was constantly changing. I came to know that there is such a beautiful world. I agreed and accepted everything the Bible said, especially the words about sin. Then I quickly welcomed Jesus Christ as my Savior.
I didn't have much of a struggle with the existence of God at the time. Since I was a child, I believed in another world. I believed in a spiritual world. I myself have experienced some supernatural things. I could not explain them, and no one would believe them at that time. Later I even had doubts that what I experienced at that time was not true, and I just had some hallucinations. But I still believed that there was something beyond man, though I didn't know what it was. I still remember seeing the sunset once. There was a kind of inexplicable sadness. The kind of soul loss that cannot be told. I really wanted to know the world over the cloud. There is a vague yearning for eternity in me. Therefore, it was easy for me to accept the worldview that there is a god.
Later, I saw a paragraph written by C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters, which could explain the mood that I could not describe at that time. He said,
"The gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time'. All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered. Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet. Only you were left outside. He saw not only Them; he saw Him."
That's true. "Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:19-20) God has put in man the ability to know Him, and if you listen to the voice of your soul, you will see God. I thank God for guiding me to Him when I was young. I thank the Savior Jesus for taking off the burden of my soul, freeing my imprisoned heart, letting me see the light of life, and giving me hope in life. Therefore, the direction of my life has changed.
- Translated by Nicolas Cao
从2010年走入教会开始信仰，到现在不知不觉已经走过了十二年。其实我也深信，从我出生时起，甚至还在母腹里，就是那双看不见的手就在引导我，祂早已计划了我的人生，并且带领我一步一步靠近祂、认识祂。
2009年秋天，我生平第一次走出了我的家乡大西北的甘肃，来到上海读大学。那本该是我人生中充满希望的春天，却步入了令人失望的冬天。曾几何时，我对大学生活满是憧憬，我也曾怀是有崇高的理想的人，却一不小心也沦为了俗人。
大学以前我只知道努力学习，考上名牌大学，然后就可以改变自己我的命运，改善这个社会，做出点贡献，带着这样单纯的心。可是，理想跟现实差一步就差很远，进入大学之后，现实不断打碎了我之前对于人生的所有幻想。以前在学校，我的成绩常常名列前茅。我虽然我的自我意识很薄弱很自卑，因为从小到大我在班里都是个子最矮的，还有点胖，但是成绩还是能弥补一下其他方面的缺陷带来的痛苦。然而到了大学之后，连成绩在班里都成了靠后的。看到身边的同学一个比一个优秀，我一点自信都没有了，跌入了自卑的谷底，找不到存在感了。
再看自己的生活，早起也变成了很困难的事情。开始学着上网，在很多无意义的事情上耗费了大量的时间，那真正对自己有益的事情却总是拖着没有做，一天结束的时候只有就觉得无尽的虚空感。我很想多看点书，很想努力学习，想努力锻炼时身体，但是却不能自由地去做自己想做的事情。我越来越发现我自己根本掌控不了自己我的人生，对于自己有一种深深的无力感。我靠着自己的努力改变不了自己，我更无力改变社会。
而且有一种我也说不出来的沉重感，一直压着我。从我小的时候起，这种沉重感就一直在。不是因为我做了什么事情感到累，即便我什么都不做，还是感到累，那种感觉越来越强烈。我找不到出路，我陷入了迷茫，不知道人生的方向，不知道这样活着有什么意义。这不是我想要过的生活。，我过得不快乐，内心充满了焦虑、不安，读书、学习都不能给我的灵魂带来平安，不能解决我心里的问题。
大一第一学期结束之后，我都想要退学了，我不想再来上学了，带着沉重的心回家过寒假。很多次想跟父母说我想退学了，可是始终没有说出口，因为我身上背负了他们太多的期望，我怕他们承受不了。他们以为我考上了好大学应该很快乐，但是没有人知道我无处安放的心。在那种迷茫无助的情况下，我想到了神。虽然那时候我并不认识神，只是心里面想如果这个世界还有一种力量能改变我——那应该是神了。
可能冥冥之中都有神的预备。我上小学的时候我妈妈就信耶稣了，那时候我也跟着去过教会。虽然我什么都也听不懂，但是我喜欢听他们唱赞美诗，我喜欢去聚会，因为我感到在那里我有平安。上初中开始从上初中的时候我就没有去教会了，一方面学业忙，一方面我爸爸非常反对我们，找各种理由阻拦我们去教会。可就是懵懂无知的时候撒下的这小小的福音的种子，长大后开始在我心中萌芽。于是我翻开家里的《圣经》去看，但是翻了几页发现我读不懂，有点气馁，心里面很不安。
眼看着要开学了，我带着疲惫的心回到学校，唯一的盼望是希望来了上海之后找到教会，要不然我不知道怎么走下去。大概是开学第一周，有一天上完课回来的路上，我就问了一个同学知不知道哪里有教会。然后很奇妙地她说她知道一个教会，告诉我周日可以跟着另外一个同学去。于是那个周日我联系了班里那个同学，他带我去做礼拜。就这样我来到了一间小教会的团契。
那个主日结束之后，当时负责这个团契一个姐妹留了我的联系方式。后来她就联系我在学校学习圣经，大概一个星期可以学习三四次。第一次圣经学习我记忆犹新，那次学习了马太福音11章28-30节的经文，题目是《安息》。当时听完之后我觉得那是一次灵魂的洗礼，有一个新的世界开始为我打开，那也是主向着我的温柔的呼唤，祂呼召我来到祂这里得安息。我第一次感到这个世界怎么有如此能触动我心灵的话语，洞悉我灵魂的一切。我终于开始明白，那从我记事起就压着我的沉重的包袱是什么，是罪的重担啊。原来我一直想要挣脱的是罪，是罪让我感到痛苦，罪让我、和焦虑和不安。而这沉重的罪的重担，直到遇见主的那一刻，才开始脱落，尽管当时我还不太明白神怎样在我心中工作。“凡劳苦担重担的人，可以到我这里来，我就使你们得安息。”这句经文一直留在我的记忆里，神的话语抓住了我，我的灵魂终于找到了归宿。
在学习圣经的过程中，我心里面的疑问不断不解开，关于人生、关于世界、关于我自己，我开始有了新的认识，我的心不断被改变，原来还有这样一个世界。对于圣经所讲的，我当时都认同并且接受，特别是对于罪很有感触。所以我很快迎接了耶稣基督为我的救主。
当时我对于神存在不存在这个问题并没有太多的挣扎。从小时候起我觉得自己就是相信有另外一个世界存在的，我相信有灵的世界。我自己也经历过一些灵异的事情，虽然无法解释，当时大人也不会相信，于是后来自己都怀疑当时经历的是不是真的，还是幻觉。可是我始终相信有超越人的一个存在，虽然我不知道那是什么。我还记得有一次看到日落，有一种莫名的伤感，那种说不出的灵魂的失落，好想知道天那边的世界，有一种模糊的对于永恒的向往。所以我很容易接受这个世界有一位神的世界观。
后来看到C.S路易斯在《魔鬼家书》里面写到的一段话，能够解释当时自己所不能描述的心境。他说：
“对于一个凡人的眼睛来说，诸灵是陌生的，可它们并不是第一次和他打交道。在那一刻到来之前，他对它们看起来会是什么样子一点概念也没有，有时候甚至怀疑它们的存在。但当他看到它们的时候，他就知道自己一直以来都和它们相熟，同时还意识到每一个灵都曾经在他的生命中很多时刻翩然降临过，而当时他还以为自己是孤单一人呢，所以现在他可以一个一个地对它们说“原来是你啊”，而不会问“你是谁”？在这次会面中，它们和它们所说的一切都是在唤醒记忆。自婴幼儿时代起，他在孤单一人的时候，就隐隐约约感觉到周围有朋友存在，这种感觉一直萦绕于怀，现在，他终于明白是怎么一回事了；那心灵最深处的音乐，散落在每一个纯真的体验中，似曾相识，却一直无法忆起，而今终于寻回。他认出了它们，因此，在尸体四肢还未完全僵直之前，他就已经对它们的陪伴感到自在起来。只有你孤零零地在外面受冷落。他不仅看到了它们；他也看到了祂。”
是的，“ 神的事情，人所能知道的，原显明在人心里，因为 神已经给他们显明。自从造天地以来， 神的永能和神性是明明可知的，虽是眼不能见，但藉着所造之物就可以晓得，叫人无可推诿。”（罗马书1:19-20）神把可以认识神的心放在了人里面，你若倾听你灵魂的声音，就你可以看见神。我很感谢神，在我年轻的时候引导我归向祂。感谢救主耶稣脱去了我灵魂的重担，使我被囚禁的心灵得到了自由，让我看到生命的亮光，给我人生的盼望，我的人生方向也因此改变了。
信仰见证：大学时信主 罪的重担脱落 自此人生有了方向
Editor's note: A college student found Jesus when she felt heavy and meaningless in pursuit of grades. Spending much time on many unnecessary things, she was helpless to do the right thing. Intending to drop out of school, she encountered the Lord in a campus fellowship and eventually
It has been 12 years since I began to follow Jesus in 2010. In fact, I believe that from the moment I was born, even when I was in my mother's womb, those invisible hands have been guiding me. He had planned my life and had led me step by step to get closer to Him and know Him.
In the fall of 2009, I left Gansu, my hometown in the far northwest of China, for the first time in my life, and came to Shanghai to attend college. What should have been the spring of hope in my life turned into a winter of disappointment. When I was in high school, I was full of longing for university life. I was once a person with lofty ideals, but by chance, I became a brainless dullard.Before college, I only knew that I should study hard and be admitted to a famous university, and then I could change my fate, and make the world a more beautiful place. It was as simple as that. However, the ideal is far away from reality. After I entered university, reality constantly broke all my illusions about life. At school, I used to get the best grades. Although I was always diffident because I was the shortest in the class since childhood, and a little fat, the results could still make up for the pain caused by defects in other aspects. However, in the university, even my grades became the lowest in the class. Looking at my brilliant classmates, I had no confidence, fell to the bottom of the inferiority complex, and could not find a sense of existence.
I lived a miserable life. Waking up early had become very difficult. I spend much time on meaningless things, and I always put off doing the things that were really good for me. At the end of the day, I just felt endless emptiness. I wanted to read more books, I wanted to study hard, and I wanted to exercise regularly, but I was not free to do what I wanted to do. Gradually, I realized that I had no control over my life, and I felt a deep sense of powerlessness about myself. I could not change myself through my own efforts, I was also unable to change society.
There was also a kind of heaviness that I couldn't put my finger on. This feeling of heaviness had been with me ever since I was a child. It was not because I did something that I felt tired. Even if I did nothing, I still felt tired, and that feeling was getting stronger and stronger. I couldn't find a way out. I was lost. I didn't know where my life was going and what was the point of living like this. This was not the life I wanted to live. I was not happy, and my heart was full of anxiety and uneasiness. Reading or learning could not bring peace to my soul or solve the problem in my heart.
After the first semester of my freshman year, I wanted to quit school. I didn't want to go to school anymore. I went home for the winter vacation with a heavy heart. Many times, I planned to tell my parents that I wanted to quit school, but I never said it out loud, because I was burdened with too many expectations from them to let them down. They thought I should be very happy for being admitted to a good university, but no one knew I was actually helpless. In that confused and helpless situation, I thought of God. Though I didn't know God at that time, I just thought to myself that if there was a power in the world that could change me, it would be God.
Maybe there was a divine plan. My mother believed in Jesus when I was in elementary school, and I went to church with her at that time. Even though I didn't understand anything, I liked to listen to their hymns and to go to gatherings because I felt peaceful there. I didn't go to church since I was in junior high school. On the one hand, I was busy with my studies, and on the other hand, my father was very opposed to us going to church and tried to stop us by various means. But it was this little seed of the Gospel that was sown when I was ignorant, and it began to sprout in my heart when I grew up. Thus I opened the Bible in my family, but I realized I couldn't understand it after I turned a few pages. I became a little discouraged and uneasy.
At the beginning of the new term, I returned to school with a tired heart. The only hope for me was to find the church after I went to Shanghai, otherwise, I didn't know how to continue my life. It was about the first week of school, on my way back to the dormitory after class one day, I asked a classmate if she knew where there was a church. Then amazingly she said she knew a church and told me I could go with another classmate on Sunday. So that Sunday I contacted the classmate, and he took me to church. That's how I came to a fellowship in a small church.
On that Sunday, one of the sisters who was in charge of the fellowship got my phone number. Then she contacted me and invited me to study the Bible at school, maybe three or four times a week. I still remember my first class of Bible study. It was about Matthew 11:28-30, entitled “Rest in Peace”. After I attended that, I thought it was a baptism of the soul, a new world was opening up for me, and it was the Lord's gentle call to me, calling me to come to rest in Him. For the first time, I felt how the world could have such words that touched my heart and revealed everything about my soul. I was finally beginning to understand what that heavy burden was that had been weighing me down for as long as I could remember. It was the burden of sin. It was sin that I had been trying to get rid of. It was sin that made me miserable. It was sin that made me anxious and upset. And the heavy burden of sin did not begin to come off until the moment I met the Lord, even though I did not quite understand how God worked in my heart. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." That verse was stuck in my memory. God's word took hold of me, and my soul finally found its home.
In the process of studying the Bible, I kept wondering about life, the world, and myself. I began to have a new understanding, and my heart was constantly changing. I came to know that there is such a beautiful world. I agreed and accepted everything the Bible said, especially the words about sin. Then I quickly welcomed Jesus Christ as my Savior.
I didn't have much of a struggle with the existence of God at the time. Since I was a child, I believed in another world. I believed in a spiritual world. I myself have experienced some supernatural things. I could not explain them, and no one would believe them at that time. Later I even had doubts that what I experienced at that time was not true, and I just had some hallucinations. But I still believed that there was something beyond man, though I didn't know what it was. I still remember seeing the sunset once. There was a kind of inexplicable sadness. The kind of soul loss that cannot be told. I really wanted to know the world over the cloud. There is a vague yearning for eternity in me. Therefore, it was easy for me to accept the worldview that there is a god.
Later, I saw a paragraph written by C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters, which could explain the mood that I could not describe at that time. He said,
"The gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time'. All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered. Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet. Only you were left outside. He saw not only Them; he saw Him."
That's true. "Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:19-20) God has put in man the ability to know Him, and if you listen to the voice of your soul, you will see God. I thank God for guiding me to Him when I was young. I thank the Savior Jesus for taking off the burden of my soul, freeing my imprisoned heart, letting me see the light of life, and giving me hope in life. Therefore, the direction of my life has changed.
- Translated by Nicolas Cao
Testimony: My Burden of Sin Lifted After Following Jesus in College
