Joe's Testimony

Testimony of Joseph Lin
Pittsburgh Chinese Church
March 27, 2005

Even though I am terrified to be up here (I’m a radiologist, I hide in dark corners), I’m happy to be sharing my testimony with you.

I grew up in a very loving and supportive family but I didn’t grow up in the church. My first experience with church was when I was in junior high school and I played for the Pittsburgh Young People’s Orchestra. Our conductor was a nun named Sister Sarafina. One Christmas, the whole orchestra had to play in a Catholic Christmas mass service. I remember candles being lit and people singing the same song over and over again, so much so that it felt like chanting. The service lasted at least two hours. Needless to say, for a teenage kid who wasn’t used to going to church, that was not the most memorable or positive experience!

Then, we skip toward the end of college when I had my second experience with church. A good friend of mine started becoming very interested in Christianity, often hosting small fellowship groups in his dorm room and regularly attending church service on Sundays. Several other friends and I, all non-Christians, saw this as odd why he was suddenly so interested. We decided to see for ourselves what all the fuss was about. One Sunday, we attended service at his Chinese Christian church in San Francisco. It wasn’t all that bad but my lasting memories were of the worship time when many people could be seen swaying or rocking with hands in the air overcome with so much emotion that tears were streaming down their faces. This included teenagers, middle-aged men, and elderly ladies alike. I remember thinking “thanks, but no thanks!”.

Then life goes on… I didn’t give Christianity much serious thought, until I was faced with my third experience with church. This time it involved my extended family. By this time, I am partway through medical school. Playing matchmaker, my Uncle Christian and Aunt Sharon convinced me to go to church under the guise of introducing me to a good wholesome girl. They took me to a church in New Jersey when I remember attending service on Sunday and bible class afterwards. Most things sort of went in one ear and out the other… After all, I was there for cute girls. Curiously, no girls surfaced that day (this is the part where Karen breathes a sigh of relief), but I remember dinner that night with my family when my uncle, who had become a strong Christian, grilled me with some hardnosed questions like “have I ever thought about what would happen to me after I die?”, “have I ever given thought about Jesus Christ as my savior, or what Jesus has done on the Cross?”. The overall tone was very serious. There were some serious questions stirring in me, but again, I remember thinking “Thanks, but no thanks!”

So some of those brief discrete earlier experiences led me to ponder Christianity, but it was the process of my relationship with Karen, my fiancée, and her family that truly opened my heart to Christ. Then, I knew that events in my life were not being played out by happenstance but part of God’s greater plan.

This story also involves matchmatching. At this point, I am still in medical school. Karen’s family and my family were plotting something sinister. Karen and I both grew up near Pittsburgh and we sort of always knew of each other although we did not have much contact over the years. Little did we know that our two families had such a long history. In fact, all four of our parents worked in the same hospital in Taiwan before we were both born.

Anyways, sometime in 2000, I remember my mom asking, “What do you think of Karen Lan? She’s kind of a nice girl…” At the time, I thought Karen was still in junior high (any of you who knows Karen knows she looks young for her age, which I will not reveal here), her whole family is “religious” and she’s got this weirdo father. One, two, and three strikes. Thanks but no thanks. But somehow both Karen and I agreed to attend “the fateful dinner” in the spring 2000 where our families got together to have dinner, just to see what would happen. Well, without going into details, it was not love at first sight, but one thing that struck both of us, that we would later admit, was that our families meshed so easily like they were already part of one family. Since this is my testimony and not the dating story, I will make a long story short and tell you that it took several forced meetings before Karen and I starting e-mailing and talking on the phone (Fall 2000). At this point, I was still in Cleveland in my last year of medical school and Karen was in Philadelphia studying music therapy.

Karen is a strong Christian and every time I visited her in Philadelphia, she insisted on taking me to Friday night fellowship at Chinese Christian Church & Center in Philadelphia and then church service the following Sunday. I didn’t resist this time, I think initially because I had the ulterior motive of wanting to spend more time with this girl who I now found to be intriguing. Karen at this point wasn’t convinced I was exactly boyfriend material and kept taking me to church functions with somewhat of an ulterior motive that I would get freaked out by church and not pay her any more attention. I have to admit that my first few experiences with Friday night fellowship weren’t exactly positive. My idea of a good time on Fridays was going out to watch movies, playing games, or hanging out with friends. Who spends their entire Friday night studying the Bible?!

Oddly though, as I began going to more Friday night fellowships and attending more church services, I started getting to know more Christians and started to feel that I had more in common with these people than I thought. So many people at the church in Philadelphia had similar values as me. At this time in my life, I think it was also important that so many brothers and sisters at this church were similar in age to me and many people were also in the medical profession. I could really relate to these people.
I also remember times listening to my future father-in-law’s long circuitous stories, many of which had to do with his views of the Bible and Christianity. Things were starting to make more sense.

I began to ponder those questions my uncle posed to me. I started having more conversations especially with Karen about the meaning of the holy trinity, Christ being crucified on the cross, and what being a Christian is all about. Karen presented me with my own Bible on April 5, 2001. I began to learn how to pray. It felt funny at first, but as Karen always told me “it’s having a conversation with God.”

So from the fall of 2000 until the summer of 2002, my experience with church was still sporadic. I was still in Cleveland and Karen was still in Philadelphia. In Cleveland, I was still not a regular churchgoer. I would occasionally read my Bible and pray, and would go to church whenever I was in Philadelphia. But I was starting to develop my relationship with God.

Before I accepted Christ, I had been going through many difficult stresses in my life. Without going into detail, I felt that I was really being broken down and being faced with challenges that I viewed as impossible. I didn’t feel like I could do this alone. But at the same time, I had so much support around me in my family, Karen and her family, and my friends. I could see events in my life were falling into place. God was really making his presence felt, and that couldn’t be coincidence. In a tearful phone conversation with Karen, I accepted Christ as my savior on January 13, 2002 at 8:30 PM.

Since then, Karen and I have been fortunate to be able to spend an entire year in the same city as I did a year of fellowship in radiology in Philadelphia. I started regularly attending those Friday night fellowships and Sunday services at CCC&C. I continued to work on my relationship with Christ. I could see the power of praying for others and others praying for me. I was learning to lift up my burdens to the Lord and not leaning on my own understanding.

These things have continued now that Karen and I have found a home in PCC. God continues to surround me with His presence in this church with Pastor Jim, Gordon, and many of this congregation. I have brothers and sisters who hold me accountable in the Crossroads group and a new discipler in Ray Chin. So I still have a long ways to go, but with this baptism, I want everyone to know, “this is for real y’all!”

So the guy who kept saying “Thanks, but no thanks” just can’t stop saying “Thanks”. Thanks to God.