Date: April 25, 2023
Transcript taken from this video:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrclhlIgH4J/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MWxtZ3Jkbmk1cGs0Mg==
Hey! My name is Yu Cheng, and I’m a final year, final semester student in Monash.
I decided to be a partner of RUF around 2-3 years ago because I believe in the cause that they are fighting for which is doing what really matters. Now, a bit about my past: I come from a non-Christian family. I was exposed to Christianity when I was around 13 years old and I had been attending church for 6 years before I went to college. So I was exposed to Christianity back then, but the Christianity I was taught, that I was used to, I would say that a lot of it was me believing what I wanted to believe, what the pastor was teaching – but a lot of it, now looking back, was actually just half truths, and fairy tales.
And that’s why i actually got skeptical of Christianity as I was entering my college and uni years. As I was in university, since I was thinking of leaving Christianity, I had nothing to fall back on. So I was just like a clueless, aimless kid, aimless 19 year old who was in university but didn’t know what to expect. I could only fall back to the empty promises of the world, which is, you know, ‘believe in yourself’ and ‘invest yourself in career development, self actualization, experience life, go overseas’ and all that. But deep down, I’ve always known that at the end of the day, I would just be working towards a temporary happiness, perhaps a decade or two of financial freedom, that’s about it. Then I would just be lying on my deathbed one day. And yea… So that caused me to rethink life again. And in my first year in university, that’s why I decided to give Christianity a second shot by joining the Christian Fellowship there.
That’s where a friend of mine started reading the Bible with me. That friend of mine was an RUF Partner, and I started to read the Bible with him. For the first time in my life, I was actually reading the Bible for what it is, instead of what I want it to say. And for the first time in my life, I could really see reality as it is from God’s perspective.
And it’s this friend of mine, along with other leaders in the Christian Fellowship, who were the only people who were willing and loving enough and unafraid to tell me the truth, that all this while I wasn’t a Christian to begin with. Because I had no idea what Christianity was from the start. And I wasn’t actually worshipping God from the start, I was just worshipping my own idea of God. So no wonder it all just looks so inconsistent.
And that’s where I also decided to give my life to campus ministry, not just in the three years of university, but I also decided there and then to commit myself to full time paid ministry, aspiring to be a pastor in the future.
And from then on, that is how RUF has actually influenced me, how it has affected my life. It forces me to confront the truth, it forces me to see things as it is.
So that’s why i again want to commit my time, commit my life, to full time paid ministry in order to help people to reconsider Christianity, reconsider life in general, and reconsider this question of: who is Jesus Christ. Because it is a question of great significance, it is a matter of eternal relevance.
And that’s why i hope for people, especially students on campus, to further think about these things. And yea, I pray for all of you watching this, to be ablaze to see a hint of why RUF now says that they are doing what really matters.