ALL GOOD THINGS COME FROM GOD

Ana Weng — Buenos Aires, Argentina

IT STARTED WITH A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

It never occurred to me that I would still have so much to learn about the Lord Jesus and about the truth behind salvation, since I’ve been a Christian my whole life.

After my mom married my father, he brought her family the truth about the Sabbath day, as he belongs to the SeventhDayAdventistChurch. Everyone thought the truth behind Sabbath was good and they all believed.

After a few years and while I was a young girl, I happened to read a newspaper article that claimed they had the truth. So I went to my grandmother and said, “Grandma, this newspaper article says there is a church that’s truer than yours, and it’s called the True Jesus Church.”

She turned up her ears and was very curious about what the article had to say. After I had read her the article, she decided to go to the church to find out more. After learning that this church observed the Sabbath and had the Holy Spirit, she decided to bring her family to attend service.

My uncle and aunt were the first to follow my grandmother to the True Jesus Church, but they couldn’t accept that the church preached they are the way to salvation. Then my grandma brought me along.

At first I was skeptical about the church. When it came time for prayer, I felt uncomfortable after they asked me to go to the front to kneel with the others.

I went home and told my mom about the strange prayers at this church, and she was the last person in the family to go to this church. Incidentally, my mom’s visit coincided with the church’s spiritual convocation. During those few days of special services, God opened her heart and when she heard the truth, she was convinced that this was the true church.

She was baptized and also received the Holy Spirit. At that time, I was still unsure and continued to attend service and to study the truth with them.

It Lead to the Best Gift

After a period of time, God moved me to realize that having the Holy Spirit is directly related to our salvation, so I began to pray diligently to receive it. Half a year passed and another spiritual convocation was coming up, and I continued to pray earnestly for the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the convocation, the pastor also reminded the members to pray for a sister who had scoliosis, which is an abnormal curving of the spine. Her condition was very serious and she had to go overseas for surgery. So I put aside my pursuit of the Holy Spirit and started to pray for her.

But I felt weak and without strength in my prayers, so I asked God to please give me His strength so that I could pray. When I prayed with this request, I felt the floor beneath me begin to shake. After the prayer, I talked with the pastor’s daughter and told her what had happened.

She turned to the book of Acts in the Bible, where it recorded the same phenomenon when the apostles were praying during the Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit came down and filled them. After hearing this, my faith in God was strengthened. I was baptized during that spiritual convocation, although I did not receive the Holy Spirit.

After the convocation, I would pray in the morning, during lunch time, and even in the evening. My mom noticed that I was constantly going upstairs to my room and she asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was praying for the Holy Spirit, and she said, “Let’s pray together.”

We knelt down side by side, and she prayed to the Lord and asked Him:

            God, when she was born I gave this child everything. The Bible says that if parents would give the very best to their children, wouldn’t the father in heaven give the Holy Spirit and everything good for His children? This daughter of mine is newly baptized into You and now belongs to You. Please give her Your best.

Before she was done praying this, I received the Holy Spirit! From that moment on, I felt so joyful and I would love to pray, and I would sing hymns as I walked along the road. I developed a great love of Bible reading and would even read the Scriptures on the bus. I truly felt the love and joy of the Lord, and there was no more doubt that I have come into the house of God.

THE PRESSURES OF MEDICALSCHOOL

I was also preparing to enter college around that time. Most of my relatives are physicians, so naturally they encouraged me to go to medical school. I didn’t have that much interest in medicine but I didn’t know what else to study, so I decided to follow in their footsteps.

In Argentina, the first year of college is actually a preliminary year of general courses. Thankfully, the Lord helped me pass that year quite easily. The second year was when things got tough, where class sizes were reduced significantly, and many students failed or dropped out.

The professors gave us a huge list of expensive textbooks to buy, and each one was very thick. When I saw the stack of books sitting in my room, I became discouraged and had thoughts to study something else instead.

But I decided to entrust everything to God and prayed that if this was His will, He would help me pass the exams. If He would help me, I decided that I would work for the Lord. And if He didn’t think that medical school was suitable for me, I prayed that He would not let me pass the exams and would open a new road for me.

I was very close to God at that point in my life because I had just received the Holy Spirit, and I put God as my first priority and school a comfortable second. I was praying and reading the Bible frequently and I enjoyed the blessing of keeping the Sabbath.

When I couldn’t grasp certain concepts in class or during my studies, I would kneel down and pray and God would literally turn on a light bulb in my mind to help me understand. So even though those were stressful and tiring times, I was very joyful and thankful in the Lord because He was with me.

I was very nervous as the first round of exams encroached in sophomore year, and I was very thankful when I found out that I came in first place in my class. Everyone was wondering, “Who was this girl who placed first?” I was delighted to tell them that I prayed my way through the exams.

After my classmates heard my testimony and saw how well I was doing at school, they went to their church to pray, too. This opened a channel for me to preach and I was very joyful I could testify to them.

Forgetting My Priority

Slowly, though, my prayers became weaker as I put more emphasis on my studies rather than on my relationship with God. Medical school became increasingly demanding over the years, and I wanted so much to maintain a high standing in the class. I began to shift focus from daily Bible reading and prayer to allow myself more time for school.

After a period of time, I even started to fall asleep after a short “Hallelujah.” I began to feel the burden of going to church every week, and when I read the Bible I would find the shortest chapters to read. When exams fell on Mondays, I would struggle whether I should go to church over the weekend, since all my friends would be studying at home and making good use of Saturday and Sunday to get ahead.

When the preacher’s sermon went overtime, I would constantly look at my watch and agonize over when he would finish. I was very aware that my faith was going downhill; at some point, I even wondered if God was still with me.

By the fifth year of medical school, I was depending completely on myself to study, though in theory I still remembered that our strength comes from the Lord.

That year, I had to take a microbiology course and it was one of the toughest hurdle in our curriculum. Many students had to retake it more than once. I think I was probably a little out of my mind by then. Even though I knew that it was such a difficult class to pass, I was very determined to pass the class the first time through with a high grade. I demanded more and more of myself and gave myself a lot of pressure to perform well.

One time, while I was studying, I suddenly couldn’t breathe and my heart was beating very fast. I felt as if I was going to die. I went to the school clinic the next day, and the doctors told me to take some time to relax and to schedule an appointment with the psychologist, which I did.

I was skeptical about psychology but I went anyway since it is quite a common thing in this day and age. I saw a couple of psychologists but I felt that those sessions did not benefit me at all. So I went to see a psychiatrist, who prescribed medicine that made me throw up. Needless to say, that was a terrible time in my life.

One night, I couldn’t sleep so I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then I opened my Bible and my eyes fell on a passage in the book of Psalm, which reads:

            It is vain for you to rise up early,
To sit up late,
To eat the bread of sorrows;
For so He gives His beloved sleep. (Ps 127:2)

It comforted me to know that God grants sleep to those whom He loves and who are close to Him, and it made me realize how ungodly I had become. I got up to pray that night and the Holy Spirit filled me, and I was able to go to bed afterwards.

PUTTING THINGS BACK INTO PERSPECTIVE

When our resident pastor heard about my problems, he paid me a visit and admonished me to shift my focus back to God, as all things in our life has God’s good will in it. So I quieted down and reflected on my relationship with God, and I marveled at how far I have distanced myself from Him. I also remembered the old promises I made with God to serve Him, and I felt very ashamed and humbled.

Then I realized that our weaknesses are not a sudden change of character but a slow and subtle downhill demise. This is also why we need to renew ourselves in the Lord and build on that relationship day by day. We simply cannot overlook the importance of daily spiritual cultivation because by the time we identify with the symptoms, we’re already too far from Him.

I decided to take a semester off from school, and I spent that time praying and reading the Bible. I asked the Lord to open a path for me and to have mercy on me, and these were the two deepest impressions I learned in that time—God’s mercy and His loving good will.

One night, while I was praying at home, I asked God to teach me what to do. I was wondering if perhaps God doesn’t want me to continue with my studies anymore, but in my prayer I was comforted by God’s answer that His grace is sufficient and His strength is made perfect in those who are weak. God’s answer was full of compassion and love. Realizing this, I set the determination that no matter what I do from then on, I would rely on Him and not on myself.

After a while, I got better and was able to smoothly transition back to school and the pressures of exams. I had only three weeks to prepare for the final exam of that dreaded microbiology class (most people take two months to study for it). In those three weeks, I prayed diligently every time before studying.

Since I didn’t have much time to study, I went into the exam with God in my heart. To my surprise, I received the highest grade in the class. Everyone was flabbergasted at how I could do this because I only had three weeks to study so much material. But I knew very clearly that it was God who gave this to me.

Through this experience, I understand that what God requires of us is to put Him first in our lives and to love Him—to know to rely on Him and acknowledge that it is through Him that we are able to do anything.

I have since graduated from medical school and I’m doing my residency in Buenos Aires right now. Though the academic period of my studies are over, the lessons I’ve learned about life and what is important in life are priceless. Indeed, all good things do come from God. For me, it began with a small little newspaper article.

May all glory and praise be unto our heavenly Father. Amen.