“One day, while I was meditating on the Lord Jesus I was given a mental image of an ‘Abandoned Pier’. There I was standing at this useless, dilapidated and forsaken pier, waiting alone for the next ferry to dock, fantasizing that the ferry would take me where I want to go…”
– Timothy Tsun (jnX member in US)
Back in 2015, I lived my Christian life day by day. I was living aimlessly with no goals and no plans for the future. My rocky situation at work was often my excuse to avoid facing the fact that I had no answer for my future. In other words, I was living in passivity.
My mother passed away when I was nineteen. Since then, I seemed to have lost my goal and direction in life. Because my mom showered me with superlative care, I felt I was living under her shadow and her plans for me; and I didn’t even need to think for myself how to live my life. I relied on her so much that my life has become stagnant. I was afraid when I tried to move forward; I feared that unpredictable catastrophes would happen; and I just didn’t know how to face and to cope with the future.
Eventually a friend recommended me to join a therapy program. The coursework consisted of self-knowledge, self-discovery, and self-analysis. During those three years that I was in the program, I had to keep revisiting my past pain, my past mistakes, even some of the shameful things in my past. During this time, I kept using the therapy program to save myself. As a result, I regularly felt helpless and ashamed and I seemed to have lost the hope found in the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the portrait of the darkest time in my life
Three years passed by. One day, while I was meditating on the Lord Jesus I was given a mental image of an “Abandoned Pier”. There I was standing at this useless, dilapidated and forsaken pier, waiting alone for the next ferry to dock, fantasizing that the ferry would take me where I want to go
The Lord Jesus used this mental image to help me realize that the never-ending scrutiny of my past mistakes and hurt is a waste of time and energy, and an exercise in futility because I cannot correct my past mistakes, nor can I count on changing my present circumstances.
It would be an endless, mournful pursuit of vanity.
During that time, I seemed to have forgotten that the Lord Jesus has already saved me. He has already rescued me from darkness. I need not waste time and energy to scrutinize my past. Instead, as I rely more and more on God, He is able to take away my inner anxiety and my fear of the future so “I can face tomorrow”. I want to seek God, be constantly renewed and to have the hope to live every day – that would be what God truly wants for me.
Philippians 3:13-14 (NET)
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead,
14 with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
– Timothy Tsun (jnX member in US)
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