Learning To Fully Live For Christ – Aaron Loh & Joanna Jong

 

Aaron Loh and Joanna Jong have been together for three years now. They recently sat down with me and shared about how the Lord has worked in their lives—individually and together, as they get to know each other better and trust God to guide them with their future.

Aaron grew up in a non-Christian home and did not know anything about God or Jesus until he was in secondary school. “God sent several angels into my life,” he said, noting that the people who introduced him to Christ were not exactly the closest people to him.

One year for his birthday, a friend gave him a Bible. “I had no idea why. Like… why are you giving me a Bible?” So he kept it at home, and would occasionally flip through it. “But I didn’t understand a word at that time,” Aaron said. Today, he is still using that same Bible.

The next year, another friend gave him a Christian music CD album for his birthday. “I started listening to it and enjoyed the songs, but I didn’t understand the meaning. I just listened for the rhythm of it.” So he was exposed to the Bible and to Christian music, but what actually got him to really know God was following his friends to church.

Since he was part of the Boys’ Brigade, many of his friends went to church and invited him to go with them. “So, okaylah. Why not? Just for the fun of it.” He went along. Then came a time when his friend was supposed to go for a church camp but had to unexpectedly pull out at the last moment. Aaron took his friend’s place, and ended up going to church camp.

 

 

“Throughout the camp, there was a peaceful feeling… a peaceful ambiance surrounding me,” Aaron said. “I could feel the presence of God.” The pastor gave the invitation to pray and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, and Aaron took that step of faith. “I went along with the prayer and actually meant it in my heart. Whatever the pastor was praying, I was praying the exact same thing.”

Aaron’s family was not very receptive of his newfound faith in God at first. They would ask him why he wanted to go to church, assuming that all the stereotypes about Christians wanting to brainwash people are true.

“It was tough,” Aaron said. “Youth service was on Saturday night, and instead of enjoying the weekend with my friends, I was secretly dressing up properly so I could sneak off to church.” As difficult as it was, Aaron sacrificed having fun with his friends so that he could attend youth services. “My desire to know God was so strong at that time. I actually strove to meet God and know more about Him.”

As it is with most of us in our journey with God, however, Aaron has been through many ups and downs since then. When college came around, he decided to take a break from God. “You know la, it was the usual teenage angst,” he said. “It’s like everything is so wrong; maybe there is no God.”

It was around this time that he met Joanna. Having grown up in a Christian family in Sarawak, Joanna’s experiences with God were quite different from Aaron’s. “Everything is ready for you,” she said. “You’re baptized before you even really know God, you go to church and to Sunday School—I was the normal Christian girl who just followed everything my family did. Mom just said, ‘You have to love God.’”

 

 

So she went to church every Sunday. “But it’s like I didn’t really know God. I didn’t really know: Why do I need to love God? Why do I love God?” It wasn’t until she was in Form 5 that she really came to know Jesus personally.

“In my family, your studies come first,” Joanna said. She did well for her UPSR and PMR, but when she got to Form 4, she started failing at many of her subjects. “I mixed with the wrong group of people,” she said. “They didn’t study, and just wanted to hang out all the time.”

It got to a point halfway through her Form 5 year where her results were so bad that her mother succumbed to giving her the silent treatment. “I am very scared of cold wars,” Joanna said. And for two to three weeks, her mother didn’t speak to her after telling her that if she chose not to study, she could just do nothing with her life after her SPM.

“I cried a lot la, of course,” Joanna said, “but that made me realize I had to change, and the first thing I did was to leave my group of friends.” It was a difficult time for her. She had lost her friends, and they laughed at her for studying. “That was the time that I got really close to God, because I didn’t have anything left.”

For the second half of that year, Joanna studied hard and brought her grades from failing to A’s. “I was really close to God and really felt that He was there for me. It was like it suddenly clicked.”

During that half-year, Joanna also got to know her classmates better, and while waiting for their results, they took a trip to Ba’ kelalan, Sarawak where Joanna encountered God and fully surrendered her life to Him. “It’s so beautiful there—it’s like you’re not in Malaysia,” Joanna said. Made up of a community that is entirely Christian, the lifestyle there is quite different.

 

 

“By 5 am, they are up to pray in the church. We got to be really close to each other, and one night, as they were praying for us, I kept crying and couldn’t stop. I knew God was really with me. I think I just really needed a knock on the head,” Joanna said.

Joanna soon left Sarawak and moved to KL for her studies where she met Aaron. At that time, Aaron was on his “break” with God, and Joanna’s mother was naturally worried. However, God used Joanna and a lecturer at the university to bring Aaron back to Him.

During their foundation year, Aaron’s psychology lecturer started a prayer meeting for the students. Together, Joanna and Aaron decided to attend those prayer meetings and Aaron rediscovered his faith in God. “So maybe it was a good thing,” Aaron said. “Maybe without meeting one another, we wouldn’t have wanted to go to that prayer meeting.”

At that time, Joanna was attending a church that was some distance away, and when the lecturer found out that they were looking for a church, he invited them to his church, which is close to their university.

“Every church we went to didn’t feel like home,” Aaron said. “We always felt like we were visitors.” “We didn’t feel connected,” Joanna said, adding that she felt quite lost at that time. Thankfully, this new church was different, and Aaron and Joanna continue to go there today. “After a few months of attending, we had that feeling that we want to go back. It actually feels like home.”

Since they met, Aaron and Joanna continue to discover God in various ways. One thing they have in common is their desire to see Aaron’s family come to know Christ. “When I got together with him, I began to see God from other people’s perspective,” Joanna said. “I’d always been surrounded by Christians, but for him, it’s like he’s an outsider.

 

 

Through a new lens, Joanna is glad she gets to understand things better. Over the years, they have both been praying for Aaron’s family—that they would accept his acceptance of Christ, and that they would one day accept Christ themselves.

“They have started to accept it because they realize it’s more of a personal decision than about being brainwashed,” Aaron said. “I think they could also see the changes in me. I used to be quite rebellious, but since knowing God, I have more respect towards them.”

The most shocking thing that happened for Aaron was when his mother asked him about Christ. “I was so shocked that I walked out of the room and immediately contacted Joanna: ‘Joanna! My mom just asked me about Christ! What should I say? Where do I start?’”

Then a few months ago, Aaron’s mom asked both Aaron and Joanna about Jesus, this time in more detail. It would seem that more and more of her friends and relatives are becoming Christians, and she wanted to know more.

“For the first time in my life, I felt so excited to share about Christ!” Aaron said. Joanna also felt the same way. “I was shivering—so scared I’ll say the wrong thing or give the wrong info.” “After all, this would be her first impression, right?” Aaron added.

 

 

This semester, Aaron is taking a class on the philosophy of life and death. “I would honestly say that it has strengthened my faith. By studying philosophy, of course you won’t know everything, but you know more. You see things from different perspectives, yet you still believe in God.

“It shows that you’re still choosing God even though you know other alternatives out there—even though people actually show arguments that God doesn’t exist. It’s like, ‘Wahh, I’m actually still sticking by my faith ar! I’m not thinking like oh no, he or she is right!

“One of the struggles I am facing presently is that we get too comfortable with Christ,” Aaron reflected. “I feel like the desire in me is slowly fading away. I tend to think that yeah, God’s there, God’s with me. I speak to Him, but I feel that it’s not fair on my part that I’m not doing enough to reach out to Him.

“I don’t think we can ever repay Him, you know, ever. I mean, for the amount of things He has done for us, but I realize I need to do my part: Read the Bible, Be a man of God, be a living testimony, be an example of a person who has God in His life.”

“I think God still wants me to learn a lot.” Joanna said. “It’s not just about loving God. I have to love God and the people around me. Which is hard. Some people are just not so… cute. Being a follower of Christ is not just about my relationship between me and God, but about my relationships with everyone else.

“I want to reach out to people groups and go to places to teach kids to know Christ from young. I really adore God a lot. When I look at creation, the leaves and the flowers… it’s like. God is so talented! If He was a real person, I would marry Him,” Joanna declared, to which Aaron responded that he is up against some tough competition!

 

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Esperanza Ng