My Testimony

My name is Ashleigh. Being born in a Christian home, I’ve grown up not being a stranger to church. I’ve attended Sunday School, learning lessons from the Bible and being taught to pray. But this did not mean that I knew who God was, or that God knew me other than someone who read His word and learnt what was deemed ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. In fact, I never really knew what Christianity was about, having been so numbed to its influence. Just as many Singaporean children would relate Buddism to the Chinese, Islam to the Malays, or Hinduism to the Indians, for the longest time, I had thought that Christianity was a Western religion. And because of that mindset, I felt that it was just a religion that merely taught people how to lead better lives. It was less real to me than say, stories I’ve heard and believed about bomohs, witchdoctors or voodoo. I always wondered whether if a priest were to come to religious blows with such a practitioner of these arts – who would win?


I said the Sinner’s Prayer when I was twelve or thirteen. At that time, I was genuinely so touched to the point that I believed strongly in the love of Jesus. I continued to go to church, but I never took the step to draw closer to God, or experience Him deeper in my life. Many times, I would see others in the Youth Service go to the front to praise God with so much joy, but adolescent awkwardness held me back. Slowly, I found myself never experiencing life with God leading me through. As my circle of friends in church slowly dwindled because I saw them only once a week, and as I never thought to draw closer to them except during those few hours, I found myself losing interest in coming to service altogether. Sometimes I would still try to go to church, standing alone in the congregation, listening to the pastor’s message, but steadily, I lost heart.



Being deeply rooted in Christ, my mother would never allow me not to come to church. While I tried hard to create excuses not to go every week, she would never accept them readily, always admonishing me that my reasons were still feeble. If I insisted on not going, she would stop trying to persuade me eventually, knowing that my reluctant submission means I would only go to church in body, but not in mind or spirit. And yet the issue would not rest easily, and it would later provoke conflict between us. She would express her concern for me, and I would tell her that I simply did not want to go to church. I dreaded such incidences because I knew that my mother would worry for me, but at the same time, I simply did not wish to go. I dreaded going to church because I would be alone in service, and I was not the type of person to take the first step to make friends.

So, I began to cheat my way out of my dilemma. Under the guise of going to church, I would instead spend a few hours, every Sunday, whiling away my time at various places like Borders, the nearby park, or even taking a bus from terminal to terminal just to let the time pass. Deep down, I would always feel a sense of disappointment in myself, because even as I chose not to go to church, it was not because I really didn’t want to. I wished strongly to draw close to God, but I could not bear to go to church feeling that sense of loneliness and awkwardness. Sometimes, I would feel so bad that I would ask God to bring me back to church. I really wanted to return to God, but I simply didn’t have the desire to go to church.




The answer to my prayer came early in the year, when a classmate of mine invited me to Faith Community Baptist Church. I was so excited, because finally I could go to church without feeling the isolation I experienced before. With people I already knew coming to church with me, I quickly drank in the spirit of God. In a sense, I believe that those years of spiritual drought that God had put me through had the purpose of giving me a thirst so great - that I would return readily to church when the opportunity arose. It was a thirst that I would not have had if I had not left church in the first place. It was a thirst that saved me from being a shallow Sunday Christian who did not really believe in the might of the living God. I saw clearly that it was all in God’s plan for me. After all, you’ll never know what you’ve got until it is gone.



Through another classmate, I joined a cell, and gained a solid support of peers who became the safety net for me not to feel isolated in church. Instead, I had a cell group of people whom I could have fellowship with. This spiritual support helped me through my growth as a Christian, and through my times of discouragement.

I believe that I was never truly saved until God put me through that period of emptiness, so that I might return to Him filled with enthusiasm and a strong desire to grow in Him. That is what I am most thankful for in my walk thus far.

Ashleigh Low
(Isaiah's 12)