I grew up in Sacramento and both my parents were followers of Jesus. They served in ministry at our local church and my mom played the organ and my dad sang in the choir. Now throughout my childhood I always attended church, always attended Bible school and always went to youth group, yet the seemingly good track record that I had, the teachings of faith during these years really never penetrated me.

By the time I was in high school I remember becoming really jaded towards Christianity. I began thinking that the biblical stories of Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Noah's Ark were just made up stories told to us as kids, similar to Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Also around this time I developed the perception that Jesus of Nazareth was just some guy with a magical ability to walk on water, to heal people, to turn water into wine.

So I ended up developing this really distorted and spurious view of Christianity and of Jesus. Fast forward to my college years, in 2008 I left home to pursue my engineering degree at UCI and this started a new season of life for me. I was fed a rich diet of science and reason, leading me to believe that truth could only be found in evidence-based rational thought.

Basically believing in things that could only be proven or physically observed. And this rational world view always made sense to me on a fundamental level, while events that I read in the Bible did not. Reconciling science and faith had always been a struggle for me, especially when it came to describing the world that we live in.

It seemed less and less plausible that truth could be found in scripture and this ultimately led me to a point where I abandoned church, focusing on seeking answers through my education in science instead of faith. Fortunately God is faithful and while we may abandon him, he will never abandon us.

For in Isaiah 42, 16, God says, "I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, and paths that they have not known, I will guide them." So as an act of grace, God began planning people in my life that he would use as tools to demonstrate his love and faithfulness for me, starting with the first time I heard the gospel outside of church.

He asked me, "If you were to die today and stand before God, and God asks, 'Why should I let you into my heaven?' what would you say?" Well I said, "I think I'm a pretty good person. I love my family. I'm nice to other people. I went to church." He then introduced me to this foreign concept of being saved by faith and not by works.

Faith believing that Jesus lived and died for us and those who chose to repent and follow him would be delivered from the penalty of sin and given everlasting life. Hearing this planted a seed of curiosity in me and caused me to question what I really knew about Jesus. I also had a really good friend in college whom God had used to display his love and patience and relentless pursuit.

For two years this friend invited me to church and for two years I denied him. But despite that he did not give up and he continued to invite me until we both graduated from college. Little did I know that these small gestures would in time play a big role and play a big significance in bringing me to Christ.

Leading up to my senior year in college, the hardening of my heart had rendered me blind to the things of God. I was living in a selfish life where I actively sinned and invested all my time and resources in worldly things. Before I got to a point where I could really start looking at faith with an open mind, something big had to happen.

And in February of 2013 I found out my cousin passed away from sudden cardiac arrest. It was just one week after his 20th birthday. He collapsed while walking back to his dorm and by the time paramedics arrived he could not be resuscitated. I know it's a cliche thing to say but my cousin was one of my best friends.

I was in complete shock after hearing the news of his death and was unable to process what had happened. In a blink of an eye I went from state of shock to all of a sudden realizing that I would never see him again. That he would never be at another family gathering.

That he would end up missing all of the important events in my life. I remember feeling so much pain, agony, confusion, being completely broken. But to my surprise it was in this moment when I turned to God. How could he do this to me? How could he take such an innocent life away from me?

In John 19, 9-2 Jesus indicated that God in his mysterious and wise providence sometimes allows his children to go through hardship and suffering so that they can experience God's mercy and power in delivering them. So the point being if you see tragedy and you know God could have stopped it, which he always could, but he didn't.

He must have a purpose in it. After my cousin passed I could no longer sit idle and believe that we were just molecules in motion, that my feelings were just a series of chemical reactions and nothing else. There had to be purpose. There had to be a larger picture that I wasn't seeing.

This was the time when God allowed me to open my mind and seek truth in his word. Now there's a Hebrew word that I've become really fond of in these past few weeks. It's "shuv". The literal definition of this word is to turn back or return. And the prophets in the Bible picked up this word and turned it into a powerful metaphor for how we relate to God.

Life is a journey and we go down certain roads and some roads don't lead to life. Some roads lead to ruin. And when you find yourself on this road you need to shuv. You need to turn away from sin or your current way of life and turn back to Jesus.

This is the point where I stopped wanting to live a life of sin and selfishness and instead live a life for Christ. Now fast forward to right now. Standing before you today is a sinner, unworthy of God's love, unworthy to enter his kingdom. In Romans 5a it says, "But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." I've come to realize that the mercy and God's grace shows by sending Jesus to the cross is incomprehensible.

Ephesians 2a, "For by grace we have been saved through faith, not of works." Salvation is the greatest gift given to man, yet it's one that we never deserved. God loved us so much that he sent his only son to become human and die on the cross for us. And I find comfort knowing that God understands my struggles, my pain, and everything that I experience.

He knows me better than I know myself, for in Matthew 1030 God even knows the number of hairs on my head. Before I even existed, God had his eyes on me. He had his attention on me. How faithful, how marvelous, how wonderful is he that despite my continuous rejection after all these years, he would still orchestrate his perfect plan to give me hope.

Hope in his word, hope in salvation, and hope in the promises rooted in the works of Christ. Kevin, do you understand that when you go into the water you're uniting with Christ in his death, and that when you come out you're uniting with Christ in his resurrected life? I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

My name is Paul Kim. I am 52 years old, and I am only now coming to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and accepting that fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Today I am asking him to be the ruler of my life. I'm the older brother to Pastor Peter and the elder Philip Kim, and father of three sons.

My father was a pastor, as was my grandfather. Although I grew up in a Christian family and always been around people who were dedicated to serving God, I never really seriously evaluated my own relationship with God. I was a Christian by default, meaning I thought I was a Christian because I always hung around the church, people I hung around with was Christian.

So I didn't really realize that I had to work at being Christian. I was at church, but I didn't really have the faith. I prayed, but without conviction. I didn't really think there was a process to being a Christian. I didn't realize that being a Christian was difficult. You really had to work at it.

You had to be diligent. Keeping faith was like every moment kind of thing. I never thought I was a bad person, so I never really thought I had to accept Jesus Christ. The problem was I wasn't a Christian. Excuse me. Oh, boy. I know how to be a Christian, but I was too lazy to practice it and kept falling deeper and deeper into worldly temptations.

In 52 years of existence, I made many mistakes along the way. I can honestly tell you every time I come to a fork in the road where I have to make a difficult choice, I have consistently made the wrong choices. My friends and family who cared about me witnessed the path that was conducive to a life of failure.

At 52, I know that I lived my life as a sinner. I can honestly tell you that I made wrong choices despite people who were encouraging me and counseling me. I had the right answers with me all the time, I knew, but I refused to listen. I was stubborn and made continuous mistakes.

You know, the choices I made were conscious because it was easier to live as a sinner than it was to live as a Christian. There were many times I regretted being so far away from God. Despite being born into a Christian family where I could have found Jesus Christ easily, I regretted because I did not like myself or where I was headed.

And there were many times I regretted because I have failed many times. People ask me why after all these years, I am coming before Christ now. That you have to ask God. You have to ask God because at 52 years old, I can tell you that all these years amounted to years of sin.

And there were no denying it anymore. At 52, despite years of making wrong choices and living life as a sinner, I know. There was divine intervention. Mitchell, you got your wish. Oh boy. Why now? Because I am weak. For 52 years I tried and I couldn't do it on my own will.

I am saved only by the grace of God. And at 52, I thank God that I am saved before it was too late. You understand that when you go into the water, you are united with Christ in the depth. And when you come out, you are united with Christ, resurrected life.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Hello, my name is Matthew Yee and this is my testimony. So very fortunate to have been able to grow up in a Christian home, attending a church of the name Ocean View in Torrance regularly on Sundays. As a result, during the early years of my life, I had been exposed to many different stories of the Bible.

However, these stories played very little significance to my life, possibly due to my young age, but mostly because of my lack of understanding of God's character. So my family attended Ocean View Church up until I was about nine years old. My parents had decided to look for a new church, and we stumbled upon, at the time, a pretty small church.

And you guys might have heard of it. It's called Berean Community Church. And I still remember on my first day, I was very intimidated, just because of the change and stuff. And I joined a younger kids for service where we played basketball with a younger James Hong and I didn't miss a shot.

And week by week went by, and my family had found a new fellowship at Berean. And I attended the main service along with my older brother and the Kim boys, where literally every sermon went way over my head. However, in a short while, God graciously provided a youth group at Berean under the leadership of Pastor Peter Chung.

So under Pastor Peter Chung was where I believe God really began to work my life within the youth group. I became convicted of my sins and my relationship to God. And I can't pinpoint an exact day, but it was around this time in my life where I repented of my sin for the first time.

I was convicted to read my Bible and pray to understand more about God and sought opportunities to share the gospel with my middle school friends. And then high school came along. So high school quickly came, and with the change of scenery, also came new temptations in my life. Throughout high school, I struggled greatly with my identity in Christ and constantly had battles with two specific sins, idolatry and lust.

So first off, speaking on idolatry, I idolized high school sports, and I constantly wanted to get better at football and basketball, even though I wasn't really much of an athlete. I had many spiritual battles concerning sports, but I felt as if my faith was ultimately going downhill. And sports slowly began to consume my thoughts, and it no longer became a matter of how I could glorify God through sports, but rather how I could glorify myself.

And then secondly, lust, it became very apparent in my decision-making, where I began dating a non-Christian girl my senior year. And the effects of my decision to date her would carry over into my first years of college as well. So college, I had a ton of trouble adjusting to college and the college ministry at Bremen.

I was struggling with school, and possibly due to my awkwardness or antisocial tendencies, I was having a hard time adjusting to the new ministry. However, it was ultimately my sinful thinking and my commitment to my non-Christian girlfriend at the time that convinced me to believe that I did not need fellowship.

I really struggled during this time, constantly being convicted to end the relationship and pursue my faith and fellowship with other believers, but not being able to commit to that conviction. My heart felt like it was in a constant tug, and I was in and out of the relationship, but also in and out of church.

And just like Proverbs 26, 11 states, "Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly." And that was me. I was constantly returning to my vomit, not my ex-girlfriend, but my sin. And I was just that fool, making compromise after compromise to my faith, to the point of where I stopped attending church for a while, due to the increased feelings of this guilt and doubt of my faith.

So at this time, the feelings of guilt and doubt were really weighing me down, and the relationship wasn't going well. And I just began to turn to worldly things for my stress and anxiety, and just for comfort, only to realize how temporary those things were. And it was during this time that I just had a moment of repentance for the first time in a long time.

I was at the lowest of my lows, and I admitted my weakness to God, just how dependent I was on Him. I confessed my sins and asked for forgiveness. However, the biggest difference between this time and throughout high school, I think, was that I really relied on God to help me commit to my convictions, instead of just being wavering and kind of shaky with my faith.

And so I really wanted to commit to my convictions, and I wanted to act with my faith out. So I ended the relationship. I disengaged in the worldly activities I was partaking in, and I started getting plugged back into church. And by God's grace, I'm here today. And the truth of the gospel has never meant more to me than it does now.

And as Philippians 1:6 states, "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." And despite my hardship through sin, by God's grace and God's grace alone, I'm here today. And this all ultimately points back to the cross, that God being holy and intolerant of sin, knowing of the sin I struggle with, the sin I may struggle with now and the sin I might struggle with in the future, he still sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die for my sin and resurrect to conquer my sin.

I'm not perfect, nor do I fully understand the character of God, but the truth of the gospel is what allows me to persevere through trials and actually live up my faith. And I just want to share Galatians 2.20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Thank you. Thank you. We've been waiting for you. You understand when you go into the water that you are united with Christ in his death, and then when you come out, you're united with his resurrected life.

I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Hi. I'm Esther Yam. I'm a fourth year UCI student. So I was born into a Christian home with a loving family. I went to church every Sunday, and I thought, and like, although I could answer all the questions during Sunday service or like Bible study, like, it took me 19 years to realize that I wasn't a genuine Christian.

In the seventh grade, I would use these little tests to determine if I was truly saved or not. Did I cry during prayer? Did I jump up and down during praise? Yeah, I did. But that hype never lasted long. In fact, the only times I felt close to God was during retreats or during worship nights.

Truthfully, that was all because of like a spiritual high. It was something that the music had done to me. And when I resumed my everyday life, I lived for myself. Prayer only on Sundays. Singing praises only on Sundays. And devotions, never. I didn't even know what they were. Despite this, I got baptized in the ninth grade because everyone else was doing it, you know, and I wanted to take my faith seriously.

Yet by 12th grade, I had burnt out. I felt no emotion, no love, nothing for God. I stopped attending service. Every time something bad happened to me, I would ask God, "Why? Why me? Why would you do this to me?" When I entered college, an older sister tried to go through a little gospel booklet with me, but I told her straight up, I said, "I know everything.

I don't want to talk about God." Yet I still considered myself to be a Christian. I believed that God was real, but I was living in sin without a second thought. And the only time I would think about him was when I cursed him for doing something so bad to me, for ruining my life.

It's funny though. Like, I have a friend who was Catholic at the time. She invited me to check out CCM because her sister wanted to check it out because her sister's friend told her to check it out. And I thought, "Oh, it's a Christian ministry. I got to make sure it isn't a cult." So I went.

But there was something different about these people. They encouraged me to check out Burian, and I did. The sermons, and everyone encouraged me to read the word and stuff like that. But I decided to take my faith seriously again. I tried not to sin. I did my devos. I prayed.

I worked so hard to stay holy, but nothing worked. I was still giving into my sins, and I began to think that I would always live in my sin. Every time God gave me a trial, I would hate him because I knew I wasn't able to do the right thing.

I thought he was trying to trick me into sin. I thought he was throwing me into temptation just to get back at me for cursing him. That was the case until the summer of my freshman year. I read John 3, 17, which states, "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved." And then it all clicked.

It happened so suddenly and out of nowhere. God was so merciful to me. He was the one who opened my mind. He was the one who revealed himself, and he was the one who saved me. God wasn't out there to get me. He wasn't out there to trick me into sinning.

Instead, he showed me love. He sent his son. He chose me. He gave me salvation. Rather than thinking, "I'm safe," I felt so ashamed. I understood the weight of my own sins. I repented, and I understood that I was completely deserving of his wrath. Yet he showed me love.

Now rather than trying to find security in my works, I find security in Christ. It's my love for Christ that makes me yearn to learn more about him, that makes me pray. He makes me eager to talk about him. And whenever a trial comes my way, I trust in God, and I trust in the plan he had all ready set out for me.

I give it all up to him. So when I asked my mom about this baptism a couple years ago, she's like, "Why do you need to do it again? You already did it in like ninth grade." And I thought, "Huh. Yeah, I did." So there was a time when I wondered if I was really saved during my baptism in ninth grade.

I used to struggle with that a lot, but then I came to realize, no, I was not saved. I was not dead to sin. I was not alive in God. My desire to get baptized again is because I know the importance of baptism in my saving faith. I'm not proclaiming this because my friends had done before me, but I'm proclaiming Christ as my savior because I am of Christ.

I already have been baptized by the spirit in his death and resurrection. Thank you. So you understand that when you go into the water, you're united with Christ in his death. And when you come out, you're united with Christ in his resurrected life. And I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Hi, everybody. My name is Alex Chang, and I'm here to share my testimony. As I kid, I grew up in a Christian household, and I also went to a private Christian school. I always felt that I was Christian just because of all the people that I was surrounded by.

Just always being in that environment, I just assumed that I must be Christian because that's just who everybody in my family is. That's who all my friends are. I even loved going to Sunday school and learning about God and Jesus. I felt that all these stories that I was learning was just so crazy that there's such a thing as a God that sent someone to come save us.

But as a kid, I only really wanted to just have the knowledge about him, not really knowing and trying to develop a relationship with him. So as a kid, I idolized popularity and knowledge. And so I'd always ask, like during Sunday school, who God was. I always just wanted to know the answer.

I just treated Sunday school like regular school, just wanted to know everything for the sake of knowing it. So as a kid, my concept of Christianity was just to be nice to others, especially because as a kid, I was taught the golden rule, treat others as you would have yourself be treated.

And since I believe I was just being a nice guy, that was the only thing I needed to do in order to become a Christian. In seventh grade, did I truly grasp and understand the significance of Christ's death? Every year prior to that, I just thought, since I knew everything about it, that I was saved.

But luckily, on a Good Friday service, my youth pastor finally revealed the significance of it, the gravity of what Christ had done for us. Even at that point where Christ, he already performed all these miracles for all these people, for the Jews. On that day, they still decided to turn on him.

And he was so willing to go to the cross and save them, those who cursed him, mocked him, even spat on him, but he saved every single one of them. Not just them, but even me, to save my sins past, present, and future. At that time, a huge wave of emotions crashed over me because I was just so ignorant and arrogant at the time.

I was overlooked at what God has given me, his grace. And I thought to myself, me, an undeserving sinner, has been given another chance to be reunited with him, a God who created me and loves me. I realized that I was just trying to be a good person and be better than everybody else.

But then finally realized that I would never be able to live up to God's standard, which is Christ Jesus. On that day, I devoted my life to Christ. I repented from my sins and asked for forgiveness. I asked God to forgive me for claiming to be a Christian without truly knowing him.

From then on, I had this passion to serve others and truly care for them and to be able to live a life that would glorify God. So luckily I had opportunities such as Mount Hermon, this Christian camp, where I was able to truly apply what I learned and also go on to mission trips where I can truly share God's love to others by witnessing to them, as well as have the opportunity to build houses for them.

Yeah, that's it. Thank you. You understand when you go into the water, you're reunited with Christ and his death. And then when you come out, you're united with Christ and his new resurrected life. And I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Hello, I'm James Lau. There's a lot of you guys, so I'm pretty nervous. So I was born and raised in the Bay Area, where I grew up in a house with two God-fearing parents who brought me to church every Sunday. Despite this, I would say I did not truly know or love God for most of my life.

I went to church, but if you asked me at the time what the gospel was, I probably wouldn't be able to have told you. To me, church at the time was just a place to go every Sunday to see my church friends, with the possibility to hang out with them afterwards.

Who God was and what Jesus did on the cross on my behalf had no impact on my life, and I lived a sinful lifestyle daily. During high school, my worldliness manifested in the way that I disobeyed my parents constantly, and in the things and relationships that I pursued. I know it was bad because sometimes I talk to my parents now, and they tell me, "Yeah, I was bad," and they didn't know what to do with me at the time.

It's humbling to look back now and think that they were constantly praying for me, despite how much I didn't care. My heart was hardened to both my parents and, more importantly, to God. So during my junior year of high school, a friend invited me to a praise and prayer night at one of the churches.

I went mostly because I didn't know how to say no to that friend. I don't actually remember much about that night, other than the praise and prayer being really loud, and remembering that, feeling convicted that if I continued living the way I did, I would surely end up in hell.

I remember praying that night and confessing that I was helpless in my struggle towards sin and for God to take control of my life. I don't think I was actually saved after that, but I see that as the time where God started to soften my heart and when I started seeing the need for God in my life.

When I entered college, I began to check out campus ministries and eventually wound up at one my roommate brought me out to. I think one of the things that stuck out and convicted me in the ministry was I remember seeing a lot of guys there being genuinely excited to go pray and read the Bible and witness and me kind of wondering why I didn't share the same fervor as them.

Also growing up, I always thought that if I acknowledged that God existed, that that itself was sufficient for salvation. So when a friend invited me to join him in listening to a sermon by I think Paul Washer on Matthew 7 and hearing him preach on how not only is the gate narrow, but the way leading to the gate is narrow, I remember feeling completely devastated and walking away questioning whether my faith was actually saving faith.

So I don't know if any specific event triggered me to go, "Oh, now I'm saved," and I don't know the exact time or day when God saved me, but I would say during that time, the first couple years in college is when God began to remove my heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh.

Somewhere during that time, I began to understand that despite how surely on my own I was heading towards the gate that leads to destruction, God still chose to send his son down to pay the ransom for my sin. I remember growing up on Sundays, I would sometimes confess sins that I committed throughout the week, but I think there's a difference in repentance when I finally understood the weight of who God was and what he sacrificed in order that I might be saved.

Today I'm far from a perfect person and I often struggle between my natural tendency to sin and my desire to be obedient and to submit to God in every part of my life. Despite my imperfection, I am still able to identify in Christ and his death as I put down my old self and continue to deny myself daily.

I'm able to also identify with him in his resurrection in which I can share Jesus' victory over sin in my life. James, do you understand that when you go into the water, you're uniting with Christ in his death, and then when you come out, you're uniting with Christ's resurrected life?

And I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.