Hello church family, my name is Chris Choi and this is my testimony. I was born into a Christian family to two loving parents at around age seven. My father introduced the gospel to me, who's sitting here with us today. He introduced to me a man named Jesus and told me he died on a cross for you because he loves you and if you believe in him as your Lord and Savior, then your sins will be forgiven.

You won't have to go to a place called hell and you will be able to have eternal life in heaven with God as long as you believe in him. I believe this was the beginning of my salvation because I hung my life to this truth, but at this point I mainly just did not want to be punished for eternity.

I only had a minimal understanding of the gospel, if anything just a piece of the gospel. Growing up I attended a charismatic church where I was able to understand more and more of who Jesus was, how he loves us, understand more about his mercy upon us. Life was good growing up.

We lived very comfortably with little worries in life. Yes, I was very much a sinner and had many flaws. Undeserving of his grace, was a liar, cheater, pursued my lust, disobeyed my parents in authority. You name the sin, I committed it. But thank God I did have the desire to have my sins forgiven and wanted to repent before God.

However, growing up I would say my faith was only steadily growing. Also, I remember thinking to myself, life is too good right now. But when I read a Bible, it talks about how Christians will face trials of various kinds. Well, in 2008, I was 18 years old, entering my senior year of high school.

Everything came crashing down. That year my grandfather passed away, my father lost his job, we lost our house, we lost everything. And the worst news of all, my mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. It was not a good time, but I knew a day like this was going to come and I knew in order to persevere I needed to depend on God.

The following year, I got accepted to UCI and needed to find a new church. Through a parachurch, I was able to visit Brean. At the time, Brean was meeting at some janky middle school and singing hymns that I was not familiar with. As a boy who was used to jumping up and down and shouting to more contemporary music, I had to just stand there and sing to much slower songs.

At this point, I thought this was going to just be another church to check off the list as I was visiting other churches. Then I listened to the sermon and thought it was unusual how Pastor Peter kept going back to the word after each segment. And this type of preaching was very new to me.

I remember after church ended that day, I went back to my college dorm room and just laid there on my bed and thought, "Perhaps it was the Holy Spirit tugging at me, telling me that I needed to continue to attend Brean." Throughout college, I was on fire for the word.

I wanted to learn more and more about the Bible. It was the thing that I was missing in my life. I believe that even though I had the basic understanding of the gospel growing up, my faith was only barely steadily growing. But once I started to indulge into the word, my faith grew exponentially.

Reading upon true doctrine helped solidify the foundation of my faith. I was a starving, weak, spiritual child. I needed to be fed. I would go to all the Bible studies, met up with older brothers and pastors. Even during the summers when most students would go back home, I didn't want to go back home.

I wanted to stay in Irvine and learn more about the word. The following year, in 2010, my sophomore year of college, my mother fought three good years but eventually passed away. This was the most difficult time in my life. Death became real to me. I knew death was imminent and life here on earth was temporary.

Everything I had learned from the Bible at this point helped me to persevere and understand that this was all part of God's will and plan. And I was also thankful to God, praising God that He had saved my mother, and I am confident that she is in a better place worshipping God in heaven today.

Most people would have despised God for losing such a loved one, but I had peace in my heart. And this gave me confidence and assurance of my faith, and praise God for that. To this day, today, still a sinner, I come before God repenting of my sins. The older I get, I understand more and more of how utterly sinful I am, but I also understand more and more how great God's grace is.

It is truly an amazing gospel. Still a student of the word, still so much to learn. Today, my wife and I are looking forward to our first child, our daughter who is due to be born next week. I look forward to having a glimpse, a different perspective and understanding more of God's love for His children, displaying my own love for my child.

Thank you all for witnessing my baptism today, and I thank God for this day, and may all praise and glory be to our Father. Thank you. All right, Chris, 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 His resurrected life?

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