[Note: This is Part A of the Christmas testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 25 December 2000. Unlike the 1981–1982 sermon series, this recording is from the folder Pastor Eric's Testimony. Part B continues directly.]
Regarding the testimony, I want to say a few comments before I go on. First of all, you will notice that my testimony is not an autobiography — that is why it is called a testimony. You will have a hard time making a head or tail of my life story from it, because dates are not given. The whole idea is not to focus upon me or what I have done. If there is anything I have done, I don't think it is worth talking about. The whole purpose is to focus upon what God has done. So I don't mention any achievements of mine, if there are any. I don't want anyone to pay any attention to anything I did or am doing or, if the Lord permits, will continue to do — but only what God does in me and through me. If you tell the story of one's life in this way, it cannot really be an autobiography. No attention is given to places or times. And if you read the Gospels, it is exactly the same thing. The Gospels are a headache to scholars because the scholars want the biography: the historical details, what time did this happen, in what way. But the Gospels are not interested to tell us any of these things — they simply tell us what Jesus did.
The second thing I want to make very clear is this: in my testimony there are no exaggerations whatsoever. That is a principle by which I work. If I cannot recall a thing very accurately, I would rather not talk about it, because I might misrepresent it. Some people have thought: these things are too amazing, maybe they are being exaggerated. I assure you, as the Lord is my witness, I have exaggerated nothing. An exaggeration is, in an important sense, a lie — you have made the thing bigger than it is. Notice the same thing in the Gospels. There is no attempt at exaggeration. A very important thing is said just as though in passing: "Jesus saw the widow of Nain walking along mourning the death of her only son. He had compassion, stopped the procession, and raised her son." It could not be made shorter or less dramatic. No padding. The preachers do that sort of thing, but the Gospels don't. In my testimony I try to tell you what happened, without working on your feelings or emotions, and much less will you find exaggeration — it is, in my view, falsehood, a falsification.
With this, let us proceed. What I aim to cover today is not the whole of my life story — otherwise we might be here until tomorrow morning — but just the ten years or so of my time in London and England. In that time, I can only select a few things which I look to the Lord about and ask: what exactly do you want me to say about what you did? I aim to choose those instances for which there is no real human explanation, where it is difficult if not utterly impossible to find another explanation, where you cannot easily think of some psychological or other process to explain it away.
But the other thing I would like to say is this: what I am doing through giving my testimony is simply witnessing. Witnessing is something that every Christian can do and every Christian should do. You may or may not be able to preach — that does not matter. But you can witness and you must witness. What is a witness? A witness is somebody who has seen or experienced something and tells you what he or she has seen or experienced. If you are a true Christian, you must have experienced God in some way — how did you become a Christian if he did not change your life? If he changed your life, you have something to witness to. You can say: I was like this, and now the Lord has made me like this. A witness is somebody with first-hand experience. Therefore, if your faith is second-hand — you believe because your friend believes, or you got baptized because someone else did — you cannot be a witness. But if you yourself have witnessed the Lord and experienced him, then you can witness for him.
If every Christian were witnessing for him, this church would really be growing. I have often said: you only need to witness to one person a year, bring one person to church in a year. Just one person, one year. How many Sundays are there in a year? Over 52 or 53. If in all those Sundays you cannot bring one person to church in a year, what is with your Christianity? But if every member of the church brought one person to church, what would happen? There would be a hundred percent growth. The church would have doubled in one year. Did your church double this year — in the year 2000? Probably not. Then somebody is not witnessing. Maybe you witness and nobody wants to listen. Well, maybe your witness carries no punch and nothing of quality, and nobody is interested. Then you better take a good look at your Christian life and ask what is happening.
In Revelation 14:12, the saints are described as witnesses for Jesus. If you are a true Christian, you are a witness for Jesus. And I see in Revelation 12:11 that they overcame — overcame the devil — through two things: the blood of Jesus and their testimony for Jesus. Many people know about relying on the blood of Jesus, but that is not quite enough by itself. The other thing is witnessing for Jesus. They overcame the evil one by telling everybody about their experience of Jesus and the way Jesus changed their lives. Go out there and keep witnessing to the Lord, and somehow you are going to discover that you have victory. Maybe that is why the church is so full of defeated Christians who wallow in defeat and the church never grows — they don't witness for the Lord.
Now, in a sense, teaching can be repeating theory — you just talk about what you have learned. In North America I once received literature from a publisher who guaranteed that if I paid them a certain amount every month, they would provide me with a message to preach every Sunday. I could hardly believe it. And then I realised that thousands of pastors must be receiving this kind of literature, picking out a message sent through the post each Sunday, and preaching it. America is an amazing place, isn't it? I also saw an advertisement in a magazine offering every kind of degree you could want for a certain sum of money — no courses to attend, no examination, you just choose the degree and they print the certificate for you. That includes the PhD. No wonder North America has so many people with PhDs. When I first went to America from England I wondered how this country could be so full of learned people — until I discovered where some of the PhDs came from.
But preaching can mean nothing — witnessing is everything. Preaching can be just theory, just knowledge. When I preach, I preach from the heart — that is why it burns me out, literally kills me. I pour my life out into it. If you can preach five messages and feel no tiredness, you have a problem; you must be preaching from the wrong place, certainly not from the heart. Witnessing, on the other hand, has to be life — unless you are telling lies. I hope there are not people who tell lies for the glory of God. You have to be talking about something you have truly experienced. You can preach about dying with Christ and rising with Christ until your mouth is dry without having experienced it. But you cannot truly witness about something you have not experienced. So I want to encourage you: don't know how to preach? Don't worry about it. But witness — in order to be victorious in Christ.
So let us come to the ten years in London, and I am going to work the camp theme in reverse. This is an excellent design on your camp book — crucified feet still walking around afterwards. That is totally impossible. You first walk, then get crucified, and that is it. Once crucified, walking again? And yet the nail prints are still dark and visible. That is precisely the point: the whole Christian life, if it is genuine, is miraculous. It is a miracle. The Christian life begins with dying and ends up with life — the reverse of all that goes on in the world. God works miracles only if he lives in us. He doesn't work miracles outside of us. He works miracles in us and through us. This is what worries me about so many Christians — they hardly ever experience anything that can properly be called miraculous. I wonder: is God living in them? Because when Jesus lives in you, almost everything you do becomes miraculous. He does not do amazing things to impress us or others. It is only when we are living his life, walking his path, living to serve him, that the miracles just happen, all the time.
I will begin, then. At one point I finally acquired a motorcycle — a BSA, 150 cc, quite powerful, much heavier than most of what we see on the streets here. A very valuable possession for a poor student who owned next to nothing. My friend at the same Bible institute — a Cambridge graduate going to Japan as a missionary — sold me his old motorcycle for fifty English pounds. For a poor student, fifty pounds is a lot of money, so he agreed I would pay him in installments: maybe five pounds one time, twelve pounds another, whatever I had. I had not owned it for very long when one day, staying in an apartment I shared with two Malaysians, an American-born Chinese brother was staying with me in my room. We had had fellowship together and said goodnight, and we had barely lain down for a few minutes when I heard a distinctive click — my motorcycle stand coming up. I knew that sound right away: someone was messing around with my motorcycle three floors down. I rushed to the window and saw two fellows getting on my motorcycle, the one in front kick-starting it. I ran down the stairs full speed — I was just about to grab the neck of the fellow at the back when the motorcycle started and shot away.
But the thing I want to emphasize is the total peace in my heart about the loss of the motorcycle. It was, you could say, the only thing of any value to me, and of course it affected my transportation — I would have to take the underground and pay expensive fares. But the thing about Christ living in you is that the world means nothing. I did not let it bother me for a moment. The bike was gone; I went back upstairs, went back to bed, and fell asleep. My American friend could not believe it. Next day he said: "I don't understand you." I said: "Did I do something wrong?" He said: "Your motorcycle just got stolen and you go back to bed and drop off to sleep." I said: "Well, so what was the problem?" He looked at me in complete disbelief, as though we were speaking different languages, and shrugged his shoulders. Humanly speaking I should have reacted differently; he expected me to act like a normal human being and be very upset. He couldn't understand that it didn't bother me at all — not because I had enough money to go out and buy another one, but because it simply didn't bother me. The Lord gives and the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord. Fine with me. My thinking had changed, and that is why my American friend had nothing he could say. He later went into the ministry and became a pastor himself — witnessing being not just a matter of talking but of the kind of life we live.
A few days later I got a call from the police: they had found the motorcycle. I went and collected it. But whoever had been riding it had done enough damage that the brakes were defective, and there seemed to be a leak somewhere in the engine that we could never quite locate. Now, I had already arranged with a friend for the holidays that we were going to Ireland to evangelise — my constant joy and determination was to witness for my Lord — and now my motorcycle was defective. If I put money into fixing the brakes, I could not go on the mission. If I went on the mission, I had no money for the brakes. When a motorcycle's brakes are defective, it will skid whenever the road is wet, and when a motorcycle skids you fly off and your life can be in danger. And now the motorcycle was defective.
[Continues in Part B]
# Testimony of Pastor Eric Chang (Part B) — Defective Brakes; Miraculous Weather; Cambridge Witnessing; YMCA Government Official; Romans 6:7; Dying Is the Door to Life
[Note: This is Part B of the Christmas testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 25 December 2000, continuing directly from Part A.]
If I put the money into the brakes, I couldn't go on the mission. If I went on the mission, I had no money for the brakes. So I said: "Lord, what do you want me to do now?" And the Lord gave me confidence: "You go, I'll be with you." Defective brakes and all. So the day we were going out, we had to listen carefully to the weather forecast. This time I would normally not pay attention to weather forecasts, but when you have defective brakes, you had better. And the forecast said it was going to rain — the day we were leaving, and for days to come. I said: "Lord, okay, now I'm waiting. You want me to go on mission or not? If I'm going on mission, it's going to rain. Shall I cancel this project?" And I looked to the Lord and said: "Lord, I'm sure the enemy wants to stop us from witnessing for you, but we are going to go. We're going to entrust the whole motorcycle situation into your hands." So the two of us set out.
We got up and looked at the sky, and there was something I have never seen before. You see, from London, when you go to Ireland you go westward — through Oxford, on through Wales, and then from Wales to Ireland. Looking westward, in the direction we had to go, the sky was all clear blue. Looking backward, it was all black. Have you ever seen something like that — a line right across the sky, black behind, blue in front? I looked up and said: "All right, my God is going to do interesting things today." So we prayed together and set off, speeding out towards Oxford, through Oxford, and on westward. And you know what? The line was following us. Right above where our motorcycles were, there was the line — behind was black, in front was blue. We were riding towards the sun.
Somewhere towards the Welsh border, there was someone at a Catholic monastery to whom I wanted to witness. I said to my friend: "Let's pause and go witness in the monastery." He said: "What? Witness? Look at those black clouds moving forward — we had better keep ahead of them." I said: "Let's do the Lord's work, and we'll leave the weather to him." He was from a conventional church and had no particular experiences of the Lord, so he thought this was really being reckless and unreasonable. Anyway, I went and spent some time with the monk, witnessing to him, and then we continued westward. The clouds were still right above our head — still that line, moving, moving west. Then it got dark, and we took turns riding, one in front with the headlight and one behind following the red light.
At a certain stretch I was riding in front, and suddenly my light disappeared and everything went black — my engine had died. My electrical system was generated by the dynamo, meaning if the engine runs you have light, and if the engine dies you have no light. I had run out of petrol. We stopped on the road, pitch black in the countryside, couldn't see a thing. He came up behind me and said: "What happened?" "My engine is gone — no more petrol." He said: "What do we do? We're in the middle of nowhere." We committed it to the Lord. Then he rode off, and I saw his light go over the hill and disappear. I stood pitch black, by myself, looking to the Lord. A few moments later, I saw a light coming back — and this time he had a can of gas. He said: "It's amazing." I said: "What's amazing?" He said: "I just went over the top of the hill and there was a gas station there, and the man was just about to close — literally about to lock up — and I got there just before he locked the door." Watch the timing of how the Lord does things. None of us knew there was a gas station; the Lord did not allow the engine to die until we were that close to it. The Lord wants to test our faithfulness and our trust in him all the time. What is faith? Faith is trust.
We poured in the gas and off we went, riding a long distance into Wales and then towards the little town of Caerphilly, where we were going to stop for the night. When we got to the house, we rode up, took our packs off the back of the motorcycles, moved to the door — stepped inside — and the rain came down. It was pouring absolutely. And if it had been pouring when we were on the motorcycle, we would have been blinded by the rain, utterly soaked, and in great danger — because Wales is a hilly place, it goes up and down and left and right, and with brakes that didn't function properly, you could be in great danger on wet roads. It was as though stepping inside the door pressed a pedal, and the rain just came down. My friend told me his mouth dropped open. The timing was astonishing to him. It was awesome.
Now from that account you can imagine that the Lord would have to control the weather not only for that night but for the entire three weeks or so that we were on the journey. And you know what? It never rained. Not for three weeks. Walking with God — that is the thing. Shall we just say coincidence? You will find, when you walk with the Lord, that there will be one coincidence after another, until by definition there is no more coincidence. On the way to Caerphilly, stopping for a drink somewhere, I said to my friend: "You know, the Lord has given me a message to speak to the brothers and sisters in this little town." He said: "Do they know you're coming?" I said: "No, I don't think so." "Then how would they know to invite you to preach?" I said: "I don't know. All I know is the Lord gave me a message to give them this Sunday." When we arrived, the brothers and sisters said: "Oh, we didn't know you were coming — otherwise we'd have invited you to preach. But we already have a brother from the Bible college coming." All right — if the Lord wants me to give the message, I give it; if not, that's fine with me.
Sunday morning, there was a knock on the door very early. My friend opened it. A young man was standing there who neither of us knew, and he could barely speak — his throat was inflamed and he had lost his voice overnight. He said haltingly: "I am the man who is supposed to preach this Sunday. I don't know what happened through the night — I've lost my voice. Could you be so kind as to preach for me?" No problem, I'd be pleased to. My friend just turned and looked at me. "Your God is real, right?" He was a Christian, but he had never experienced the Lord in anything unusual. Mind you, if I had not told him in advance that God had given me a message to give on Sunday, he wouldn't have known how to read the moment. But I had told him, and there was the preacher without a voice — and he was simply stunned.
Now I also want to tell you about my friend who went with me on this three-week trip. His whole life was transformed and revolutionised — not because I preached to him, but because he simply watched what God was doing for me, and he was stunned. He had never seen such things in his life. He too became a servant of the Lord, went to a theological college, and then went into the ministry. Witnessing is not just a matter of talking — it is a matter of the kind of life we live.
I could tell you account after account of how people came to the Lord. Take for example the case of a Vietnamese person studying in Cambridge. I often went to Cambridge because London is very big and busy and I loved the quietness I could find there. But once in Cambridge, my desire to witness was always too strong, and I would go out looking for people. I stayed at Tyndale House for Biblical Research, where a fine Christian lady was always trying to witness, especially to Asian students. She told me one day: "In that college there is a Vietnamese person — how would you like to witness to that person?" I said: "Fine, just give me the name." So I went to the college and found this Vietnamese scholarship student doing engineering. I walked in through the door, we exchanged names, and within a minute he said to me: "I'm a Buddhist. Are you a Christian?" I said: "Yes." He said: "Tell me about Christianity." He was not satisfied with Buddhism, he said — he had looked into it and it had not satisfied him. That same evening, not much more than an hour or so later, he knelt down with me and yielded his life to the Lord.
There was another person from Taiwan — also a research student at Cambridge. The lady at Tyndale House often invited people for tea and then came to fetch me from my room. So I ended up talking with a lot of people this way. This Taiwanese student also yielded his life to the Lord that very afternoon. Sometime later I saw him and he was so full of joy. He said: "You know, God is really wonderful. The other day I was walking down one of the back streets in Cambridge and I had the desire to pray. So I said: Lord, I'm going to pray now — I'm going to close my eyes, and please see to it that I don't bump into the wall or a tree." This is a brilliant research student in mathematical economics. He closed his eyes and walked down the entire road praying, and he never hit the wall and never hit the tree. Now I know that road — it is not much wider than this room, with trees on one side and a long wall on the other. His chance of hitting something was quite good. But he walked the entire road and never hit anything. He said: "God is so amazing, I can pray to him and close my eyes." I smiled and said: "Oh, that is wonderful. But let me tell you something else that is also wonderful." He said: "What's that?" I said: "You can pray with your eyes open too." So lovely, isn't it — so cute.
There was another student from Hong Kong, a medical student in Cambridge doing his first three years there before going to London for the clinical years. I just knocked on his door — I didn't know him and he didn't know me. He opened the door and said: "Oh, come in." Within two minutes he said: "You stay at Tyndale House — you're a Christian, right? Tell me, how did you become a Christian." But he added: "Don't try to convert me. Just tell me how you became a Christian." That's fine — I'm not the one doing the converting; God converts, I only witness. So I shared with him for a few minutes and then stopped. He said: "I'm still listening, carry on." Every time I stopped, he asked me to continue. My principle in witnessing is: don't talk to a person until he is sick of hearing you. So I finally said: "I think I've shared enough for today, it's time for me to go." "Okay," he said, "we'll talk again."
Years later, when he went to London to work at a teaching hospital, he landed in the same district where Helen and I were living — the Lord knows what he is doing all the time. We invited him for supper. He walked in through the door and said: "By the way, where did we finish last time? You were telling me how you came to the Lord — please continue. But don't try to convert me." You see the amazing hunger — he doesn't want pressure from you, but he is hungry for the words. Then I had to leave London to take up the ministry in Liverpool, and I lost contact with Arthur — that is his name, Arthur Lee. Years and years passed, and one day I thought: whatever happened to Arthur? Some years after I came to work in Hong Kong, the Lord brought his name back to my memory. I looked in the telephone directory — you know how many Lees there are in Hong Kong, page after page, and how many Arthurs. I thought there was no way to find him. And then about a year later, I was watching the news on television and there was someone being interviewed: Professor Arthur Lee. That was him. He was the head of the medical department of the Chinese University, and Professor of Surgery at the hospital in Sha Tin. So I picked up the phone and called Arthur Lee. After more than twenty years, he remembered me right away. We had lunch together. I wanted to know: how about the Lord? He said: "Yes, I'm a Christian." Amazing, isn't it? Sometime along the way, he had come to the Lord. And I saw him on television again only a few months ago — he is apparently now vice-chancellor of the university.
I was staying one night in the Foreign Missions Club in North London, studying, and the Lord spoke to me very clearly and distinctly: "Eric, get up and go down to the YMCA in central London." Many people think it strange that God would speak to you — but why not? The Bible is full of it. How many times in the Old Testament do you read "Thus says the Lord"? Does the prophet dare to say the Lord said this when the Lord didn't say it? God talked to his servants all the time, for those who are living in such a way that Christ lives in them. And the Lord spoke to me: get up and go to YMCA. I had a lot of homework to do and I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do at YMCA anyway. But I got on my motorcycle and rode down to the city centre — a long ride. YMCA was right at Oxford Circus. I arrived and said: "Lord, what do you want me to do here?" I had not a clue. And the Lord directed my attention to the revolving door at the front of the building, and said: "Look to the door." I looked, and a Chinese gentleman — quite a tall gentleman — was walking through. He said: "Talk to that man." So I went up to him and tried to think of something to say. And the Lord said: "Just ask him if he needs help." Now, do you normally stop somebody in the middle of the YMCA and say "Do you need any help"? He walked in through the revolving door, and I said: "Do you need any help?" He said: "Yes." Oh — so he needed help.
We talked together, and he being an older person than myself — he was in his forties, I was in my mid-twenties — I felt it was not appropriate for me to be the one helping him along spiritually, so I directed him to the pastor of our church. And he came to the Lord. When I got to know the background, I began to see the amazing thing. He had just come in from Taiwan, with only two days in London, going on to Geneva for trade talks as a government official. He had only those two days — either he came to the Lord now, or never. And it struck me: it was exactly what happened in Acts 8, when Philip was sent to meet the Ethiopian eunuch in the desert. The eunuch was a government official just passing through. Philip's timing had to be perfect. He arrived just as the man was reading Isaiah and needed someone to explain it to him. He yielded his life to the Lord, and so did this government official from Taiwan. The timing was incredible. Had I not listened to the Lord, had I disobeyed — the blood of this man would have been on my hands. He told me afterwards: "It is amazing. I was looking for the Lord. I did not realise I would find the Lord here in London, in this time slot."
I will share also this point. You will notice that these accounts are from when I was very young — in my mid-twenties. At that time, the Lord spoke to me audibly. Nowadays, the Lord has another way of talking to me — most often not audibly. He lets his will be known to me in such a clear manner that I have no doubt. He doesn't need to speak to me audibly very much anymore, because as I have learned to walk closer to him through the years, he can communicate his will to me heart to heart, right to my heart. I think that when I was much younger spiritually, I was not yet walking close enough to him that I could receive the message direct into my heart — I needed to hear it with my ear, as it were. He knows our needs and meets us at our point of maturity or lack of maturity. He talks to a little child at the level of a little child, not as you would talk to an adult. Nowadays, he just lets his will be known to me in a flash, clear as day — and can tell me things utterly beyond human possibility, about somebody's life, about somebody dying or not dying. He doesn't do it for my curiosity — only if there is a need for me to know. There are times when all the doctors say a person will die, and I say: that person will not die. You either believe the doctors or you believe what God tells me. In the end the doctors are wrong. That is the wonder of walking with a living God.
I need to close soon. I have talked to you so far about Christ living in us. I told you I would go in reverse order — because only in putting it in reverse order will you see the importance of dying. Without that, you won't understand why it is so important to die. Let me draw your attention to one verse, very short and one of the most important verses in the New Testament for practical Christian living: Romans 6:7 — "He who has died is free from sin." Free from the most fearful thing in this world. When sin is in your life, the devil has a grip on your life. Whether you believe in the devil or not makes no difference to his reality. If a doctor tells you there is cancer in your body and you say "I don't believe you" — does the cancer disappear? It is going to kill you whether you believe it or not. What makes a difference is how you respond. The same is true of the devil. You don't believe in him, so you put your guard down — but he can do nothing with you when sin is not in your life. Without sin, he has nothing to grab hold of. Have you got sin in your life? Then the devil has a grip on you. The world has a grip on you too. When you have sin, you are spiritually dead. And the way out is to die to sin — and so, paradoxically, die to death. The path to freedom from sin is death. The Christian life begins with dying and ends up with life.
So few Christians experience this absolute freedom because so few experience death. You have been hearing all through this camp about dying, dying, dying. It sounds morbid. But dying is not the purpose — dying is not the end. Dying is only the door to life. Have you ever seen a Christian physically dying? There are people who have come to the Lord just by watching a Christian die — the sheer peace, the sheer joy, death simply a door into eternal life. The early church had a powerful witness to the world around it precisely because all the non-Christians were terrified of death. The fear of death is what the devil uses to control you. But the one who has lived with Christ in this world knows where he is going. He is already freed from sin and therefore freed from fear. Sin brings fear; free of sin, free of fear. Nothing to fear. It is simply wonderful — the freedom that comes from being dead to sin.
Now, I want to share in closing some things relating to my personal family life. I never said much about my family, apart from something about my father. But I never mentioned much about my mother. I really don't know how to look at this thing, but it seems to me I never truly had a mother — and I don't mean to be unkind in saying so. I had a mother who apparently never was a mother to me. For what reason is better known to her than to me. I always felt as though I was not really wanted, as though I were in the way. My mother was a very beautiful woman, and maybe having a child hindered the enjoyment of life she was looking for. Even later in life it was difficult for me, because she always looked young.
But I had another mother: my Amma. She brought me up; she was so devoted to me and loved me so much. In a way, maybe I never lost anything, because though I didn't have my own mother's love, I had another mother who loved me as her own child — perhaps more than most of you have ever experienced from your own physical mother. No Amma, no matter how devoted, is quite the same as one's true mother. But the Lord already had done something — he provided me with an Amma who was really more like my mother than an Amma. And there came a day when my Amma brought me a present. She said: "I got something for you." I said: "What is it?" And out of the basket came a chicken.
# Testimony of Pastor Eric Chang (Part C) — The Chicken and the Dog; Mother's Conversion; Dying Heals All Wounds; Romans 6:7; No Need for Inner Healing
[Note: This is Part C of the Christmas testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 25 December 2000, continuing directly from Part B.]
It turned out to be a very clever chicken. Do not think that the small brain means no brain matter — this chicken had a great deal of it. We lived at that time in an apartment on the third floor, and there were two main entrances on every floor with two doors each: an intelligence test for the chicken. Did it know which floor to go up to and which was the right door? My super chicken knew exactly how to get home. If my Amma put it out in the garden — not a private garden but a public one, with a gate opening to the street — this chicken would never walk out onto the street. It only stayed in the garden. And when my Amma went to the window and called, the chicken would come running up the stairs, to the right door, right floor, right into our door.
Of course, that chicken became very precious to me. And one day when I came home from school: where is my chicken? It had ended up in the cooking pot. I went to my Amma and said, what do you mean by cooking my chicken? She said, I didn't want to cook it — your mother told me to. She had some guests and nothing prepared, so she put the chicken in the pot. Remember that I was just a child, and this chicken was very dear to me. I look back through all these years and think: I never got anything from my mother, and what was dear to me, she took away from me. What kind of mother is this? She did many other things that hurt me a great deal — I am sure unintentionally, but it still hurt.
Another time, one of the greatest pets you can have is your dog. So I had my little Pekingese Terrier — a small white terrier with long fur covering the eyes, a round face, very cute. It was very dear to me, because when I came home from school, even if my mother would hardly look at me, my dog would be jumping all over me, licking my hands, so excited. You never get a warmer welcome than from a dog. And then I came home one day — no dog, no welcome. What happened to my dog? Oh. Your mother forgot to close the door. Your dog went out on the street and never came back. My chicken gone, my dog gone. This is the end of your life. You have got nothing left.
Now, I am not saying all this to speak ill of my mother — that is why I have never talked about her before. But I can find no other way to show you how deep was the hurt inside of me. I had no mother who ever showed me warmth or did anything for me, and she destroyed even the little joy that I had. If you grow up like that, what kind of person would you become? You would become resentful, bitter, and eventually it could become hatred. I had nothing to love her for. Now, if the Lord had not worked in my heart, I think that is exactly what I would have become.
Why did I feel no bitterness toward her? Why did I feel no resentment, much less hatred? Because I died. And in my dying, I lost the old man that had been offended, hurt, mistreated, abandoned, and neglected. The only way I could enter into life without bitterness and hatred was because that Eric Chang who grew up without a mother's love had died. I do not suffer from any psychological effect — none whatever. And afterwards I could even love my mother. Before she died, we became very close friends with one another. That is the power of God, I can tell you.
Nowadays there are parts of Christianity that speak of something called inner healing — for people like myself who suffered abuse, neglect, all through childhood. I can never remember a single act of mother's love; if you ask me to quote just one incident, I cannot think of one. It would have left emotional and psychological scars. But not at all, not at all — because I did not need any healing. There is nothing to be healed. I do not need to see a psychiatrist or work through my abuse. I love my mother, and I could only do that after Jesus came into my life. He lives in me, and he is the friend of sinners.
When my father died — this was during my London years — the executor of his will found that he had written my mother's name into the will, though they had separated. Because he still loved her and hoped to reunite with her, though she did not wish that. The court refused to honour the will because she was no longer his wife, and so the inheritance fell to me. My mother wanted to fight this case in court. Here is a mother who had done nothing for me, but she wanted the inheritance. I thought to myself: come on. This is a bit much. But she was not a Christian at that time — please remember that.
This is what I did. I said to my mother: I will give you the inheritance. I am not going to argue or fight over it. I went to the lawyer at my own expense and instructed him to sign away my inheritance to my mother. Give it all to her; I don't want it. I was a servant of the Lord; I was penniless. And in the end, because I could not pay the lawyer's fee, the lawyer — who was a Christian — said: you don't have to pay me. He was so moved that though I could have claimed the inheritance, I signed it away. He said: in the future, whenever you need legal help, come to me and I will do it for you free of charge.
Then I went to visit her. I was not even welcome in the house — she made it quite clear. There is a way of telling you, how long are you going to stay, and when are you leaving? She was not unkind outwardly, but I interfered with her private life. All right, I said, I'll just stay a few days. And while I stayed, I washed the dishes, I did the kind of things one was not expected to do. I'm going to witness with my life, I thought. And she would ask me: who provides you financially for your studies in London? And I said: my God does. She said: yeah, I know, but surely he doesn't drop the money out of heaven. I said: well, sometimes he does, sometimes not. He has his ways. She said: I don't understand. I said: I know you wouldn't.
Slowly, slowly, God was working in her heart. The hardness and selfishness began to melt away. And one of the most profound moments of my life came one day when she said: Eric, how do I come to know the God that you trust in, that you serve? Tell me how. I said: Mum, you really want to know? She said: yes. I said: if you are prepared to kneel down here with me, open your heart to God, yield your life to him, break with the past, let him make a new person out of you — are you willing to do that? She said: yes. Shall we kneel down together? And she said yes. And she knelt down with me, and she gave her life to the Lord. And there were tears and tears of repentance. She just cried and cried. I can never think about it without feeling the power of that emotion — watching what God was doing in my mother. This woman who had never wanted to see the inside of a church, who had not believed in God, who had lived only for herself — she was transformed into a totally different person, beyond all recognition. And we became very close to one another, with a love that is very hard to explain.
A few years later she passed away, and I felt it deeply. In fact, I will be honest with you and confess that I was unhappy with God. I said: Lord, all my life I never had a mother. And now a mother comes to the Lord; she wants to walk with you. Just when I was beginning to know that I have a mother, you take her away. I do not understand this. I am not happy about this, Lord. I confess I really grumbled with him. I still do not quite understand it, to be perfectly honest. She suffered no pain — she died in a coma from a very vicious viral pneumonia that no antibiotic could stop, within a few days. I never even got to say goodbye by phone or in person; I was away on mission. When I came back, I was told that my mother had passed away. Being a Christian is not always easy. And yet because of this death with Christ, I had no unhappiness with my mother, no bitterness, nothing to forgive — because the one who had once been neglected and abandoned had died. This Eric Chang no longer existed. There was a new man, in whom Christ lived. And that new man changed a person whose heart was so hardened that, humanly speaking, it was impossible to save her.
Our time is gone, and I really have to close at this point. But I hope you have got a little idea of what it means to die. I never need any healing. I have no need for emotional healing of any kind, because when you die, all that is bad has died with you. Everything is gone. There was a sister, for example, who went through the terrible experience of abuse, with deep psychological scars — humanly speaking. But again, because she had died, she required no psychological treatment, no healing of any sort. The old had passed; the new had come. Remember these words. He who has died is free — free from everything. Free to live a life full of the glory of God, full of the joy of God, full of the liberty of God.
So I want to stress in the end: having said all this about my mother, I love her so much. When I see the change in her life — she became a new person. That is the greatest miracle you can ever see. I have experienced many miracles, but the transformation of a person — there is nothing to compare with that. It is simply amazing. I go to her grave from time to time, when I pass in that direction, and I think again: oh Lord, how glorious are your ways. Let us pray.