A testimony and reflection on the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) by Steven Wong

Let me say it’s an honour and privilege to stand behind the pulpit today and to deliver the sermon and to give my testimony. I’ve titled my sermon “Coming back for a second serving”, which reflects the state of play I am in now as I have returned to worship regularly with South Yarra Baptist. In my talk I will make some observations about the Parable of the Sower and how it took me a while to start growing. The events in one’s life sometimes repeat themselves. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. As I look back on my life, at how I became a Christian and how my life has unfolded, I find I can relate to at least three of the responses in this parable.

The first observation which I will make is that when the farmer sows the seeds, he is not sowing something which he has made. The seeds are not man made. The seeds are the gifts of God’s creation and the seeds are uniform, uncontaminated and not disproportionate in quality. The seed is God’s word in its purest form. It hasn’t been corrupted.

My next observation is that farmer sows indiscriminately and evenly. He sows on tracks, on rocky ground, amongst weeds and on good soil. God does not discriminate. The Good News is open to all people. There are no boundaries. Race, colour, creed, nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual preference, marital status, linguistic skills, physical and intellectual attributes, education, socio-economic background, political alignments and what other barriers human beings put up to exclude people, God does not look at these as his Kingdom is open to all who receive the word and believe. His Kingdom is inclusive.

What really matters is how we respond to God’s word when it comes our way.
Do we ignore it and do nothing like the seed that have fallen on the track? Or do we receive it, get all excited and then lose interest and turn our back on God like the seed that has fallen on rocky ground? Or do we take up Christianity but find the priorities of life – getting academic qualifications, climbing the corporate ladder, accumulating wealth and belonging to the right social networks more important than being a Christian? Then we give up and just crave for acceptance from our friends, relatives, colleagues and peers. Or are we as a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, once said on claiming victory for the Australian Labor Party – “The true believers”? The ones who not only receive the word, but act upon it, live it out in our lives and as a result live spiritually fulfilling lives.

I’ll begin now to tell you something about myself. I often consider myself a chameleon because I tend to blend in with the surroundings. So much so that I have this uncanny ability to make myself invisible especially in front of my wife. Often she has come home and just doesn’t see me. I could be lying on the bed or sitting on a couch for a good five to ten minutes before she sees me and says “Oh there you are”.

You may have noticed that I also come to church without her, not only at South Yarra Baptist but also Melbourne Chinese Baptist. After my first 18 months at Melbourne Chinese Baptist, one of the elders remarked to me saying “Steven, I can’t believe you are married”. “You look single”. “Where is your wife?” “Who is your wife?” Rest assured, I do have a wife. She is not imaginary. Nathan and Margie met her once when I was at South Yarra Baptist, shortly after Nathan was called to be pastor at this church, but neither of them can remember what she looks like. Hopefully, you’ll get to meet her one day, if I can persuade her to come here for a visit. She often works most Sunday afternoons and evenings.

So in describing myself, people mistake me for something or somebody that I’m not or if they don’t really care about my identity just accept me for what I am as I’m able to blend in like a chameleon. Let me begin with a brief biography. I’m a local boy but my parents were immigrants from China. I was born in High Street, Armadale at Windermere Hospital. So I’m an “Armadillion” before Armadale became a fashionable and wealthy suburb. I grew up in St Kilda, Malvern & Glen Iris and did my schooling locally at Malvern Central School, Melbourne High School, Prahran College of Advanced Education (which is now Swinburne TAFE) and Toorak State College (where the grounds of Stonnington Mansion is located and was a former home of the Governor General). I currently live in Camberwell, so I haven’t moved very far from where I was born.

I spent most of my childhood living in a Chinese restaurant called the “Taiping Café” in St Kilda Junction. The building is still there but it’s no longer a Chinese restaurant. Because my parents worked there nearly seven days a week, I was very much a loner and spent my weekend evenings there watching TV while they worked.

My first experience of Christianity came through one of the part owners of the café, Baw Lam, who told me about Jesus when I was 10 years old and taught me to pray. He told me to always thank God for what I had and to talk to God as if he was really there and to end my prayer by saying “in Jesus name, Amen”. One of the most insightful things he told me was to listen to God and I could hear God speak. I tried praying in silence, trying to listen to God but I don’t think I heard him. However, I had an innocent heart and mind, and each evening I would pray as I had been taught and I would feel at peace.

I had limited exposure to Christians because of the family business schedules. The Christians I met were at Religious Instruction classes on Wednesday morning. The RI teachers had something special about them and showed consideration towards me. I remember them taking a small group of us on picnic to Mordialloc beach one Saturday and I really enjoyed that day because they were loving people.

Baw and Syliva, one of the other staff at “Taiping Café” were associated with the Salvation Army. The Salvos occasionally had dinner in the banquet room and at the end of the meal, they would call me over and say a prayer for me. I was really touched by their kindness.

When I was about 12 years of age, Baw gave me a copy of “Good News for Modern Man”, it was the first version of the Good News translation of the News Testament. The Good News stayed on my bookshelf for five years before I picked it up to read. I was mentally immature and not interested in reading it.

When I was 17 years of age, I suffered from severe depression. I desperately wanted to find the meaning of life and was reading books which only depressed me further like the French existential writers, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. I would often walk the streets on a cold Winter night looking at puddles and just wallow in further self pity. My grades at Year 11 in the first half of the year were appalling. I failed every subject. I told a friend of mine about my depression and he told me to pray to Jesus and to read the Bible. I took the Good News from off my bookshelf and began reading the Gospel of Matthew. As I read the Gospel according to Matthew, my heart burned. I believed everything I read and I believed Jesus was the Son of God. I also started to pray every day.

One day, my friend invited me to a coffee house called “The Bridge” in East Malvern. It was probably one of Melbourne’s first street churches. They served instant coffee and raisin toast and played rock music containing lyrics about Jesus. I remember, Geoff, one of the members of “Bridge” asking me if I was a Christian. I said, “I’m trying to be”. He said, “You don’t try to be a Christian. You just ask Jesus to come into your life as Lord and Saviour”. That night, I asked Jesus to come into my life and the Holy Spirit dwelt within me. My body began shaking all over and all the sadness, the depression, the suicidal thoughts were lifted from within me. Jesus had healed my heart and my mind and with only 2 weeks to go before my final year 11 exams, I got high grades. My class teacher could not believe the turn around because I had all the indications of failing year 11.

I believe that God chose me even though he has given me a free will to choose him. Despite my limited exposure to Christianity due to my sheltered childhood, I was touched by the Religious Instruction teachers, the Salvation Army and a Street Church operating as a coffee house. If you haven’t caught onto the link about my chameleon characteristics, you will now. God has blessed me with the ability to worship and be accepted by all Christian denominations.

As a university student, one of my friends at the University Bible study group introduced me to St Paul’s Anglican Church. I began going to the youth group associated with this church and found they practiced the charismatic gifts of healing, prophecy, speaking and interpretation of tongues. There was peer pressure on me to experience the Baptism of the Spirit. Although, I had reservations accepting this to be a separate event, I had hands laid on me during a Sunday night service and felt a filling of the Holy Spirit. Those laying hands on me wanted me to speak in tongues. During that night as I slept, my tongue started moving about and I woke up the next morning speaking in tongues.

Thinking that everything seemed to be out of order, the vicar suggested I should get baptized in water. So about 6 weeks later, I was baptized by full immersion in a swimming pool in the middle of Winter. Little did I know that I would fall by the wayside. My charismatic experience could be compared to the seed that has fallen on rocky soil, I was excited at first but gradually lost interest and stopped going to church.

I plunged even further and got caught up with looking for a job, a girl friend and a future marital partner and didn’t care whether she was a Christian or not. My parents wanted to me to marry a Chinese girl and I resisted and it just happened that when I met my wife and fell in love with her, she just happened to be Chinese. I compromised with the wedding ceremony and went for a civil service and basically turned my back on God for many years. Until I suddenly realized my two kids would be starting school and I felt it was important that they have good morals and church would be the best place to start.

I walked into South Yarra Baptist Church one Sunday morning and it was like I had never left God’s family. God was so forgiving and the community so warm. For some reason, God wanted me to serve him immediately. I soon found myself leading worship services and in a few months, I had become a deacon, then secretary, a member of the Prahran Interchurch Council and later Vice President of the Prahran Interchurch Council. I was on the Pastoral Settlement Committee and you could say responsible for calling Nathan as your pastor.

At the time, I returned to church, I told Beatrice, my wife, about what it means to be a Christian. She didn’t understand me but she didn’t object to me or the children going to church. But the seeds were planted. It just took a while for someone to do further sowing before the seeds spouted.

As for my own inner spirit, I was restless. I was so busy and tired of running around doing things at South Yarra Baptist, that I wasn’t nurturing my own spiritual needs. I began having holy communion at the Seamen’s Mission on Wednesday lunchtime. The high Anglican eucharist was celebrated by the two chaplains, a steward and myself. I told the chaplain I was baptized in water in the Anglican church and he suggested I should get confirmed as an Anglican. I went ahead with the Anglican confirmation and some members of the South Yarra Baptist Church attended including Pastor Mike Enright, who was at the church for a year.

Shortly after Nathan came to South Yarra Baptist Church, Nathan, Margie and I started to have regular early morning prayer meetings at 7am. I hung around at South Yarra Baptist when Nathan began to write his own liturgy and we would worship in the garage on Wednesday nights. I didn’t object to what Nathan was doing nor did I dislike what he was doing, for some reason I wanted to look for another dimension in Christianity outside the Baptist church.

I began worshipping with the Catholic Charismatics at St Francis Church in the city and I also joined a Christian Meditation Group. You couldn’t find two groups so totally different in worship styles. I even worshipped with the Quakers for a little while. I began exploring Catholicism and decided to become a Catholic and was confirmed in the Catholic church. But for some reason, the conservatism of Catholicism, didn’t appeal to me and I didn’t hang around.

I was also looking for a family centred church to enable my children and my wife to become Christians and I joined an independent, interdenominational, evangelical , charismatic church called the Liberty Christian Church. I came across a very loving cell group in that church who really cared for my wife and kids. None of my family members had taken a step to become a Christian but they were touched by the love the members of the cell group showed towards them.

I am sure the seeds were sown for my family at South Yarra Baptist Church and Liberty Christian Church, it just took them a while to respond and when they did respond it happened within a very short period of time of each one becoming a Christian. First, my daughter, Belinda, bumped into an old school friend from primary school, who got her to join the English speaking youth group called “Fusion” at Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church. Next for some strange reason, my son joined the Cantonese speaking youth group called “Catalyst” at Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church. Finally, my wife made friends with members of the Chinese congregation and a couple called Wendy and Gary spent many hours explaining the Bible and Christianity to her that she became a Christian at Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church.

Obviously, the sign was there, I had no choice but to join Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church. I have always avoided Ethnic Chinese churches because I am a multi dimensional person and I have never felt a desire to worship with a very homogenous group of Christians. However, I seem to find that my home is with Baptist churches because this is where God uses my talents the best. I am not a practical person. I’m not good with using my hands or making things work. But I have lots of ideas. I’m a visionary. I’m a church builder and God has used these skills in me at Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church (MCBC). I joined MCBC at a time of change when they took the bold step of appointing a female pastor, Sylvia Griffiths and she began to restructure and change the worship service. I had already developed worship leading skills from being at South Yarra Baptist and I found my service at Melbourne Chinese Baptist Church almost mirroring my service at South Yarra Baptist Church. As well as worship leading, I became the church representative on the Kew Inter Church Council and the delegate to the Baptist Union. I assisted interim pastors, conducted the farewell service for Sylvia Griffiths and the induction service for Pastor Charles Olsen.

You may ask why have I come back for a second serving at South Yarra Baptist Church. I have a real spiritual hunger. I find the danger with being too busy and doing things at a church is that you can lose sight and forget about your own spiritual health. Worshipping again at South Yarra Baptist Church has been a time of healing for me because I’ve known I have been empty inside. As Christians we really need to get ourselves right with God before we can help others.

Let me conclude by saying to any of you now who are struggling with your faith or you have friends or family members who are not Christians, don’t give up praying and asking for guidance. Jesus, the farmer, has sown the seeds. It is up to us to respond and even though we may get excited and the interest dissipates, or we get distracted and let the other priorities take a hold of us, or we actually feel nothing, the challenge for us is to continue our walk with God. We may stumble and fall, but don’t stay there. Pick yourselves and you’ll find God’s grace and love so overwhelming that he will guide you along the path towards his Kingdom.