Former Catholic Nun Found Shocking Truth ! Former Catholic Nun Finally Found Jesus Is The Only Way To heaven - Jong-Soon Hyeon.
The following stories are from members of Hanmaum Church in South Korea. They aired on a Korean Christian TV network called C channel and were dubbed in English.
[Applause]
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Hello. My name is Jeong-Soon Hyeon from Hanmaum Church in Chuncheon. I was so thirsty for the truth that I even decided to be a Catholic nun for the rest of my life. Then I met Jesus who is the eternal truth and rose from the dead and my life became devoted to the mission that He gave me.
I'd like to share my testimony with you. I have two brothers and three sisters. I'm the fourth daughter. Ever since I was young I spent a lot of time thinking and had many inner conflicts. Why was I born? This world isn't a paradise; It's not always happy. Then what's the point of getting married, having children, and carrying on our lives without any answers. It doesn't seem right to blindly and irresponsibly bring children to this world and make them live out their lives. These are the inner conflicts I had.
Our family moved after I graduated from high school. The very next day, our next-door neighbor suggested that I attend Catholic Church, and I did. I began to have fellowship with the nuns. We prayed, read the Bible together, and talked a lot about life and truth.
Then I came across a book written by a Catholic priest, and I was wholly inspired to devote myself to living only for the Lord. I was 21 years old when I entered a convent. At the convent, we lived according to a set 24-hour schedule. It was to the extent where I felt like I had no freedom apart from the way I breathed.
After four years of this intense training, I prepared to become an official nun by spending a month in prayer and silence. Then I was shocked by an unexpected truth. I had been so convinced that a nun whose life was fully devoted to Jesus would become the most like Him and that she'd be the first in line to get into heaven. That was why, when I was entering the convent, I had earnestly and desperately prayed like this:, "Lord, I enter this convent on my own two feet, but when I come back out, let it be on my back." That had been my earnest request, asking God to let me live as a nun till the day I died.
Even so, during the entire month that I prayed and read the Bible, I realized that the words in the Bible had absolutely nothing to do with me. I had nothing to do with the Lord's salvation. I was like those five virgins who didn't prepare oil for their lamps. Salvation was harder than a camel entering the eye of a needle. Only passages like these seemed to be for me.
After the month-long prayer which left me with many questions, shock, and despair, I officially became a nun and was assigned to a church. My first assignment was a Catholic Church with about 10,000 believers. I was busy and tired with many things to do and my heart got more and more hardened. I appeared holy, but in reality, I wasn't.
I was transferred to several more assignments after that. During that time, my body and soul grew sicker due to being overworked. One day as I felt like I wouldn't last long like this, I was lying in bed in a basement room, and my family came to get me. That was how I came back out into the world.
After a long time in the nunnery, the world was a strange and scary place. I was called to come back to the convent, and I was conflicted about it. But I needed rest, and even if I did go back, I was worried about whether I could endure that hard life with my frail body. But more than anything else, after 10 years of living there, I had concluded that it didn't contain a truth that I could devote the rest of my life to.
While I was lost and not knowing what to do, my older brother hurriedly set me up for marriage with a child friend of his, and that man is now my husband. As we were getting ready for the wedding, something happened. We were taking a walk together, but a huge fire broke out at the mountain we were hiking. A helicopter came to save us, and everything around us was turned to ash. We barely managed to escape, but I was afraid that this might be the foreshadowing of a difficult marriage.
My husband happened to love drinking. He was someone who worked hard and did his best to live for the practical things in life. But I was someone who thought that being a hungry philosopher was better than being a pig with a full stomach, so we weren't compatible from the start. My husband berated me for being an idealist detached from reality.
In this way, our thoughts ran a parallel course. We never gave into each other's point of view, and we argued over every little thing. I became a wreck inside. I concluded that I could no longer live like this. Then I felt like a failure. I'd failed as a nun, and I'd failed in my marriage. Once again, I didn't know what to do, and my sister recommended that I try going to a church retreat.
At first, I didn't really want to be there, but after four days, my heart opened up through one message. I had learned that salvation could never be fulfilled as long as we lived in this world, and I had believed that salvation would be determined after I died and my entire life was evaluated. But at this church, I was told that human beings didn't deserve to be saved. All this time, I had strive to attain salvation through my deeds, and these words made so much sense.
I felt assured that salvation was attained through what Jesus had done, that it was a gift, and that I only had to receive Him. That was when I converted. I felt sure that I now knew the truth of salvation, something that had been impossible for me to know before, no matter how much I struggled and toiled. I felt relieved to have become a heavenly citizen, and I was happy.
I thought I could live a wonderful life without wandering as long as I lived according to this truth, even after I had kids. I felt like I could stop fighting with my husband and all my hardships would come to an end. I felt like my whole life could change after I completed this church's extensive discipleship training program. I even dreamt of becoming a missionary like the Apostle Paul.
But a year passed, then 10 years, then 20. And I was still left with a life that didn't change and an endless and repetitive discipleship training. My husband and I were still at war, and the Bible had no impact on my thoughts. The words of God had no impact on my life. I was exhausted and having a difficult time.
Then a close friend who had done discipleship training with me suddenly died. She was only in her early 40s, and she had to leave everything behind. I had no words to offer her. If the gospel was truly the good news to her, she would depart from this world with hope for eternal life. Instead, she was in denial about her death, and it was so sad to watch. Her death let me clearly see what my spiritual state was.
Frustrated, I left the church and my husband, and I lived abroad with my children. Later on, my husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and I had to return to Korea and look after him. I was struggling, and a friend of mine shared with me a lady's testimony. My friend kindly urged me to watch this testimony, telling me that it would help take the load off of my heart and give me strength.
The lady in the testimony was reciting Bible verses, and every verse she uttered was life and grace. This old lady's honest and humble testimony reminded me of the gospel of the Resurrection that I had heard from my daughter's teacher four years ago. This teacher had taught my daughter for two years, and she had left a deep impression on me when she told my daughter and me the gospel. She had been filled with such assurance. I eventually found out that the lady in this testimony and my daughter's former teacher went to the same church.
After some meandering, I found the church, and I heard the gospel there from a small church leader. The Pastor's sermons and the church members' testimonies. All said that you could believe in Jesus as God and believe in all the words in the Bible through Jesus's resurrection, the proof given to everyone.
It was the first time for me to hear that you believed in God through a proof. Until that point, I had thought that I could come to know God and believe in Him through my experiences or realizations, but that hadn't been God's Way. Through the book of Acts, the pastor talked about the fact that the news of the Risen Jesus was what the disciples had consistently shared. After reading the book of Acts, I could really see that the disciples had proclaimed, "Jesus has risen." ... "God made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." God had put countless prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament and had His resurrection written in history so that we could believe in God though we couldn't see Him, and all the words in the Bible, too!
Thomas, Peter and Paul had met the Risen Jesus. That was why they had carried out their mission of telling others about Jesus even unto their deaths. I had tried so hard to believe in God's words, but His way was to make it possible for me to say, "Amen," to all of His words through the resurrection! I felt exactly the same way as the disciples had when they met the Risen Jesus 2,000 years ago.
I had spent so much of my life conflicted and lost, because I couldn't understand the meaning of life. But all of my questions and conflicts were resolved through the words in the book of revelation about the Lamb who was slain. When God made human beings, He had given us free will so that we could have a relationship with Him and love each other. Even if we might sin with this free will, He had created us with the plan to save us by giving up His own life.
All this time, I had had a misunderstanding about Jesus. I had thought that He had caused us to suffer by making the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and having a sin. But when the meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil became clear to me, His life's taking love touched my heart. He considered our lives so precious that He had prepared everything before the beginning of creation.
I was also told about the Trinity. in 2nd Corinthians 4, it says, "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Because I didn't know exactly what Jesus was like, though He was the one I should believe in. I had lived in blindness without faith. I had thought that, although Jesus had come to this world as a man, He was still God, so He could deal with problems that normal people couldn't deal with.
I didn't know that He had come to this world as a complete human being. So I was shocked to read Philippians 2, where it said, "Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."
God the Son, Who was One of the Trinity, had come to this world as a complete human being. I was reminded of the verse in acts that said, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it." Then the Trinity became clear to me. After the Trinity became clear to me through the Resurrection, I came to stand before God's love.
Now I could understand why I had felt nothing in regard to the pain Jesus had endured upon the cross or His love. He had suffered disease and pain as a human being just like me! That was the love He'd shown me at the cross! Even in the midst of unspeakable pain, He had cried out for the Father God to "forgive them because they didn't know what they were doing" as He obeyed Him. His heart became real to me. His desire to save me, His love, was poured into my heart. Standing before Jesus's love, I could see how I had lived my life.
As a nun, I had cut myself off from everything that people pursued in the world and toiled so that I could win God's approval. Even after I converted and became a Protestant, I'd strive to achieve a life that God wanted through various training programs. But when things ultimately didn't go my way, I had lived resenting God. God had given us a shore and clear proof so that we could believe in Him, but I had lived without knowing about it.
What flashed before my eyes was the life I had lived trying to believe in God my own way, and I knelt before Him, "God, You gave us prophecies ahead of time, and You confirmed that anyone could believe in You through the Resurrection, but I was an unbeliever." ... "My heart was filled with resentment towards you and I lived calling you 'Lord' only with my lips." ... "I was an evildoer, and my faith had nothing to do with you, lord." ... "I was the Pharisee who didn't know Your heart, and I lived for my own righteousness." ... "You came to place Yourself at the humblest position in this world and gave up everything for me, but I didn't know that you loved me enough to give Your life for me." ... "Please forgive me for the sin of not believing in You, and being the Lord of my self." ... "I receive You, risen Jesus, as my eternal Lord."
I was so happy. The Risen Jesus truly was the truth that would quench my thirst forever. Only the word confirmed through the Resurrection was fact, reality, and the truth I should believe. My eyes were no longer blind. Hope was poured into me, and this confession spilled out of my lips: "I will never live according to my feelings and circumstances again. I'll only obey the words of the risen Lord from now on."
My life is like a jar of clay, but it has become the best life, because Jesus, the true treasure, is with me and in me. Now I see my husband as another soul, and I'm able to pray earnestly for him. I pray that he would meet the Risen Jesus and become freed from everything to live his life with Jesus's mission. Because I love my husband as Jesus loves me, we don't fight anymore, and peace has come to our family.
He is currently recovering from the surgery for his stomach cancer, and since I trust my Lord with it, I'm peaceful. Recently, my entire family attended worship service together, and we listened to the testimony of a cancer patient, how she had lived and died with hope in heaven. It was read by her daughter.
My husband told me that he had wept throughout the service after he had heard the lady's repentance about the fact that she had lived only putting her hopes in this world. My husband had never known God his entire life, and he had never sat through a whole worship service before. But he told me that two-hours service had felt like less than 30 minutes.
My friends in Busan, Seoul, and even America came to the last church retreat in order to listen to the gospel of the Resurrection. They were all people who had been thirsting for the truth, so all he had done was send them links to some testimonies, but they had all come together in one place for the gospel of the Resurrection. I saw them repenting throughout the retreat for the sin of living as their own lords.
The Lord said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," and I will continue to share about the Risen Jesus to those who are bound and oppressed by darkness. I was searching for the truth in life, but I was wandering because I couldn't find any answers. Then the Risen Jesus met me. I Love You, Lord. I confess that I ought to live for Jesus, Who is alive at this very moment and is with me forever.
"However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task, the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." This confession of the Apostle Paul has become my own. I pray that this will be the confession of everyone I meet. I'll devote my life to my mission. Thank you.
Source:
--- Thus Testimony from Jong-Soon Hyeon ...
- Ia membawa aku ke luar ke tempat lapang, Ia menyelamatkan aku, karena Ia berkenan kepadaku. - (Mazmur 18:19).
- Karena itu Aku berkata kepadamu: apa saja yang kamu minta dan doakan, percayalah bahwa kamu telah menerimanya, maka hal itu akan diberikan kepadamu. - (Markus 11:24).
- Segala perkara dapat kutanggung di dalam Dia yang memberi kekuatan kepadaku. - (Filipi 4:13).
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