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| Noel Esty ( |
I grew up poor but my life was relatively happy. I am the eldest of five children and my mother raised us by herself on the meager salary of a conductress with the local bus company. She was from the countryside and very religious, so when she came to the city where I was born, I was christened in two churches—a Catholic Church and an Adventist Church. When I became older, she insisted on sending us to Sunday School every morning. I therefore grew up hearing about God all the time.
She married my father shortly after I was born. Together they had one child before me who died shortly after birth, so I was treated like a special person. If I had even a hint of illness, I would be rushed to the doctor and I was always coddled and admired by the people around me. So from a very tender age I began to think I was somehow special.
I DIDN’T LIKE MY FATHER
The older I got, the more I began to realize that I despised my father. He started out as my mother’s partner, always working with her to better our life together, but somehow he started to stray and he made her cry many nights. At first he would be missing one night, then two nights; then for a week or two we wouldn’t see him. Then he eventually disappeared altogether.
I really liked my mother; she treated all five of her children as her special gifts. But when my father left, I recall many nights and many times when, after she got paid, she would just sit and cry because she didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t like my father, and more than that, I was determined that I would never be like him.
My parents had a second death in the family when I was 10 years old. I recall my father being there when my little sister was getting sick. The night she was admitted to the hospital, my mother stayed up that night watching her sick child gasping for breath. My mother woke him up and told him that she thought the child was dying, and I can never forget what he said—“If she were dying she would be cold and her toes would stiffen.” Then he went back to sleep. Dislike was piling up inside me.
That sister later died from a disease called diphtheria and when everybody was crying I couldn’t. I was sad and I tried but couldn’t. My mother came to me and told me I had no feeling, and at that moment I felt like me and my father were the same. It was scary, and I vowed even more not to be like him.
I actually witnessed many nights when my mother would quarrel with him for money to support his children, but to no avail. On one occasion when I was 12 years old, I took the bus to his workplace hoping to collect our monthly support money and he hid from me. I had to walk almost an hour back home through a scary part of the city. The same thing happened to my sister when she was 13 years old. On both occasions my mother cried and there was even one physical fight when he hit her. I was determined to never be like him.
MY DETERMINATION
I was sure I would become the exact opposite of my father. I reviewed every negative memory I had of him and tried to cultivate the opposite in myself. I always liked the British, and back then we had a lot of British programming on television. I liked the fact that they were gentlemen and I started to train myself that way. My father didn’t know how to treat women, so I spoke like the British, opened doors for ladies, and made it a practice to notice what they wore and compliment them. He didn’t know how to say he was sorry so I practiced that too. I became a consummate gentleman and every now and then I would check myself to see how far I was from my father.
By the time I became an adult, it got so bad that one day someone said to me, “It seems like your every move is rehearsed.” Of course I shrugged it off, but they were right; without even knowing it, I was becoming someone who was really working hard to control himself. Nonetheless, because it was working, I still felt special. By this time, there were many things I was convinced that I would never do—most importantly I would never make a woman cry, take God lightly, or become like my father.
BACK TO CHURCH
With the pressure of raising five children on her, my mother stopped sending my younger siblings to church as often as she had sent me. Later, my sisters and brothers started attending a new church but I refused to go. I would only go to a church that was serious about God, not the religious club that they were attending. I would choose the church I wanted to attend, one that was, in my opinion, serious about God.
With this decision, I didn’t attend church for about 10 years and I lived by my own cultivated values. All of my efforts appeared to be working, so I really felt like a man in control of his destiny. At the end of this 10-year period, my brother started to attend a church called Worldwide Church of God. This was an organization that believed in the Sabbath—and not just the one that occurs each Saturday but every one of the other Sabbaths mentioned in the Bible.
Now these people were serious—I didn’t even know that there were other Sabbaths. I started to attend that church and liked it; they were devout and really appeared to understand the Script-xures. I had now found my true church. I settled there and started to do the work of serving the church. I was charming, diligent and dedicated. Pretty soon I was in charge of all the young people as the Head of the Singles (unmarried people). I was really on my way.
MY WORLD BEGAN TO CRUMBLE
After attending that church for about two years, I really started to feel burdened. I tried to care about the young people, but they were really hard to care for. I once planned a trip to Blue Mountain Peak—the highest spot in Jamaica—and it went very well. There were times when quarrels occurred between a few of the almost 15 members, but I was able to resolve them by remaining calm and accepting blame as the leader. When we were leaving, people cried because they enjoyed it so much.
But soon I got tired of always accepting the blame. When we had an event I found that I had to do more and more work and spend more and more money and the members became harder to control. Eventually even going to church became a burden. In fact I started to have real problems with the content of the sermons—they seemed too contrived. On top of that, the international head of the church died and his son assumed control, and this son then decided that we were a new covenant church and didn’t need to keep the laws, including the Sabbath.
The church started to splinter and crumble. Then we began to find out about local pastors who were robbing the church and all kinds of mess started to unfold. I really got frustrated and stopped going to that church. More than that, I lost faith in the whole church thing. I now concluded that the Bible was just another history book. However, if that were the case, it doesn’t make sense, because every year they add a new volume to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why are there no new volumes to the Bible? But, it’s all nonsense I thought.
Eventually, my life started to unravel; every job I got at work ended in failure. In addition, I started to see myself making many women cry, not just one like my father. I struggled to preserve my image as someone special and likeable, but it wasn’t working. One day a lady who knew my father said, “You are really just like your father.” She meant it as a compliment, but I was shattered. At one point I really felt suicidal.
BACK TO CHURCH
I eventually looked around my life and saw I needed God, so I went back to my old church hoping for a change. Things had changed a lot, but shortly after I returned there was coup d’état and the new pastor, a really nice guy, was ousted. He decided to start his own church so I followed him. He started by having meetings with a few trusted men in which we planned how to create a church with a book about church planting as our guide.
The first church meetings were at his house, and it was OK for a time. Of course my diligence paid off again, and now I was in charge of the church finances. We had movie nights, but they didn’t really raise any money. I was an obvious failure as a fundraiser, so my pastor stepped in and said he wanted us to join the Amway pyramid scheme—apparently many other churches were in it. Somehow it didn’t sound right to me, but he was the pastor and a genuinely nice guy, so I went along with him to a meeting with Amway at a local hotel.
At the meeting the presenter from Amway told the audience how much money he made and how much we could make. I was uncomfortable but looked across to see my pastor salivating at the prospect of making money, just like the other non-Christians. Now I was really uncomfortable. He arranged for the Amway representative to come to our church and make the same presentation. I thought, is this a church? I didn’t think this was how it was supposed to go.
I decided to research Amway and found it on a site called “worldwidescams.com.” It was just a scam, so I got all the information together and tried to email it to my pastor. Amazingly my computer froze three times and the email never went through. I tried printing it, but I ran out of paper, and even when I got used paper, every attempt to print made my computer freeze. I was really scared. This was a Friday evening.
PASTOR KIM?
During this time I was also enrolled in something called “Evangelism Explosion” where I was taught to explain the gospel with the tenacity of an insurance salesman and never take no for an answer. I was failure at this as well. In addition, my pastor had met someone called Pastor Kim and every time we had Sunday Service he would repeat something Pastor Kim said. Later he recommended that a few of us attend the Bible study with Pastor Kim as well.
Three of us from the church started to go to an evening Bible study with Pastor Kim. The meeting was at his house, but since our church was also at my pastor’s house, that was OK. Pastor Kim’s accent was strange, but I had too many things I was struggling with—I was starting to look more and more like my father; my church was getting into something that was causing me great turmoil; I was causing many people, including the sisters who came from my church to the Bible study with us, a lot of pain and tears. My life was a mess. So when I could keep awake I listened because this was really different. Still I attended my church and Pastor Kim’s Bible study at the same time.
AMWAY AT CHURCH
The Sunday when the Amway person was to present at my church, I got up and I was extremely uncomfortable. I couldn’t find my car keys and after searching the whole house I found them under my pillow in my bed. I didn’t know how they got there.
I normally went to my church in the morning and Pastor Kim’s church in the evening on Sunday. So on the way to church I gathered all of the material I could print and explained to the brother in the car with me that I wouldn’t be there when the Amway person comes and that this was my evidence as to why I didn’t like it. He would have to make sure everybody, including the pastor, sees it. But that same day while I was leading songs before the service it just spilled out and I said everything. When I finished talking everybody was just staring at me. I had just defied the pastor in front of the church—I wanted to die.
Strangely, the emails I had attempted to send arrived the Monday right after this service—three copies—one for each attempt to send it.
THE GOSPEL
That evening when I went to Pastor Kim’s church he witnessed the gospel to me for the first time. After many weeks of personal fellowship God was able to break my image and save me. I can’t say that I chose this gospel or God—I wasn’t looking for it. I still had a hope that I could be a man in control of his destiny and that I could make myself into the man I wanted to be so everybody would like me.
When I stood before God, I saw that I was in fact the same man as my father and deserved to go to hell. Romans 3:23, For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, was a verse I had to study for evangelism training at my church, but I never understood it. The story of the man hit by the robbers was actually my story; I felt beaten and half dead.
When Pastor Kim showed me Hebrews 10:16–18, THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAITH THE LORD, I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR HEARTS, AND IN THEIR MINDS WILL I WRITE THEM; AND THEIR SINS AND INIQUITIES WILL I REMEMBER NO MORE. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. I was stunned; Jesus had really made me clean so I didn’t have to struggle not to be like my father. Jesus had already made me righteous.
Ever since then God has been holding and keeping me. I’m not someone who can restrain myself from evil or make myself a good person like I used to think; all of these efforts always end in failure. Shortly after I got married, I received a promise from God in 2 Thessalonians 3:3, But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil. With that Word I became free from trying to make myself into someone who is better than my father. I am actually worse than him, but Jesus has accepted the responsibility to hold me. By the grace of God I am now experiencing a “newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)
NEWNESS OF LIFE
I have been married for eight years now and we have been through many experiences, but I could see that even after I received true salvation I was still trying to keep myself. At first I struggled with sinning, and then I struggled to make myself live by faith—still working. That was how I lived for a while inside the church.
However as I listened to Pastor Park’s sermons I could see that he was trying really hard to get me to see that he was not someone with special spiritual powers. If that were the case, spiritual life would still be hard. He just put down his efforts and his way and accepted Jesus Christ as the driver in his life. When I thought about these words I could see that God was surely taking away everything I held inside my heart—my wife, my pride, my mother, my image and my ambition—everything. This really made me afraid and I felt that if this were to continue my life would be empty again.
Pastor Park was saying the only thing in his heart was Jesus. Apostle Paul said the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2:1–3, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Apostle Paul was once a great man as Saul; now he was a weak man and the only thing he wanted to hold in his heart was Jesus because in Jesus was everything.
Pastor Park was trying to get me to see that this is not a fearful thing. What do I have to fear, be it shame, difficulty or hunger? Jesus is greater than all of these things. Jesus was able to overcome all of these things in his life and Pastor Park wanted me to have the same faith and for that he tells the same story over and over again, each time with a different spin. It became clear that his hope was that I would let Jesus take complete control of my life and my heart.
My life still has many challenges, but I can see Jesus who is leading me to a new life where He is the only thing in my heart.