The Grace of Repentance

Believe

Preface

Thank the Lord for once again granting me the grace to testify for Him. I feel deeply ashamed because my past experiences are rather unique. Thus, every time before giving a testimony, I feel very weak and lack the strength to do so.

I came to believe in Jesus on December 8, 2013. Now, with one month to go, I will have believed in the Lord for six years. During this period, I have received countless graces from God. Among these graces, the greatest for me is the grace of repentance.

The ability to repent has been the greatest grace in my journey of believing in Jesus. This is because, by my own ability, I simply could not repent. I used to live in my own world every day, and for me to be able to repent is truly miraculous.

In the past, I experienced countless failures and could never rely on my own strength to repent. Just a few days ago, while sharing the gospel and giving my testimony to a colleague, as I spoke, the colleague got upset and said something to me. What did he say? He said, “Fool!” He blurted this out during my testimony. In the past, if I heard something like this, I would think: “Sigh! What am I even doing? First, I’m ruining my own image; and second, I’m letting people insult me. Isn’t this just foolish?”

But when he said that to me on that day, I thought to myself, “I am exactly that person.” I told him, “You’re right; I am a fool.” I said, “My wife often calls me that, too. Not only does she call me a fool, but she also says many other things… ‘You’re a liar! You’re a scoundrel!’ … She’s said so many insulting things about me. And I admit it all because I really was that kind of person.”

A few days later, in the morning while I was busy sweeping the courtyard at work, a colleague saw me tirelessly cleaning while others were resting and chatting. He said to me, “Wang Feng, were you really that kind of person before?” He might have heard about my past from other colleagues. After learning about it, he was shocked and asked, “Were you really that kind of person before? I can hardly believe it!”

I said, “Yes, I truly was that kind of person. What you know is just the tip of the iceberg of who I used to be. If I were to tell you all the things I did in the past, you might react differently.” Now, I want to share with you this tip of the iceberg, focusing on the repentance between my wife and me, the saving work God has done in our family, and His saving grace.

A Shattered and Broken Family

I was born into an ordinary family, but my family was pitifully unfortunate. From the time I started kindergarten until around the second grade, I remember wearing open-crotch pants all the time. At school, I often felt inferior and ashamed. When I was in the first grade, my father got into a fight and was arrested during a nationwide crackdown on crime. He was sentenced to three years in a labor camp.

During that time, many of my classmates would say things to provoke and humiliate me, things I didn’t want to hear. I felt deeply wronged by life. I kept asking myself, Why was I born into this family? Not only were we poor, but my father was also such a disgrace. Why do other families have it so good? I carried this question with me through life.

When my father was released, I thought the labor camp might have reformed him, that he would feel remorse and become a better person. He owed so much to our family and especially to my mother. My mother had singlehandedly raised my sibling and me during those years, enduring an incredibly difficult life. We even had to borrow twenty yuan from neighbors just to pay our school fees. After school, with no one home, I’d sleep by the front door. I thought my father would return with a sense of guilt and try to repay what he owed us. But to my dismay, he had picked up many bad habits during his time in the labor camp and became even worse.

At first, he seemed to improve for a short while, but it didn’t last. Soon, things escalated. My parents frequently quarreled and fought violently, sometimes with knives or scissors. My mother attempted suicide three times. Once, she drank pesticide when I was around ten years old, just old enough to understand what was happening. I saw her foaming at the mouth and rushed to push her to the hospital, where she was saved. She also jumped into the river twice.

One time, during a fight, my mother stabbed my father with a knife. At the time, we were making tofu at home, so there was a knife around. She stabbed him in the back. I was about 14 or 15 and in middle school. When we got to the hospital, the doctor saw the wound and said, “This is a knife wound, just two centimeters away from the kidney. Who did this? You need to report it!” I told the doctor, “My mother did it.” The doctor turned and walked away without saying anything more.

The conflicts between my parents were incredibly deep, and during their fights, my mother often called for my help. Being a boy, she expected me to stand up for her. When I was little, I’d use a rolling pin. As I got older and stronger, I’d use a stool. When I grew even bigger and stronger, I didn’t need any tools—I could fight my father directly. Several times, I beat him so badly that the police were called to arrest me.

Because of all this, there was no bond between my father and me. In my mind, the word “father” had long been erased. For many years, I didn’t even call him “Dad.” The term felt foreign to me. I had a father, but I refused to acknowledge him. We hated each other deeply, wishing each other dead, and said the most venomous things to each other.

Growing up, I vowed to myself that when I became an adult, I would never be like my father—smoking, drinking, or abusing my wife. But things didn’t go as I hoped. When I grew older, I found myself unable to avoid these very behaviors. I started drinking with my friends, and soon I also picked up smoking. Once I got drunk, I lost control and ended up doing all kinds of things I later regretted.

My Family Followed the Same Path as My Past

At that time, I had been in a two-year relationship with my wife, but I never invited her to visit my home. When our wedding was approaching, I finally took her to see my family. She was very upset and said to me, “Wang Feng, you’re a liar! How could your family be like this?” She felt deeply deceived. Later, feeling helpless, she said, “Well, I guess if we can live well together from now on, that’s fine.”

However, after we got married, our life was neither peaceful nor happy. I had many drinking buddies, including classmates I grew up with. We often drank together, smoked, and went to nightclubs. Even after getting married and having children, I continued to deceive my wife and hide the fact that I was meeting other women.

The first time I hit my wife was when I was chatting online with a Korean girlfriend on MSN. She found out and became very angry. She caused a lot of trouble, destroying things I had set up. I became furious, and at that time, she was pregnant with our first daughter. I hit her, and I hit her hard.

From then on, I lost control. Whenever something upset me, I would often hit her and mistreat her. After each incident, I would deeply regret it, realizing that I should never have hurt her. I knew that a man who hits women is not a real man. But while I knew this in theory, I couldn’t follow through in practice. Once my anger flared up, I lost all reason and couldn’t control myself.

There were many times when my wife had to deal with the consequences of my reckless behavior. After a night out with friends at a nightclub, when we didn’t have enough money to pay the bill, the club owner would call my wife to settle it. This pushed her to the brink. Each time, it would lead to an inevitable confrontation. During this time, I wrote her letters of assurance, promising that I wouldn’t do it again. I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t want to repeat it. But after a brief period of calm, I would fall back into the same cycle, and once again, my wife would catch me. She would pull out the letters and show them to me, and I would tear them up and throw them in the trash.

For nearly eight or nine years, she endured this suffering, hoping that I would change, but she never saw that change. In the final incident, I beat her so badly that she couldn’t get up from the floor. I asked her, “Are you going to accept it now?” She still refused, and I kept hitting her.

There were many occasions when I hit her so badly that the police were called. After calling the police, I would run away. When the police arrived and found no one, they went to my parents’ house. My parents told us, “We can’t show our faces anymore. You two go find a place of your own.” They pushed us out.

In the midst of this pain, my wife couldn’t control her emotions. Many times, she secretly went out, bought a bottle of liquor from a street vendor, and used it to numb herself, trying to relieve the pressure inside. She would smoke, even burning herself with the cigarette. Why? Because she hated herself. She hated the fact that she had chosen me. She regretted choosing someone like me. I didn’t change, and it only got worse—each time more intense and more violent.

After the last beating, when she was bruised all over, she went back to her parents’ house. My father-in-law called me, saying, “Wang Feng, what is wrong with you?” At that time, I still didn’t feel that I was in the wrong. I replied, “She’s your own daughter, don’t you know her?” I said it with a sense of defiance, with no guilt or regret for what I had done. When he heard this response, he immediately hung up the phone. Looking back now, I deeply regret how I treated them.

My wife returned home to pack her things and said to me, “I’ve endured this for eight years! The child is now six years old and growing up. I’m ready to let go. I’m going to divorce you.”

When she said this, I replied, “You’ve got it wrong. You shouldn’t be the one saying this to me. I should be the one asking for a divorce. You leave first, and I’ll find someone even more beautiful than you to replace you.” I used this kind of cruel language to provoke her. This only strengthened her resolve to leave me.

The Unexpected Grace That Came

Just as my family was on the verge of falling apart, thank the Lord, He chose me.

After I believed in Jesus, one of my convictions was this: since I chose to believe in Jesus, I must believe wholeheartedly and never be half-hearted. I felt that if I wasn’t going to believe, I should just avoid Him altogether; but if I believed, I should commit fully and not be careless.

How could I live like a person who truly believes in Jesus? Whenever I had the opportunity, I would come to this church. I would attend the gatherings, listen to the sermons, and absorb as much as I could. I would learn a little and then go home and try to live according to what I knew, striving to live that way. I am deeply grateful! The grace of the Lord has always been sustaining me, leading me, and continually guiding me to repent.

When I first believed in Jesus, I would talk with my brothers and sisters and ask them, “What should I do to live like a true believer in Jesus?” They would ask, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to start by living like a believer in my own home.” They explained to me what I should do: “The things you used to want to do, you must stop doing; the things you used to avoid, you now need to start doing.”

I thought about it. At home, the things I didn’t want to do were washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. Now, I needed to start doing those things. The things I used to do and enjoy, like smoking, drinking, lying, and cursing, I had to stop doing. So, from that moment on, I quit smoking, quit drinking, and even stopped lying. At that time, lying was a serious problem for me; I could lie without even thinking. To be able to change my habit of lying and cursing was truly a miracle because on my own, I could never have changed.

At that time, I told my wife, “I’ve accepted Jesus. Let’s not divorce for now.” She was very indifferent. She replied, “Believe whatever you want, it’s got nothing to do with me! This marriage is over.” I said, “Why don’t you give me three more years and see how I do?”

She replied, “What are you talking about? Three years?!”

I said, “Okay, one year is fine.”

She said, “That’s impossible!”

I said, “Then let’s make it three months.”

She responded, “Go away! Do whatever you want.”

I said, “Since you’ve made up your mind, even if we do divorce, I’ll still wait for three years to show you if I’m truly living like someone who believes in Jesus.”

Jesus Is the True God

She saw me changing day by day, with new transformations every day. She was very surprised and amazed. She knew that whenever I had previously written apology letters to her, I would lose interest after a few minutes, and eventually, I would return to my old self. So at first, she didn’t take me seriously. But as the days passed, then weeks and months, she saw that I was changing more and more. She realized that my belief in Jesus was not a lie.

One night, while I was watching an evangelistic movie, the characters in the film made vows to God, to their families, and to their work. I felt this was very good, so I copied the vows. After I wrote them, I told my wife that I wanted to apply the same principles to myself—honoring my faith, being reverent toward God, being loyal and loving to my family, and doing my best at work. I said I would do this too, and I signed the vows with my name and the date.

When my wife saw this, she was deeply moved and started crying. She cried and then punched me while holding me, crying and hitting me at the same time. She kept saying, “Why are you not the old Wang Feng? Why?!”

At that moment, I couldn’t understand. I thought, “Is she crazy? Didn’t she see what I used to be like? I’ve changed for the better, and now she wants the old me back?” I didn’t understand. Then I closed my eyes and prayed to the Lord: “Lord, why is this happening?” And then, I experienced a miracle. In just a few seconds, I saw before me, like a movie, all the ways I had mistreated my wife in the past. I realized—I had killed her heart with my actions. She had already decided to divorce me, but now, seeing me repent, she was struggling to make a decision. She felt torn. She didn’t want to leave, but remembering my past, she was angry, resentful, and firm in her decision. She was in turmoil.

I said to her, “I know now. I understand.” She asked, “What do you understand?” I replied, “I was so bad and cruel to you in the past. I am truly sorry.” I said, “From now on, I will make it up to you. I will truly follow Jesus. I was not living as a man before, but now I am sincerely repenting, listening to the Lord, and taking responsibility for our family.”

My wife said, “There really is a God! I’ve waited for so many years. You didn’t change, and things kept getting worse, but now I have finally seen this day come. It’s worth it! I also want to go to church with you and get to know Jesus.” I said, “You’re welcome to come to church.” From that point on, my wife started attending church, and moved by God, she repented and believed in Jesus.

In our family, we experienced the salvation of Jesus. The relationship between my wife and I changed greatly, becoming much more harmonious and peaceful. And, quite unexpectedly, my father was baptized and believed in Jesus in July this year. Thank God! Our family has truly received great grace. On my own, I lived more than thirty years in failure, and it was impossible for me to repent. It was God’s grace that changed and saved our family.

All glory be to our Lord Jesus!

【Faith Testimony】Wang Feng: The Grace of Repentance

(November 9, 2019)

Feng

Published on 2024-11-21, Updated on 2024-11-24