Looking back at my nine years of part-time study in theology at the New York Alliance Theological Seminary, serving as a visiting lecturer at Columbia University in 2013, and later helping the Columbia Chinese Bible Study Group — each leg of my life's journey bears witness that God's thoughts are higher than ours.

From asking God to raise up a church that focused on serving students and scholars, to later when spiritual elders encouraged me to start this church and I initially resisted, to then actively seeking and submitting to God's will, and now to joyful willingness — I have truly experienced that the Lord is not only a God who does wonders alone, but also the Lord who changes people's lives.

In this newest, small but vibrant Chinese church in Manhattan, every week on the way to church I am full of expectation — expecting to see how God Himself renews the lives of everyone in our areas of weakness: every participant coming to know the gospel more deeply, every believer learning humility in an environment of serving one another through both failure and success, learning faithfulness in difficulty, learning to love among people of different personalities, and together living out the power of the cross by relying on God.