A pastor named Alan Redpath from Moody Church in Chicago once said, “The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, the manufacture of a saint is the task of a life-time.”

Stanley became a Christian and was baptized. His new life in Christ begins.

In the first episode, we heard how Stanley, a young Singaporean from a traditional Chinese home, was seeking among many schools of thought. He wanted to know life’s purpose and direction. He signed up for a basic correspondence course in Bible knowledge. Since God unexpectedly answered his 2 questions without his full understanding, he “gave God a chance to accept Jesus”. Then at his friends’ encouragement and as a challenge, he said a simple prayer and invited Jesus into his life. He didn’t expect anything out of it; he just wanted to see whether praying was a foolish thing to do.

Let’s hear what happens next.

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Stanley: Although I come from a complicated background with so many different beliefs and ideologies, I chose to accept Christ with a miraculous conversion experience. Christ transformed my mind. At first, I wanted to “see and believe”. Now, being transformed by Christ, I “believe and see” with the benefits of “see and believe” intertwinned.

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Many years later, Stanley recalled that when he prayed to accept Jesus, it was not an earth-shattering event for him. On the contrary, after his prayer, he had a quiet and peaceful night and slept very, very well.

When he woke up the next morning, he remembered what he had done. Excitedly, he called Linda, his former secondary school classmate, who first shared the gospel with him. He told her, “Hey, do you know? I prayed and accepted Jesus!” Linda was overjoyed to hear the news. Stanley was also happy but also somewhat apprehensive. What should I do next? I prayed but my understanding of God is so very shallow. Where should I begin to know more about this God? What would happen next?

Linda suggested that Stanley go to church with her, and also to enroll in discipleship training with the Navigators. Stanley agreed. So this young sales engineer joined the Navigators, a Christian fellowship which comprised a group of professionals. Every week, these young people from different fields would meet to study the Bible, sing hymns and worship God together. Here, every young Christian had a spiritual mentor who discipled him or her one-on-one.

Stanley’s mentor was Lim Chin Keng, a senior bank manager who spent much time and energy nurturing the young man’s growth in Christ. This one-to-one discipleship training laid a very solid foundation of faith for Stanley. He realized that a healthy Christian life must have four indispensable “pillars”. First, one must diligently study the Scriptures. Second, one must pray often. Third, one must fellowship with brothers and sister in Christ and live out the biblical precepts. The fourth is to share the gospel and one’s testimony with others.

To deepen his understanding of the Bible, the young Stanley used a card system to memorise scriptures according to themes. Looking back, Stanley recalls that he had a love-hate relationship with these memory cards. He loved them as they were small, easy to carry around and easy to refer to. But why did he hate them? Because memorisation had to be “word perfect”, it was challenging. A huge amount of time was needed to meditate upon Scriptures, to thoroughly understand them so that the verses would stick in his heart and his memory. Memorization is a very painful discipline. A friend in London recalled later with great humour that Stanley was the Navigator man who could memorise many Scriptures.

The young people in the fellowship tried to relate what they had learnt to their daily lives. They discussed boy-girl relationships, stewardship, attitude towards work and people, faith, honesty and so on, in the light of Scriptures.

Besides exploring these topics, they also spend much time praying for special needs of the group members. In such a learning environment, Stanley gradually learnt to tithe 10% of his monthly income to support church work or missionaries.

At the same time, his spiritual mentor Chin Keng encouraged him to share the gospel with his relatives, friends, neighbours and even strangers. Chin Keng would regularly take Stanley to Singapore’s busiest street to do street evangelism.

At first, Stanley was fearful that he would not be able to share well or would say the wrong things or embarrass himself. But as he learned to do this with an attitude of prayer, he saw the work of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of his labour.

He was encouraged and grew more and more confident. It was during this time that he chose the English name “Stanley”, which means a person who is strong, sincere and reliable.

At this time, he could very clearly see that human strength is weak and unreliable. But when one relies on God, even the weak would be made strong. As Psalm 16: 7-8 says, “I will praise the Lord who counsels me ... I will keep my eyes always on the Lord, with Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”

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Stanley: The truth has changed me but growing in Christian maturity has no shortcut. One has to worship God faithfully every day and let the sweet presence of Christ dwell in his heart. Also, we need to listen to biblical teachings and sermons to nourish our understanding of God. When we are deeply rooted in God’s truth, and   face temptations, we can stand firm and follow Christ regardless of the circumstances.

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The year-long discipleship training programme enabled Stanley to have a deeper understanding of the divinity of Christ. He was convinced that Christ was the true and living God. So in December 1975, he was baptized in the church.

Dear friends, you may think that since Stanley had become a Christian and the church has an added church member, the great work’s completed! Simply that ?! Really? A pastor once said that the conversion of a soul is a miracle of the moment but the transformation of a disciple takes a lifetime. Indeed, Stanley had just been baptized but his new life in Christ had only just begun!

He began to ask himself some important questions:

Since the Bible is so full of wisdom and knowledge, what are the things I should stop doing? What are the things I should begin to reflect upon?

How can I restructure my thoughts so that I can know God more day by day and be a better person?

Dear Listeners, do tune in to our next episode 3 as we continue to discover together with Stanley the answers to those questions. Our programme ends here today.