By David Chiang
Life was hard being a member of a poor family living in a small village in Malacca. My mother worked as a rubber tapper to feed ten children. My father, who worked only occasionally, was seldom home. Daily, from 4 am to 5 am, I had to help my mother tap rubber before going to school. After school, I had to do some farming. This background of hardship shaped my thinking about money.
Money was the family's primary concern and soon the idea came that gambling was the quick way to get rich. I fantasized about striking it rich through gambling and I was well-known as a gambler even in my teens. After my graduation, I went to Singapore to work for my eldest brother who had started a business there. I fell into a wrong crowd - a mahjong playing group - and I was soon hooked on the game.
During the eight years I was in Singapore, I got deeper into gambling and owed people money because of gambling losses. In 1985, my brother sent me to Hong Kong as part of his business expansion plans to tap the China market.
My early days in Hong Kong were without problems. But birds of the same feather flock together and soon I was associating with a group of friends who were mahjong `kaki'. My days and nights were consumed by mahjong sessions. At one time, we gambled non-stop for 36 hours!
I got married in 1989. During the first few months of marriage, I played the role of a good husband - avoiding my gambling friends and keeping my wife company. But it did not last. Before long, I was back to my old ways. And this time, the gambling habit began to take its toll on my personality.
Gambling had become my master. I became moody and prone to emotional outbursts. My marriage went downhill and fast. Eventually, the inevitable happened: divorce.
My gambling habit had destroyed what I had forgotten to appreciate: my marriage and family (I had a daughter by then). I thought of suicide during the divorce proceedings but I was afraid to face death. My life had become a nightmare and I had no other relatives and real friends in Hong Kong to turn to.
Then I remembered a lady friend from my hometown who had witnessed to me about Jesus several times. I had mocked her then, saying that ‘only the weak turn to Jesus'.
When I met her, I poured out my woes to her. She invited me to join her at her church on a Sunday. I will not forget the date - 28 March 1993 - when I went to the church. It was the day Jesus became my Saviour and the Lord of my life!
I experienced no dramatic transformation at conversion. But I knew I had a new lease of life. I began to see the ugly side of me – which was something I had been blind to before. Eventually I gave up gambling and never returned to the habit. Some years after becoming a Christian, my brother, having been convinced that I was indeed ‘a new man', gave me a chance to start a business of my own.
Today, God in His mercy has restored to me what I had lost through sin. He has not only prospered my business but also blessed me with a new God-fearing wife and three children.
The devil came to destroy through bondage of habits and by whatever means he can to enslave us. Jesus came to set us free. If, like me, you are bound by habits you cannot break free from, there is only one person who can set you free from sin and all the attendant evils that sin brings into our lives. That one and only Person is Jesus.
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