John Kao wanted to be a good boy. His mother, who had become a Christian through the preaching of a British missionary, wanted John to read the Bible, pray and attend church with her. But her beliefs contradicted what was being taught at his secondary school in Shanghai. The teaching were full of communistic and atheistic ideas.

“As a good Chinese boy should, I tried to please my mother,” recalls John. “But I believed that the Bible was filled with myths and funny stories.”

John’s ideas changed in 1949 when he and his family fled Mainland China to Hong Kong. His mother took him to Kowloon City Baptist Church. There, he heard the pastor preaching on 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

John finally understood his sinfulness, and he raised his hand to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour.

“I prayed, and I realized that my heavenly Father listened to my prayers. I read the Bible, and I believed that it was the Word of God, even though I did not understand many things. I developed an appetite for God’s Word.

“I enjoyed the fellowship other brothers and sisters in church. I started to talk to unbelievers about Jesus even though from time to time I experienced ridicule. I had pity on them and prayed for them. From all these changes in my life, I realized that I had become a child of God.”

John Kao went on to build a successful life following Jesus. He is the founding pastor at Toronto Christian Community Church, General Director of the Association of Christian Evangelical Ministries, associate professor of the Chinese ministry program at Tyndale Theological Seminary, and the author of several magazine articles.