Trinity Church Eindhoven

This is a testimony to glorify Our God.

I am undertaking a PhD in Biophysics — a subject I find very interesting but one which can often be a challenge to the faith of a Christian. Biophysicists try and sometimes succeed to understand the way the bodies of living things work by applying the laws of physics and mathematics and performing experiments. These living things can be animals, fish, birds, you and I, the tiny cells in our blood, even germs, and many other things.

But doing that is not always easy, as I soon found out for myself. My supervisor and I had brainstormed over a difficult problem which I thought nearly impossible to solve, for many months we could find no solution. That made me sad and I thought I wasn’t going to succeed in my study. I had almost given up trying and my focus was gradually turning away from work to many other things. Early last year, my pastor approached me and said, “Henry, you need to focus on your academic work.  It is a serious thing, not play.” I don’t know how he figured that out, but it's true what the bible says that "these pastors watch over your souls" Heb 13:17.  Knowing he was right I went back into study with rekindled interest, but still got nowhere near solving the problem.

One Sunday after the summer holidays last year, just before the end of the service one of our leaders stood up and asked for the church to pray for our school children who were returning to school from the summer holidays, so they all came to the front to be prayed for. As they went up I thought, “Hey, I’m going to school too.  I don’t mind being a kid to get some prayer.”  So I went to join them.  I still remember the words that Francis our pastor prayed that day, “Lord, help them to know that they can call on Your Name whenever they experience any difficulty in their studies.”  I hence made up my mind that I was going to be doing a lot of calling on the Name of the Lord from then on, because I needed God’s help!

So that same week when I got to my office I took a look at the problem once more, thought about it a little more, then stood up and prayed, calling upon the name of the Lord.  “O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!  Father of my Lord Jesus Christ …”  Then I got back to my chair.  After about a few minutes I had an idea which got me REALLY excited.  It was the first flicker of light and I thought, “This might very well do it!”  So I got down to building a demonstration that I later showed to my supervisor, who also got very excited after seeing it.  “This might very well be our break, Henry!”

And he was right, except that that was only the first step.  So after I had used the idea to write a computer program, I began to test it.  Surprise, surprise!  It didn’t work!  Clearly something was missing, but what was it?  I tweaked it here, and fixed it there and there, and it still wouldn’t work. Meanwhile pressure built up, as my boss told me I needed to write an article about my work.  How was I going to write about my work, which wasn’t working?  Very soon I was also going to get married and my then fiancée needed me to help her in the preparation. I didn’t know how I was going to meet all these expectations in time before my wedding.

You know, there’s something I learned in this life of mine: God takes His own time. A few more months passed so I asked my fiancée, my friends in our EfM study group, and KidzChurch to pray for me since  there seemed to be no resolution.  Friends, it is a wonderful blessing when you have the body of Christ, his church praying for you.  Even though I hadn’t yet solved my problem, I felt my burden ease. I remarked to myself one morning that this burden was being carried on the shoulders of God’s church herself. I was not alone! I had a peace about it, not panic.

One day my fiancée and I visited our pastors (as most couples about to get married do).  During the meeting they gave me a tip on how to listen to God. So one Saturday morning I prayed to God saying, “Dear God, you know all things.  Show me once more that you know everything.”   I then lay in bed and just remained quiet. Afterwards it suddenly struck me to write down an equation: to cut a long story short, this equation was the answer!

These are my supervisor’s words to me in an email:

I promised our pastors I would have to give a testimony one day about this. For this story is about God, and about you, his church. I know some of you after this might want to congratulate me, but I prefer that you do not. I’ve heard much of that already and frankly I don’t deserve it. But rather praise the Lord!  For He helps those who are poor and weak and in trouble.  He saves them from their distress.  I’m sure many other students here can testify to this.  He delivered me by lending me a tiny bit of His Infinite Wisdom.