Devastated after being cheated on, he hunted for hook-ups on dating apps … only to find a greater Love pursuing him

Even at the young age of six, Seth Yeoh was a perceptive boy.

He noticed that the photo of a woman that his father carried around in his wallet was not of his mother. He also often overheard snatches of conversation between his father and grandmother that concerned some other woman.

Young Seth in his childhood days.

Seth innocently shared all these information with his mother, who realised that her husband was having an affair.

“When my relatives found out that I was the one who bao toh (spilled the beans on) my father, they hated me for it. My mother was the ‘princess’ in her family and they felt that if I didn’t tell her about it, she would have continued living in a bubble of not knowing about it,” said Seth, now 32.

Toddler Seth with his mother.

Abused while growing up 

He became an outcast in the family, and had various forms of abuse heaped on him. His uncle, whom his family stayed with after his father left them, and grandfather often hit and slapped him.

Often he was given spoilt food to eat, and he spent many meals eating with the helper instead of with the rest of the family.

“Everyone told me that if I had not done this or that, my family wouldn’t end up this way, and that I was better off not being born,” said Seth.

Growing up feeling rejected and being abused, Seth began showing signs of depression from the age of 11.

To numb his pain, he engaged in self-harm behaviours. His suicidal thoughts led him to drinking cups of detergent and drove him to the window ledge of the 10^th floor flat where he lived.

There were times when he crossed a busy road slowly, hoping that a vehicle would run him over.

“Once, I nearly got hit. The driver cussed at me for almost making him a murderer and he told me to go further down if I wanted to die,” said Seth. The incident only made him feel even more unwanted. 

He kept to himself and had no friends. But there were a few times when he heard a voice clearly in his head telling him not to self-harm.

“The voice told me not to do it, that I was not alone and he was with me. I took him to be my imaginary friend and every night, I talked to him,” he said.

His first brush with Christianity  

A counsellor in his secondary school in Penang, Malaysia, noticed Seth’s depressive state and paid him special attention.

“She told me that even if your family don’t love you, there is a person that loves you. His love doesn’t change based on who you are or what you have done.

“That was my first encounter with Christianity,” said Seth, who was born into another faith tradition. His younger brother was a temple medium and his family members often served in the temple.

Seth began asking his counsellor more about Jesus. Each time he wanted to read the Bible, he had to approach her to do so.

“It was like a storybook to me. But over time, I noticed my depression improving. I didn’t want to die anymore and looked forward to interacting with others in school,” said Seth.

The counsellor also noticed the change in him and sent other students with mental health challenges his way so that he could share with them his own experience.

In Secondary Five, Seth left school to start working in order to help support his family. His first job was being a promoter in a CD shop. A colleague of his from the shop brought him to church for the first time.

“When I entered the place, I felt so much peace and love that I never experienced before. The people were so nice that I wanted to be planted there,” he said.

So his friend brought him to the Pastor and Seth asked if he could be baptised, thinking that he needed to do so to become a proper Christian.

The Pastor was happy to hear his request but asked him if his parents were aware of this desire of his.

“I didn’t really tell her about my family background. I just told her there’s no point asking them as they would not allow it,” said Seth.

The Pastor replied saying believers are called to honour their parents and that she could not baptise him if he did not follow God’s teachings.

“She meant well but I was so broken that I took it as a rejection. I thought Jesus accepted me for who I was but when I came to His house, I was turned away. I hardened my heart and thought: ‘Who needs God anyway?’” he added.

From then on, Seth strayed from God. He found that he could no longer hear the voice of his childhood “imaginary friend”.

Bought a one-way ticket to Singapore 

As he moved from one restaurant or sales job to another, life was not easy. His friend who came to Singapore to work urged him to find an opportunity in the neighbouring country.

Seth sounded out the idea with his mother, proposing that he might be able to support the family better with such an arrangement.

His relatives got wind of it, and began pouring cold water on the plan.

“They said I can’t even speak English and am not highly educated. If I failed and came back, they asked if they were supposed to take responsibility of me,” said Seth.

Their discouraging words hurt Seth. He realised that they were not the family that would help him to thrive.

He began skipping meals to save up for his future. By the time he was 22, he closed his bank account and bought a one-way ticket to Singapore. His mother only found out about it the night before he flew.

A year after he started working in Singapore, he entered a relationship with someone he met while he was working in a restaurant.

When she learnt of his family background, she was determined to let him experience the family love that he lacked. He moved in with her and her family, and her family members loved him like their own.

“They talked to me, checked on me and cared about me. So my plan was to marry her after three years if we were still seeing each other then,” said Seth.

He had bought a ring and was intending to propose to her during their family trip to Korea. However, they had a quarrel there and she told him that she was not ready to commit to him.

When they returned to Singapore, Seth started noticing that she often stayed out late. One night, she came back drunk and Seth took care of her.

Her mobile phone buzzed and he checked the message, thinking that her friends must be worried about her. It was then that he found out that she had been cheating on him for some time.

“I was devastated and shocked. I couldn’t sleep, wondering if I did anything wrong and why I wasn’t good enough. Then I heard a voice telling me that because I was the one who destroyed my parents’ marriage, therefore I also don’t deserve a good relationship,” said Seth.

Emotionally, he shut down and continued going to work the next day, though he was offered time off.

“I dared not rest because I know that if I were to sit down and think about it, I would just keep crying,” said Seth, who broke up with his girlfriend subsequently.

Multiple strange encounters while at work  

A few days later while he was at work, a customer at the café he worked at noticed the cross hanging on his neck and asked him if he is a Christian.

Seth said no as he wore it merely as a fashion accessory then.

She looked him in the eye and told him: “Do you know that Jesus loves you?”

Seth did not know how to respond. He changed the topic of their conversation and walked away to serve another customer.

The cafe that Seth worked at when two women separately spoke to him about Jesus.

The next day, he was back at the café introducing berry tea to a customer. He mentioned to her that it was a cold brew, and the process of making it was somewhat like making wine.

“Oh, that’s interesting. Do you know that the first miracle that Jesus performed was to turn water into wine?” she asked him.

“I guess,” Seth replied her nonchalantly.

She looked him in the eye and said: “Do you know Jesus loves you?”

Seth was taken aback. He did not know why a different woman was telling him the same thing. He wondered whether they were from the same church.

“I thought maybe they were taking part in the same outreach activity and had KPIs (key performance indicators) to meet,” he recalled. 

So he brushed it off and exited the conversation awkwardly.

A few days later at teatime, Seth was serving a customer who was a lecturer. He found himself opening up to him and sharing with him his life story.

Midway through their conversation, the lecturer asked him: “Do you know Jesus loves you?”

“This is the third time I am hearing this,” Seth blurted out to him.

Despite the uncanny encounters, Seth went about life as usual.

“I felt it could be a coincidence. I found Christians quite hypocritical then and I had also ‘abandoned’ God after my last church incident,” he said.

In the meantime, he continued grieving over his break-up. It unravelled him.

In a bid to fill up the hole in his heart, he started smoking, clubbing and drinking. He turned to tattooing himself to remind himself that he could still feel pain.

Seth in his drinking days.

He also went on dating apps to find casual partners to sleep around with. “I felt that sex and love did not need to go hand in hand,” he said.

Seth had listed himself as a “Christian” in his dating profile as he felt that would get him the attention of more girls.

Meeting “weird” Christian girls on the dating app 

There was a girl he had been talking to online for a while. When he proposed a meet up, she asked if he wanted to go to a church service together.

“I didn’t know where that was going but I agreed, thinking that we could get down to hooking up after church,” said Seth.

She picked the church Kingdomcity for both of them to go to on their first date.

Unlike the previous church that he had gone to in Malaysia where they sang hymns, he found Kingdomcity too loud, boisterous and overwhelming.

Seth told the girl that they could look for another church, but eventually he ghosted her.

Later on, he met another girl on the dating app who asked him if he was planted and serving in a church.

“I didn’t want to bother telling her the long story so I just came up with some excuses and said I don’t need to go to church because my relationship with God is enough,” said Seth.

The girl, according to him, then went on a “mini preaching session” of how God created believers to thrive in community and the reasons behind it.

She asked him to pray about it as she wanted someone that was equally-yoked.

“Okay, I will pray about it,” he texted her. 

“No, can you do it now over the phone?” she insisted, perhaps doubting whether he would really pray about it in his own time. 

Wanting to impress her, he recorded a prayer on voice message and sent it to her.

“Dear God, I want to know you again. Find me a place that feels like home. If I ever go to any church for two times, I will be planted there,” he prayed.

“I didn’t see it as a prayer, but just something to impress a girl. I was also quite confident that I will never go the same church for two times,” said Seth, who did not have a good impression of his previous visits to two different churches. 

After praying, he asked her if they could now meet up.

“No, we will see how God answers your prayer first,” she replied.

Feeling that she was another “weird Christian girl”, Seth ghosted her.

A divine encounter at a hawker centre 

Six months later, Seth was carrying the Kingdomcity tote bag (that he received from his first visit there) while ordering dinner at Beauty World hawker centre.

Unbeknownst to him, Pastor Andrew Leong from Kingdomcity was enjoying a plate of sambal stingray with his fellow Kingdomcity pastor Matt Fielder nearby. Pastor Matt was visiting from New Zealand and was craving for thunder tea rice but the stall was closed that day, so the two Pastors settled for stingray instead.

When Pastor Andrew saw Seth’s Kingdomcity bag which had a manta ray plushie hanging on it, and a manta ray tattoo on the young man’s arm, he felt it was a divine appointment.

Seth with the Kingdomcity tote bag and plushie at the hawker centre that night.

Pastor Andrew shouted loudly across a table: “Wow, look at that bag, so nice!”

Seth turned around and recognised him to be the Pastor of the church he had visited previously.

They struck up a conversation, and Seth frankly told Pastor Andrew his misgivings and concerns about the church.

Pastor Andrew was unfazed and proceeded to invite Seth for their Sunday church service the next morning.

“Even though I showed no interest in going, he gave me his number to contact him should I decide to go so that he could reserve for me a seat,” said Seth.

On the way home on the bus that Saturday night, Seth suddenly heard the voice that he used to hear in his childhood once again.

“Didn’t you just pray that if you ever go to any church for two times you would be planted there? Now, I sent two Pastors from that church to you and you are still rejecting them,” the voice said.

Though the voice came through very clearly, Seth was eager to prove the voice wrong.

“I wanted to challenge and prove that the voice was wrong – that even if I were to go there a second time, nothing was going to change,” said Seth.

Provoked, he followed up on the challenge by texting Pastor Andrew immediately to tell him that he would be going to church the next day.

Pastor Andrew was surprised to receive the text from the young man so soon after and replied that he would get him a seat the next day.

Wanting to further prove his belief that “all Pastors and Christians are the same”, Seth asked him if and when he could get baptised, anticipating that he would get rejected like he was in the past.

Instead, Pastor Andrew told him that if he was serious about it, he would baptise him tomorrow after the service.

His response threw Seth off guard.

“I was both excited and nervous at what I had gotten myself into,” said Seth. When he managed to find a replacement for himself at work the next day – which turned out to be unusually easy – he decided to go with the flow and turn up at church.

Pastor Andrew received him when he arrived in church. There were many friendly people who welcomed him with hugs and high fives, but all he wanted to do was to find a seat in the back row.

The seat that Pastor Andrew reserved for him, however, was right at the front.

“Feels like home!” 

As Seth sat down and tried to settle down for the service, he saw the church’s tagline flashing on the screen. It read: “Feels like home!”

“That was literally what I had prayed for, a church that feels like home. I told God: If You are real, let the sermon speak to me,” he said.

The sermon that day by Pastor Matt Fielder was on the prodigal son. It resonated deeply with Seth who had been away from God for the last 10 years (since the day that his baptism request was turned down) and he felt unworthy to be welcomed back in such a loving manner.

When the salvation call came, however, Seth did not raise his hand. He felt too scared to do so.

“There is one more person here who has been away from God for 10 years. God is waiting for you and knocking on the door of your heart. We will also wait for you to respond,” the Pastor called out from the stage.

“No one there knew about my past. I knew God was calling me so I raised my hand in the end,” said Seth.

Following the service, Pastor Andrew managed to scramble and secure a church member’s condominium pool in time to baptise Seth and a few others who had raised their hands for baptism that day. The church has scheduled baptism dates throughout the year after its members go through a “Faith Explained” course but this time, Pastor Andrew felt prompted to make an exception.

Seth and the other baptismal candidates were briefed on the significance of baptism before entering the pool.

Before he was submerged, Seth warned Pastor Andrew that he had not even been able to close his eyes when showering daily. This was because he nearly drowned twice when he was young.

Pastor Andrew reassured him and prayed before immersing Seth into the water. Seth dutifully closed his eyes as he went down.

“I felt like I was suffocating and drowning when I was in the water. But I came back alive after dying inside when I came up. When I opened my eyes, everything looked brighter and sharper, and I felt a heavy weight literally lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t know I was viewing the world in dull colours in the past,” said Seth, who now does administrative work with local design studio Beyond The Vines.

Seth overcame his past trauma of drowning during his baptism.

From that day onwards, Seth began worshipping in Kingdomcity church. His life was transformed when God brought him through a process of forgiving the family members who abused him in the past.

“I didn’t know there was so much hatred in me towards them. But the moment I forgave them, God gave me my first vision: I saw my immediate family members serving in church,” said Seth, who is currently the only believer in his family.

Seth serving in the coffee ministry in church.

Seth serving with others in church.

His family members have also since reconciled and grown closer.

Seth on holiday with his family in Taiwan.

Looking back at his own journey thus far, Seth believes firmly in what Joseph proclaims in Genesis 50:20 – what the enemy meant for evil, God meant it for good.

“No one is too far away to be saved. God has chased after me – the one sheep, leaving the 99 – in His goodness, mercy and grace.”

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