“I was like garbage, I only knew how to hurt people”: Once he led men to crime, now he is leading them to God

He was a child from a broken home whose mother walked out on him when he was just three. Before he hit his teens, he dropped out of school. By his 20s, he was a gang leader. Though he imprisoned 10 times, he could not change for the better. 

Such was his life that Jimmy never expected to amount to anything. Yet he did.

“In the past, I was like garbage. I only knew how to hurt people. I was of no use to the world, caught up in sin. Even though I knew what I had to do, I couldn’t do it. I was in bondage.

“Now, I have had a breakthrough. God has changed my life.”

Jimmy Tng is now a Pastor at Blessed Grace Church.

In Part 1 of Jimmy Tng’s story, Salt&Light followed him from his chaotic childhood through his crime-filled teens to his last prison sentence where he became a Christian.

That was when the life he was meant to live truly began.

Led to love

After more than two years in prison for drug offences and a lifetime of crime, going straight was not easy for Jimmy. While he purposed to stay away from his old life, old friends and old flames resurfaced.

Said Jimmy, 61: “I knew that if I wanted to change my life for good, I needed someone who is stronger in the faith to walk with me.

“So I prayed, ‘Can You put the right person in my path?’”

On the MRT one day, Jimmy met a friend from his church, Salem Chapel. They got to talking. As the conversation turned to Jimmy’s hope for a life partner, his friend mentioned a woman in church they both knew.

“I told him, ‘No, she’s too young.’ I was 42 then and I thought she was in her 20s.

“But my friend told me she was actually in her 30s and that she had also been praying for a life partner. Then he encouraged me to approach her.”

Weeks passed, but Jimmy did nothing. Instead, he noticed that his friend had not been going to church.

“I approached my Pastor and asked if I could visit this man. Actually I wanted to find out if he had spoken to her about me.”

Not only did his Pastor agree that the visit was a good idea, he told Jimmy that another church friend had also wanted to visit the man.

“My Pastor told me, ‘Why don’t you contact her and the both of you can go together?’”

That woman, Joanne, turned out to be the person Jimmy’s church friend had told him about. Their Pastor arranged for them to exchange contact numbers. Despite getting the last digit of her handphone number wrong at first, the two eventually managed to meet up and visit their common friend.

“God led me to her,” Jimmy told Salt&Light.

After visiting their friend, Jimmy and Joanne went for a drink at a coffeeshop.

“I shared my background with her. She was very curious, very interested. We talked for a long time.”

That one drink turned to many text messages and then to dates. After 13 months, they got married in November 2005.

Jimmy and Joanne have been married for 20 years.

“After we got married, I did ask her why she was willing to accept me. She was such a guaiguai (well-behaved) girl who had never dated.

“But she said she was moved by my love for God. She believed that someone who longs for God is the very kind of person He had in mind for her because she had prayed for someone who sought God.”

Called to ministry

After his release, Jimmy worked as a gardener at a condominium, then as a delivery man at a church leader’s company.

“I was very happy there. There were Christians in the company and we would pray at work. At that place, I learnt how to work with people, to speak nicely to them.”

But the marketplace was not Jimmy’s final calling. In 2004, just six months after he was released from prison, Jimmy received a word from God about his destiny.

He was at a church camp and had gone up to be prayed for by the camp speaker.

“When he put his hand on me, he said: ‘You will be a Pastor in the future.’ I was shocked. How could it be? I had barely come out of prison.”

When it came to Joanne’s turn, the camp speaker gave her a word that confirmed Jimmy’s calling.

“He told her, ‘In the future, you will have to support your husband to teach God’s Word.’”

Not knowing what to do with the prophecy, the couple kept it in their hearts and prayed about it.

A promise to obey

It would be three years before they saw things unfold. They had just welcomed their first child, a daughter. When their Pastor-in-Charge came to visit them, he told Jimmy that the church wanted to send him to Bible school for theological studies.  

Jimmy never expected to graduate from Bible school, much less become a Pastor.

Full-time church work was the furthest thing from Jimmy’s mind then.

“My daughter was just born. I felt I needed more money to take care of things. So I just told him I would pray about it, but I actually didn’t.

“But God’s call is quite miraculous. You can’t run away from Him.”

On the night before Joanne and his daughter were to be discharged from the hospital, their doctor told them that he would like to test their daughter’s hearing.

“We were nervous. Why? Was there something wrong? If she can’t hear, then she won’t be able to speak either. I want to hear my daughter call me ‘Papa.’

“So we both prayed and I knelt down and told God, ‘Please let my daughter be healthy. If she is, I will go to Bible school.’”

The next day, their baby was tested and given the all-clear. Then they discovered that the hearing test was a regular procedure given to all babies.

“God is amazing. He knows me. He used this to make me nervous and make a pact with Him,” said Jimmy.

And the blessing flowed

While Jimmy pursued his studies full-time, Joanne provided for the family.

“My wife said: ‘Don’t worry. My pay is quite good.’”

His father-in-law, who had not approved of their relationship in the beginning, filled their kitchen with groceries every week for the years that Jimmy was a theological student.

“When I told him I was going to study, he said: ‘You don’t work then your family eat grass, is it?’

“But God must have moved him because he would come to our house every week to see what was missing and he would fill our house with a few hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and household products.”

Beyond an allowance provided by the church, there were also love gifts from others.

“The blessings just kept coming.”

After two years, Jimmy became a preacher in the Chinese congregation. He remained in that post for six years before his church asked him to further his education so he could become a Pastor.

Jimmy enrolled at ACTS College to earn a degree in Theology.

A new calling

Eight years ago when he was still studying part-time, a new challenge arose. Another church asked Ps Jimmy to be their Pastor.

“I thought I couldn’t leave my church. There were a lot of relationships there and my church was my home.

“I told my wife: ‘I cannot forget the church that raised me.’ But she asked me to pray about it. She had never asked me to pray like that before.

“I was surprised because it was also her church. She was baptised there.”

One day, Ps Jimmy was listening to a Christian radio station. The sermon was about Abraham sending his servant  to look for a wife for his son Isaac (Genesis 24).

“Then the preacher said: ‘Sometimes you have to step out in faith like Rebekah.’ When I heard this, my heart beat very fast. It was as if God was talking to me that I, too, should step out in faith.

“So I prayed: ‘If this is You speaking, I need You to give me a clearer sign.’”

A few days later while at a retreat, Jimmy sat next to a teacher from a Bible college. When it came time for prayer, the man prayed for Jimmy and said: “You have to step out in faith.”

Jimmy was stunned.

“It was the exact same words. When he finished praying for me, he patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Are you asking God for a sign? God has opened a path for you. You need to step out in faith.’”

Ps Jimmy went back to his Pastor-in-Charge who asked to pray with him every day for a week. When the week was up, his Pastor-in-Charge felt great peace. He agreed that “the call must be from God and he shouldn’t stand in God’s way”.

But Ps Jimmy had some requests of his new church, Blessed Grace Church. He wanted time to complete his theological studies; he wanted to continue attending a Hokkien Pastors’ fellowship and he wanted to be allowed to accept preaching engagements outside of the church.

They agreed to them all. That was the final confirmation he needed.

Changed to change others

At Blessed Grace Church, Ps Jimmy started a prison ministry.

“I have a burden for them. I felt they could better accept what I had to say because I was like them. If God can move me, He can do the same for them.

Ps Jimmy’s life testimony is a powerful motivation for ex-offenders looking to change their lives.

“Many in prison want to chance, but they can’t see a path ahead. I have my own expeirence for them to draw from and learn how to carry on with their lives, their work. There is a clear road for them as long as they want to walk it.”

There are now about 30 ex-offenders worshipping in the church, the fruit of that ministry. Some have even met their spouses in church and are now married. One ex-offender has gone on to start his own moving company that now hires those who have been released from prison. Another set up a cleaning company.

Ps Jimmy has also changed the lives of those close to home. Because they saw the difference in him, his parents became Christians.

“I came from a broken home. I have always longed for a family of my own. God knew my heart and gave me such a good wife and children. So I am so grateful.

Ps Jimmy (right) with Joanne and their son aged 16 and daughter aged 18.

“I used to hurt people; now I get to take care of them. I used to lead people astray; now I get to lead them to Christ.

“If not for God’s grace, how could I have such a family? How could I have a chance to do all this? That God would use someone like me, I am very thankful.

“This is such a different life. Now my life has meaning, has light.”

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