She was given a vision of two possible futures she could have, yet she ran straight for the nightclubs

Since she was a young child, Tessa Tin understood the power of the choices people made.

Though she did not really know who Jesus was, she felt there was a God and that He was Jesus. Her mother, though she did not believe in Christ then, had been reading a children’s Bible to Tessa and her brother. 

Young Tessa with her brother and mother.

When Tessa was three or four years old, she ran up to her grandmother and declared: “Ah Ma, if you don’t believe in Jesus, you won’t go to heaven and you can’t see me again.”

Her grandmother, a staunch believer of another faith then, was taken aback by her young granddaughter uttering such an intense statement.

In 2014, when Tessa was 11 years old, her grandmother was found to have Stage 4 lung cancer. Her grandmother had her own divine encounter before she died and became a Christian at her deathbed.

Tessa’s grandfather, despite having severe dementia, also articulated in a moment of clarity that he wanted to be baptised on the same day as his wife.

Tessa with her Ah Ma during the last moments of her grandmother’s life.

Following her grandparents’ conversion, Tessa and her parents began going to church.

“Back then, I still didn’t really know who Jesus was or understand much about the Gospel. I just knew that I enjoyed being in the church community and I felt I was growing as a person,” said Tessa, now 22.

But when secondary school started, Tessa threw herself fully into school life. She found herself anchoring her identity on the accolades and achievements that she racked up: She was elected as the president of the Student Council at Commonwealth Secondary School. She was also constantly among the top few scorers in her cohort every year.

“I later realised that the aspects that I built my identity on were like straw when things came crumbling down,” Tessa told Salt&Light.

Tessa with her Student Council team.

A student council president who was bullied 

Things took a turn for the worse when Tessa fell out with her best friend. He rallied her friends to ostracise her and started spreading rumours about her to the rest of the cohort.

“I got bullied in school after those rumours spread. Though I was still the president of the council, I felt like nothing more than the dirt on the ground,” she recalled.

As an extrovert who thrived on having fulfilling relationships in her life, being bullied and shunned led Tessa to have suicidal thoughts.

“I saw cars going by and I wondered about if I had stepped out right now and died, would anyone even remember me or care?” she admitted.

What held her back from killing herself was a sense that she would be disappointing God and her parents with such a move.

“God met me where I was and brought me unlikely friends to be with me during this time,” she said.

Classmates from her upper secondary class, with whom she was not close with, began to include her during recess and meal times. Though they had heard about some of her “unlovable” traits – pridefulness and a lack of empathy – it did not stop them from reaching out to her.

“God also gave me a mentor in church who had a similar experience in school to journey with me,” she said.

Tessa with her mentor Vanessa Lim who walked her through her difficult Secondary school days of being bullied.

It was during these difficult secondary school years that Tessa got baptised.

“I didn’t want to because then I felt I did not have much friends who would witness and celebrate it with me. But God challenged me and asked me for whom I was doing the baptism for,” she shared.

Tessa was baptised in 2019 when she was 16.

After completing her “A” Levels, Tessa went for an annual conference at her church. Though her church has always championed evangelism, she did not care much for it as it felt like another burdensome thing to do.

Tessa and her then lifegroup at the Hope Conference in 2022.

However, as she listened to the conference speaker, compassion arose in her heart and Tessa was convicted about her indifference towards the Great Commission.

She walked towards the altar in front in an act of repentance and response towards God.

As she knelt and closed her eyes, Tessa felt herself being transported to the gates of heaven.

“There was bright light shining through the golden gates and a Man in white, whom I knew was Jesus, walked towards me,” she recounted to Salt&Light.

“Jesus opened His arms wide and said to me ‘Welcome home, good and faithful servant’,” she added.

At that moment, Tessa was filled with an immense sense of love, joy and belonging. She also began to experience a series of “flash-forwards” of the life she would have had from that point in time (at 19 years of age) to the day she died.

“I saw myself chasing after the Lord and building up His name by loving the least, the last and the lost. I was bringing Jesus into conversations with people and they were accepting Christ. I saw visions of me getting to know God and making Him known in my daily life as well as going out to the nations,” said Tessa.

Suddenly, at a snap of a finger, the atmosphere shifted.

She was still at the gates of heaven, but the facial expression and mannerisms of Jesus had changed; they now emanated disappointment and anger.

“Go away from Me for I do not know you,” Jesus said to Tessa.

At that moment, her heart sank. It was filled with intense remorse.

“The remorse didn’t just come from being rejected from heaven, but because I found myself in an alternate life that was spent building up my own name,” said Tessa.

She found herself again experiencing a series of “flash-forward” moments of a different life, starting at age 19.

She saw herself climbing up the corporate ladder and earning “big bucks”.

“It was selfish. I achieved whatever success I wanted in the workplace and did not care about other people’s eternity,” she said.

When the out-of-body experience ended, she found herself bawling her eyes out at the altar.

“I was not a person who would cry at all. But I was crying with remorse over how so many people could have known Jesus in the timespan of my life yet I chose to live the life that I wanted to live, a life that was comfortable,” Tessa told Salt&Light.

She sensed that God had encountered her in such a manner because she was planning to live a “lukewarm Christian life” in university.

“He knew what I was really looking forward to in university was the typical university experience of clubbing, drinking and dating around,” she added.

At the altar, Tessa repented.

She told God: “I give You my youth. I give You my all.”

That pivotal encounter with God marked her.

She made some immediate changes to her life, including deciding not to go an optional orientation camp known for clubbing and drinking, as well as being accountable to her leaders in church about her love life.

Removing the rotten bricks of her identity

Yet it took only the first semester of university for Tessa’s world to come crashing down.

She experienced testing in every area of her life.

Home was no longer home to her because of how strained her familial relationships had become.

“I dreaded going back home from hall (of residence) on Fridays and looked forward to returning back to school on Sunday nights,” she admitted.

But she could not find refuge in school either. Used to doing well in school, now she found that giving her best no longer guaranteed her taking the “top” spots. She was struggling even to get “average” grades.

She used to pride herself as being someone everyone knows, the one who has friends everywhere. 

Being in a communications course full of ENFP (the Briggs-Meyers personality type characterised by extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving) kids, Tessa thought she would be able to find her “tribe” immediately. Instead, she found the people who shared the same timetable as her quite different from her.

Hall life, or the lack thereof, exacerbated the loneliness she felt.  Staying on campus, she thought that her social life would be bustling just like in the reels she had seen on Instagram and TikTok: Supper hangouts, birthday celebrations and gatherings that extend till the wee hours of the night.

“It wasn’t as fun or as wild as I expected it to be. I never really experienced being fully alone by myself so I felt very uncomfortable whenever I found myself alone in hall,” said Tessa.

On many occasions, she cried out to God, asking Him why was she alone and why could she not fit in with the rest.

Once when she was praying at night in her hall room, God gave her a vision.

She saw Someone kneeling down and removing bricks – which were rotten, mouldy and falling apart ­– from a building.

“For each brick that He took out, I felt the hurt in my heart. When all of them were removed, He placed the first solid and perfect brick at the edge ­– like a Cornerstone. As He continued replacing the rotten bricks with brand new ones, the building looked beautiful,” she described.

However, the process was so painful for Tessa that she did not wait for the vision to unfold further. She opened her eyes at that moment and the vision ended.

After processing it with the Lord, she realised that He was showing her that the building or house represented her identity and the bricks were what she had been building her identity and life upon.

“One brick was relationships, another was academics and the third was ministry and church. At that time, I had transitioned into a new cell group and there were many unfamiliar faces. Even church felt foreign to me,” she explained.

“When God rebuilt the house, the Cornerstone is meant to be Jesus Himself. But I was in so much anxiety, pain and disillusionment at how my life looked like then that I just shut myself off from God,” she added.

Tessa decided to run away from God, straight into the clubs.

“I was sick of living up to the expectations of being a ‘good Christian girl’. I stopped going to church and went clubbing with my hall friends every week instead,” she said, adding that she wanted to use alcohol to numb her pain and disappointment at the way her life was turning out.

Yet deep down, she still longed to belong to God and His community.

So before she went for her first clubbing night, she informed her church mentor of her intentions.

Tessa with her mentor Samantha who walked her through her clubbing and university days.

Her mentor listened to her, and tried to urge her to rethink her decision by asking her: “Give me 10 reasons why being a good Christian girl is bad and 10 reasons why being a rabz (rebellious, out of control) kid is good.”

“I gave her all my selfish reasons, and went anyway,” said Tessa.

Tessa partied hard, and drank so much, to the extent that there were times the DJ was pouring the alcohol straight into her mouth. She also had numerous close calls with the opposite sex while drunk – these could have led to severe consequences.

“In those moments, it was always at the back of my mind: What would Jesus think or do when He saw me like that. I could still feel His presence even when I was numbing myself with alcohol,” said Tessa.

She had lived up to her image as a rabz girl so well that her friends expressed surprise upon learning that she is a Christian.

Tessa letting off steam, having fun on the dance floor.

Though she had fun during these times, the loneliness hit her even harder when she was alone back in the hall.

“You can’t outrun your problems. When you are sober, they would just come back and haunt you. I was at my lowest valley yet the Lord was so near to me when I cried out to Him,” she said.

During this time, Tessa began journaling and learning how to process her emotions and thoughts with God.

Her good friends also came over to her hall room and tried to bring her to her senses.

“Tessa, this isn’t you. What are you doing?” her friend who was about to head to the UK for studies asked her before she left.

Tessa with her friend, Ashlyn Cheong (left), who gave her a “wake up call” before she flew off for her studies abroad.

Another friend also dragged her outside her room and lectured her for an hour about running away from God when she had made certain promises to Him.

“Despite me putting up a persona of being a rabz kid, they saw who I was in God’s light. They cared more about my holiness than my happiness,” Tessa told Salt&Light.

Tessa’s friend, Tammy Chong (right), who challenged her about the life she was living.

After about a month of running away from God, Tessa came to a point of realisation.

“How could I have tasted the goodness of God yet choose to run away from Him? He was constantly chasing after me and pouring out His love even when I felt like I deserved it the least,” she told Salt&Light.

Decisions at the crossroads in life 

“I realised every person has to come to a decision in their lives whether to choose the world or to choose God. For me, the world is good but God is better,” she added.

Tessa returned back to church and experienced a newfound freedom in living out her faith.

Tessa with her life group when she returned to church.

“In the past, there were all these expectations of being a good Christian girl and all that it entailed. But now everything that I do – whether it is reading the Bible or praying or worshiping ­– it is done out of receiving His love and wanting to get to know God more rather than being good at religiosity,” Tessa said.

It was only when she returned to God and surrendered her family situation to Him that she began seeing how God would bring her whole family on a process of restoration and healing.

Tessa with her family members.

She also used her wilderness experience to speak into the life of a mentee of hers who was going through a similar phase in life.

Tessa will graduate from university next year. She intends to dedicate nine months thereafter –­ her firstfruits post-graduation ­­– to learn more about the Bible, discipleship and missions with a YWAM (Youth With A Mission) school in New Zealand.

Recalling the pivotal vision that God gave her that showed her the two possible life routes that she could have lived, Tessa said: “ The choices we make will determine the lives we live. The smallest choices we make ­– like whether to go for cell group or do something else ­– either brings us closer to God or away from Him. Each decision builds upon the one that came before.

“But God knows our weaknesses and He still chooses to show us His love when we fail. His grace is enough for us.”

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