Impact of Discipleship: Antonio Truong
/“[I would] pray to God and ask him to bring me to a local church if it was his will, but I hoped it wasn’t”
Discipleship is what allowed me to truly know who I was in Christ. It showed me that my identity is not found in anything besides Christ, and this is one of the main things God taught me throughout the process of discipleship.
I was born and raised in the town of Oxnard, California. I was raised in a middle-class family that was established, secure, and taught their children relatively good morals. My mother, who is from Mexico, is a self-proclaimed Catholic. My father, who is from Vietnam, is an agnostic by categorization. They raised me to value my education, my future career, and being a good person all around. I grew up hearing about the story of Christ but only heard the gospel for the first time in high school when I was searching for truth.
When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I knew I wanted to follow Jesus Christ with my life. Sadly, I had absolutely no idea what that looked like. I knew no followers of Christ to show me how, so I tried to follow Jesus my own way. Since I didn’t know the word of God or what being established in a bible-believing local church looked like, my walk with Christ became mingled with my carnality, my biases, my prejudices, and caused me to be a self-righteous legalistic heretic. Deep down inside, I knew it was wrong, but without being sober-minded and given up to my own lusts, sin was produced. I would then go to pray to God and ask him to bring me to a local church if it was his will, but I hoped it wasn’t. If it was, I wanted it to be my way. I kept going back and forth between wanting to follow the Lord rightly and wanting to be in control of what that looked like.
“I was living in the many identities I made for myself to fill the void that was still within me”
God ended up answering that prayer in August of 2018 when I moved to Kansas City and found Midtown Baptist Temple: the complete antithesis of my expectations for what a church body should look like. It was hip, diverse, and the teaching was contrary to my doctrine. I sat down next to a guy during the second service and was desperately praying to God to keep him from speaking to me. Unfortunately (or maybe quite fortunately), he spoke to me. This person was Alvaro Briones, my discipler, my friend, and my brother and father in the faith. I hated it all, but I saw and knew one thing was true: the word of God was preached here. I knew I wanted it because it was the one thing that I didn’t know anything about. So, I stood around and signed up for discipleship because I wanted to know the word of God and requested for Alvaro to be my discipler because he was the only person I knew.
I was paired with him soon after, and we went through a few lessons before he had to go to India and I was going to fly back home to LAX for the winter. During this time, I was able to learn about who I was in Christ, what my salvation meant, and what happened at my salvation. At the same time, I was living in the many identities I made for myself to fill the void that was still within me. I was Antonio Truong and what that meant was that I was Chinese, I was Mexican, I was a hard worker, I was a responsible person, I was an upright dude, and most importantly, I was an ambitious student who had aspirations to become a doctor and make a lot of money.
As these feelings festered, I was presented with an awesome opportunity to be able to work in a lab doing research. This would cause me to be involved in a weekly meeting which was conveniently at the same time as the Bible study I was attending. I knew this opportunity would also create a way for me to be alone and away from the church body. It was also an awesome opportunity and a springboard for my future career. Yet, I knew I wanted to grow in Christ and that Bible study, time, and my priorities had a huge impact on it all. If I decided to go for that opportunity, the idol of career and education, it would have taken the centerpiece of my life. I would be prioritizing that over my walk of faith. Thankfully, I couldn’t put Christ second; I needed to make Christ my priority and decided against joining the research team.
Looking back, I can now see that that decision was significant in my walk. I was battling between the values I was raised with (my identity being found in my career) and truly choosing to follow the Lord. As I learned the word of God, I saw who I was in him, and I was put in the position of which identity I was to be found in. The one that the world had given me, or the one that Christ gave me when he made me a new creation. If I wouldn’t have made a decision to place Christ first that day I probably wouldn’t continue to be at Midtown Baptist Temple, or in a Bible study or even following after the Lord.
“Christ changed the very fabric of who I am”
After my return from California, Alvaro and I continued along with the lessons, and at this point, I started to see my growth begin to accelerate with a renewed focus and a ready mind. One of the things we did together, which I initially thought was terrifying, was evangelizing. I did not want to be talking to people and position myself in a place where I would be uncomfortable. Alvaro and I, as well as our friend Romeo, decided to go evangelize at Loose Park. We approached a group of large trees with people hanging from hammocks, playing music loudly, reveling, and using illicit substances. Alvaro asked us if we wanted to go talk to them, and Romeo answered quickly with a “yes.” I, on the other hand, remember thinking about how these “lowlifes” won’t want to hear the gospel and who knows what they’re even involved in. But, I turned to Alvaro and also agreed to go talk to them.
We went and talked to them and were able to have several conversations about the gospel. Afterward, it was dark and we headed back to the car to pray. I started to think about the entire experience and my attitude going into it, along with my prejudices and biases that were engraved into my body. We were in the car while Alvaro was driving around, and it was my turn to pray. I started sobbing and crying because the Lord showed me my wickedness and how I would rather have these people go to hell than preach the gospel to them. This day was one of the most impactful days of discipleship. The Lord is not willing that any should perish (John 3:16), but I was more than willing to let others perish because they were people who didn’t match up to my cultural standards and my relatively good person meter. I repented of my own perspective and adopted a biblical perspective where God is not a respecter of persons and where the gospel must not be withheld from any.
Today I still am that very same Antonio in the flesh: prejudiced, hateful, and wicked. The old man is still here but because of the process of discipleship, I came to learn of the promises of God’s word and came to learn that the old man was dead. The old man was dead and the new man who God made me was alive. That man is who I am and one who can thrive through allowing the Holy Spirit to reign over his life.
These two moments during discipleship defined what being conformed to the image of Christ meant. It is a continuous work and I am ready to let the Lord continue to work through me. There were more challenges along the way, along with more idols and other things I have had to work through, but gradually by being faithful to taking the steps of obedience to what God was showing me, Christ changed the very fabric of who I am. I am a completely different person and look back at all that God has changed: the values that I was raised with; the way I act; the way I think. Ultimately, the course of my life has changed. I tried to find my identity in my education, in my future career, in my ethnicity, in my relative standing of morality, and many other things, but through discipleship, I have learned I can only find my identity in Christ.
“[I] am growing to value the things of God, to love God fully, and to be a disciple indeed”
I don’t have everything I want but Christ is enough. If it wasn’t for having someone by my side showing me how to follow Christ, to show love and care as a father would, and to teach me the word of God, I wouldn’t know that. No reality of my identity would be evident in my life. I am born again and I have many fathers in the faith here at Midtown Baptist Temple and am growing to value the things of God, to love God fully, and to be a disciple indeed.
Antonio Truong is a member at Midtown Baptist Temple and is a part of C&YA. He serves on the C&YA photo team, the grounds ministry, and is also involved in one of the UMKC men’s Bible studies.