Metro Stories: Emily Shin

Before I came to Metro in college, I had gone to church my whole life. However, Jesus was not at the center of my life, not even at the periphery of it. I spent countless hours serving on the student leadership and praise team, yet my service was never actually moved by the Gospel. I didn’t serve out of reverence for God, but for the recognition I received from others and to preserve the reputation I had built up for myself.

That pretty much summed up my life as a self-proclaimed Christian. I only cared about how others perceived me. At church, I played the role of the “sweet Christian girl.” At school, I removed Christianity from my identity entirely so I could look cool and be admired. I changed my identity circumstantially based on the crowd around me.

When I transitioned into college, I carried that same mindset with me. For the first time, I lived away from home, made new friends, joined a new church, and pursued dance fully. It was an exciting season, yet I became even more eager to fulfill my desires. As a dance major, I constantly sought validation from professors, peers, and the industry, desperate to prove myself and “make it” in this world. I clung tightly to relationships just for admiration and status. My whole world was built around what I wanted, and ultimately, I was living only for myself.

But by God’s grace, it didn’t take long to learn that none of these could fill me in the ways I thought they would. My freshman year was filled with disappointments. I experienced how impossible it was to achieve the worldly view of success, my relationships started to fall apart, and I couldn’t fit in with the people I wanted to impress. I admittedly started to crash out, blaming others, myself, and God for all things that went wrong.

Yet, by God’s grace again, He gave me a place where I could begin to build a personal relationship with Jesus. As I continued to go to Sunday worship and community groups at Metro, I saw how Jesus was at work in the people around me. Even though I never shared the struggles I was going through, the pastors, leaders, and even peers encouraged me to want to take accountability and take the Gospel into action. They showed me a kind of love and care that so evidently reflected Jesus’ love. What I thought was a long and discouraging season was actually God refining me, showing me His greater plan and the redemptive story of Jesus. For the first time, I didn’t want to go to church just to keep my church girl reputation, but I wanted to live out the fruit the Gospel was producing in me.

In my healing, God exposed the emptiness of the things I had been living for and slowly revealed the fullness of Jesus’ love. There wasn’t one specific moment where everything changed, but little by little, through every conversation, sermon, and community gathering, God’s intentional work in my life softened my heart from the grudges I once held.

Life doesn’t necessarily get easier when walking with Jesus, but it has helped me understand how He works through those trials for His glory and my good. One of the clearest examples of this came in my second semester, when my school unexpectedly shut down. I was stripped away from the school I loved and had to leave the church where I felt at home.

Despite the tears and worries, what made this trial different was that rather than clinging to my own expectations and blaming others, I clung to the truth that even in this uncertainty, God is always working to refine me. Over and over again, God revealed how he worked through every moment I thought was the end of the world. He was faithful then, even from the beginning of time, so why would He fail now?

At my new school in Vermont, I spent a couple of months completely isolated with no physical Christian community and surrounded by temptations. Yet, God proved His unfailing faithfulness. I was able to continue my walk with Jesus through weekly FaceTime calls with my women’s discipleship group back at Metro and received encouragement every day from the community at home, reminding me to have courage and trust in the truth that God is with me wherever I am.

Coming back home, I’m still the same person who spends a lot of time serving at church. But now, I don’t serve to protect my reputation. I serve in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice and out of a desire for others to see Him work in their lives, just as He has worked in mine.

I’ve learned through my lowest times that God doesn’t want to see us suffer, but He uses it to bring us into clearer sight of Him. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m grateful for all the moments when I despised everything and thought the world was against me. Even there, I see how He never left my side, and it was there that I discovered what true freedom looks like—not in success, not in relationships, not in reputation, but in Jesus Christ alone.