One October afternoon in 1973, my brother stood in front of a dozen secondary students in Bario, a remote village in Sarawak, Malaysia. In tears, 23-year-old Solomon Bulan announced his resignation as the advisor of the school’s Inter-Christian Students’ Fellowship, confessing that he felt unworthy to lead the group. He saw himself as a hypocrite, lacking personal conviction and a relationship with God. He felt disgusted and ashamed of his lifestyle of drinking and partying, and he struggled to model what he was preaching to the students.
At the close of the meeting, a normally timid…
