AWAKEN.
It’s 21st October, 2025. About a month before I turn 26. A few weeks before my first wedding anniversary; a little over 9 years of walking with Jesus, and almost exactly 10 years since I returned to Singapore.
And what a decade it’s been.
If you would have told 15 year old Edwin that he’d be where he is now; married, living apart from his family, working a non-profit, and flying all around the region, he may have done his best to avoid this life at all costs.
See, back when I was still finishing my degree, the move back to Singapore forced me to switch my undergraduate major from a Bachelor of Science in Business Management to a Bachelor of Arts in Global Leadership (even this title now is incredibly prophetic, for reasons we’ll discuss).
I moved back with the intention of finishing my degree while building my own PC, and committing as much time and attention as possible to my budding career as a content creator/musician. For months, as I was finishing my degree nocturnally, I spent hours on CS:GO, Overwatch, Minecraft, and writing to random rap beats on the internet. I made my own thumbnails. I made stream layouts. I edited my videos meticulously.
The height of this effort was when I manually cut together almost 20 separate beats in an effort to re-create the Pokémon Cypher 2016 beat to the T, just so I could cover it. I memorized all the verses. It was even shared with the Cypher Squad. I was on Twitter all the time — way too much for my own good, chatting with battle rappers, YouTubers and other online personalities.
I reconnected with some secondary schoolmates — none of whom were at my wedding — only to realize with great weight in my heart that missing out on 4 years of togetherness and friendship leaves no foundation for any kind of long-standing relationship.
In an effort to reach out to a friend; not really much for myself to reconnect with my faith, I attended a youth service with said friend on September 17th, 2016.
When I think back to how much I was trying to position myself; to seem cool to these new people I was meeting, those who didn’t know me at all; to try and be someone I thought I was so that I could project that image to them… I have a strange warmth and compassion in my heart. I remember what that felt like… what that still feels like sometimes.
That fateful Saturday was the catalyst moment for a cascade of new friendships; few of which came naturally or quickly. My lack of local cultural context was alarmingly clear, as was the inability to pick up on social cues. I was all too focused on getting people to like me to think about others as people with their own stories and hardships, too.
So ensued years of maturing and growing; stepping into service roles like being on the worship band, leading a small group of 16 year olds, and being around peers (after being isolated for the longest time) felt liberating.
While working part-time doing manual administrative statistics and training for a leadership training firm, I continued to grow in my music skills by attending a part-time course on songwriting and production. Frankly, it taught me things I now know anyone could easily learn on YouTube for free; but it provided me great access to a professional-grade studio, software, and an in-person community to do it with.
Parallel to this was my encounter with Awaken Generation and their mentors at the time. I was attending Revival Nights, sometimes to help them shoot video/photos, others just to participate. It opened my eyes to a larger Church — one that was just as passionate (if not more so) for the things of God than what I’d already experienced in my church.
The largest pivot in this season was enlisting. NS tested my mental fortitude at a level that I was not at all prepared for. The ins and outs of this season are mostly recorded in my old blog; the short of it is that I ended up making a severe amount of excuses not to work as hard manually, but somehow found great strength in serving administratively for my platoon.
Through a mentor at Awaken Generation, I was connected to Fireplace Worship; a collective of individuals who would eventually come to play a significant role in my life. I helped round out a song called “Eye of The Storm” with a 16-bar verse I wrote on the way to book in at Gedong.
You can read about that on thir.st, or stream the song directly here!
It was at this juncture, close to my ORD, it became clear to me that YHWH was calling me to work in a ministry capacity full-time. Not in what we’d label “marketplace”, but to devote my life to doing the work of God in ministering to people directly.
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Automatically, I thought “pastor”. I mean, isn’t that what people usually think when they think of ministry? That, or “missionary”, which carried with it the long-term, live overseas type of life.
With my parents and pastor’s blessings, I applied to intern at my local church…
… and with God’s blessing, that door was closed to me. Then seemingly out of nowhere, off the back of a pretty random video that was posted on thir.st as an afterthought, my now-supervisor DMs me on Instagram to meet for coffee. And the rest is…
… the story up till now. One relationship, two internships, 3 US trips, and 4 years later. Married. Appointed, anointed, commissioned. Yet…
Something’s still missing.
I can’t pinpoint it. Of all the many things I’ve learned how to do, being sure of something and living out of that confidence has constantly slipped through my fingers. My identity has gone through some final shaping and trimming (you can read/hear more about that here); and is now passing through the kiln. The first firing is underway; that being, the whole lead up into marriage, the many reminders of the primacy of sonship to Him, the solidification of the callings to Nations, business, arts, influence, and leadership. Global Leadership…?
For as much as my Learner and Input strengths reside in the top 5 (alongside Responsibility, Restorative and Belief), I am beginning to see how much more of an arts person I am inclined to be rather than a sciences person. Sure, that may be a false dilemma — but for the sake of this illustration, bear with me.
I surmise that my inclination toward the lofty and the big-picture, the overarching, cosmic narrative that YHWH is painting and orchestrating, is telling of this conclusion.
The details of a “science” would be then to focus and zoom in further on the minute and the exact (for which I am inclined to as well, to be certain); in this, however, I find myself lacking. I am in need of the assistance of a vast array of tools, gizmos and gadgets, things and knick-knacks (which I LOVE collecting and finding a place for) to truly be effective in this “side of the coin”.
Examples include my Monk Manual, or my mini black notebook, or my Peak Design Everyday Backpack, or the way I set up my iPhone 16 Pro. It’s all geared to help me focus my oftentimes large and lofty, conceptual and convoluted brain clouds into a streamlined thought process that actually has coherence.
Why, and how is this all relevant and coming to a head right now?
The meta-narrative of Holy Scripture shows us how history, and indeed time itself, is far more cyclical in nature than it is linear. The countless parallels of characters and stories, from Adam in Eden to Jesus in the New Jerusalem, clearly illustrate this.
Since YHWH is the same yesterday, today, and forever more… who’s to say that this cyclical nature, this upward spiral of things isn’t the way my life plays out, too?
Looking back, it all starts to piece together. Things I never understood the reason for, I see clearly now; all this serves to inform who God is making me to be.
One of my deepest fears is that I never gain clarity on the specifics of who that person is; worse yet, that that person is not a person accepted and loved, whose life has been wasted chasing and building things that are merely a vapor in the wind.
But in this season, I say with great conviction; nothing in my life has gone to waste. None of the struggle, the toil, or the suffering; none of the triumphs, lessons and joys of the past.
He’s not done writing this story, and it won’t end until He gets all the glory.
“… at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:10–11 (NASB95)
