One Story

A life touched, a life changed

Years ago, Dr. Celeste Li discovered her ministry – to share God’s promises with her patients at the Riviera Beach HIV/AIDS clinic where she has been a physician for 15 years.

“Satan has planted a lie in so many of their lives,” she says. “They don’t understand that through the grace and mercy of God, none shall perish.”

It was for them that she wrote the curriculum for Christ Fellowship’s Why Me? Triumph Over Physical Illness course, designed for people suffering from pain and chronic illness. But then God brought her public ministry right into her own home, when her mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Originally from Taiwan, 69-year-old Louise Li visited from time to time, even coming to services at Christ Fellowship’s Gardens Campus with Celeste and her husband, John. But she held fast to her Buddhist beliefs.

Questions and answers

Then Louise got cancer and began to ask the same kinds of questions Celeste’s patients ask: How can God be a loving God if He allows such terrible illness? I’m not a bad person; what did I do to deserve this? And Celeste was prepared, with answers directly from Scripture.

“God laid it on my heart for her to move in with us,” Celeste says. “When I reminded God that hospitality is not one of my spiritual gifts, He told me, ‘I know, but evangelism is.’ ”

It took several months for Louise Li to open her heart and receive Christ, and it happened during one of Celeste’s Why Me classes. Louise told her family, “I don’t know what happened. It just felt like a door was blown open and I walked right through. I think God brought me here so that you could tell me about Jesus.”

Prayerful preparation

Telling patients about Christ is one of the great joys of Celeste Li’s life. “I am so blessed, honored and humbled that God has given me this job,” she says. “There’s been such fruit from this.”

One of the fruits has been the Why Me? study, which took her 18 months to write and which she teaches once or twice each year.

The ten-week class is broken into three sections. Participants first acknowledge their suffering and process the emotions as Celeste reinforces God’s love, grace and mercy. The class then explores the sovereignty of God and His expectations of us during times of trial. Finally, students learn how to focus not on their own suffering but on God’s purpose for their lives.

Celeste is convinced that her work on Why Me? laid the foundation that allowed her to minister to her mother-in-law. “There’s no question that I couldn’t have done this without what I did to prepare the course,” she says. “For her to come with those kinds of questions, and for me to have Biblical answers to them was truly the hand of the Lord.”

If you or one of your loved ones is facing life with chronic illness, please call Christ Fellowship’s Life Development office (561-799-7600) to learn more about “Why Me? Triumph Over Physical Illness.”