How God Helped Me Excel In My Weakest Subject

By Nelly Bong

Hi, I’m Nelly and I’m a 17 year old student currently studying in a local Polytechnic. This testimony is about how God helped me with my O-Level revision and blessed me to score A1 in science, which was my weakest subject. 

As a combined sciences (Chemistry and Biology) student, I had a love-hate relationship with Chemistry. I enjoyed practical sessions and was confident in my lab skills, but I had always struggled with scoring for theory. I could apply the correct concept when answering questions but because  I missed keywords, I was not able to obtain the full marks for the questions.

On the day before my O-Level science practical test, I was filled with fear and nervousness. Although I was confident after countless rounds of revision, the unpredictability of the exam questions still got to me. What if it was something I had never encountered before?

In that moment of anxiety, I remembered what I had learnt about prayer during my Bible lessons, which is that God surely listens to my prayers and sometimes, He helps me in unexpected ways. 

I also remembered a testimony about how a church friend had prayed and dreamt of the answer key for her exams! I was very curious if I would be able to experience such a great miracle so I decided to try it myself. Hence, I earnestly prayed to God about my situation and asked God to show me a sign on what was going to be tested.

That night, I had a dream of myself walking in the chemistry lab. I remember seeing a blue solution inside a test tube, then I woke up. I thought to myself: “Hmm… interesting, will copper be tested today?” (Since blue solutions signified the presence of copper in our science syllabus). For the rest of the time before the exam started, I studied all the practicals I had previously done involving copper and texted my friend about my dream. To my delight, copper, (specifically copper (ii) hydroxide) really came out during my exam! I was able to do my experiment with renewed confidence and I even had ample time to redo it!

God’s saving grace rescued me once more during my Chemistry theory exam. The day before that paper was my Additional Math paper 2 exam, and it was particularly challenging. Everyone went into the exam hall thinking that paper 2 would be easier since paper 1 was quite challenging, but Cambridge seemed to say: “nope, let’s make it even harder”. I was feeling very dejected and hopeless after the Additional Math exam, and many of my friends felt the same way and even cried after. When I went home, I prayed and told God about everything that went wrong with the exam and how I was going to disgrace my tuition centre and my ancestors. For the rest of the day, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and I had no motivation to revise for Chemistry the next day.

Later that night, a friend texted me some questions from the Ten Years Series (TYS) she was unsure of. Those questions she had asked me happen to be the only revision I did before the Chemistry paper. Going into the hall, I said one last prayer and just entrusted everything to God, that He may at least help me to finish the paper without leaving any blanks. The amazing part is when I saw the questions, I remembered that it was really similar to the ones my friend asked me about the night before, with only a few words changed. I breezed through the paper and actually had a lot of fun doing it.

The same thing also happened during my Biology paper and it was the same friend who asked me questions the night before! I realised that God had worked through that friend to help me. As a result of God’s help, I obtained an A1 for science. This was a miracle because I had never obtained an A1 for science before.  

I would like to thank God for not only listening to my prayers, but also helping me when I had little confidence in myself. These experiences made me realise the power of sincere and earnest prayer. For some, prayer may seem like a very foreign concept and you may think that it might be a coincidence. 

But from my personal experience, as long as one has faith, one will really start to see the workings of God. I never believed in God when I was younger, but when I tried to pray and saw these miracles happen repeatedly in my life, I cannot deny that God is indeed with me and taking care of me. 

The past me would have been so stressed out by exams that I would have thoughts racing through my mind the whole night and I would not have an appetite to eat because of anxiety. However, since God is the source of my strength and He helps me in unexpected ways, such as through the people around me and through my dreams so long as I pray about it, I was able to overcome all of the stress and anxiety. 

Through my O Level journey and conquering revision and exams with God, I realised with certainty that God indeed listens to and answers our prayers.

As I learnt from one of my favourite church sermons: “Prayer is work. When you do it, it will be fulfilled and the thing you prayed about will be completed.”