“What good can come out of Miri, Sarawak?”

When Singaporean pastor Sabrina Low first heard the Lord’s command to plant a church in the slow-paced, coastal city of Miri, Sarawak over a decade ago, she struggled.

“When I prayed, ‘Lord, send me to the nations’, I meant roads less travelled, nations with a Christian minority. Miri is a city with churches everywhere! God, please don’t send me there,” she recalled.

At the time, Ps Sabrina was a youth pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Singapore (Cornerstone), leading a thriving bunch of 500 teenagers.

But when the following months brought one confirmation after another, she knew she had to obey. In 2015, with Sarawakian pastor Rachel Bulan, she co-founded Cornerstone Community Church, Borneo.

A tumultuous start

Ps Sabrina’s call to full-time ministry and church planting goes back to her childhood years.

When she was eight, her aunt began taking her to Cornerstone. At 10 years old, she experienced the tangible presence of Jesus for the first time.

“We were singing, ‘I will have no other gods before You’ and my heart became so warm. Tears started flowing; I had encountered the presence of God,” said Ps Sabrina, who is a first-generation Christian.

After that encounter, she started having dreams of preaching the gospel. Over the years, words were spoken over her to confirm her calling to full-time ministry.

At 14 years old, however, life took a turn. Secondary school brought with it temptations and pleasures of the world. “I backslid and became very rebellious,” she said.

Her parents, who had become Christians by then, were at their wits’ end.

Saved from expulsion 

It was three years later at 17 years old that she had a special encounter with God that changed the trajectory of her life.

“I had hit a dead end because I was nearly going to be expelled from school. I was so wrecked on my way home,” she said.

Her first thought was to run away, but without money or a job, she knew it would not last. The second option was to end her life.

She walked to her kitchen window – her flat was on the 10th floor – and opened it, but the fear of God gripped her heart.

Her third thought was God. She made a pact that day, promising to give her life as a blank canvas to the Lord if He would prevent her expulsion from school.

“I was crying and wanted to show the Lord how serious I was. I drew a line on my carpet and said, ‘God I know You’re real. I’ve heard so many testimonies of how You change lives. I don’t want to be living in sin anymore.’”

She stepped across the line in an expression of repentance and then fell to her knees, weeping. When she stood up, it was as if a load had been lifted off her. For the first time, she felt free.

Two weeks later, she was summoned to the principal’s office to discuss her potential expulsion.

Her principal expelled her accomplice, but turned to young Ps Sabrina and said: “You’re a bright student, Sabrina. Your teachers and I have decided to give you a second chance. Do well and prove that we made the right decision.”

Dumbfounded, she knew it had to be God. Determined to avoid all temptation, she changed her phone number and stopped mixing with particular friends who were bad company.

“I became zealous for the things of God, serving Him in church and earning the nickname ‘Holy Cow,'” she said with a laugh.

Answering the full-time call on April Fool’s Day

After finishing her studies at Tung Ling Bible School, where she majored in leadership and ministry, Ps Sabrina became a corporate trainer and consultant.

Over the next three years, her senior pastor, Ps Yang Tuck Yoong, called her up twice to ask if she was open to full-time ministry. She declined both times.

Then in March 2010, she had a vision of two roads.

One had her company’s name on it. That road was dark and depressing; trees were dying and flowers were wilting. The other road spelt out “full-time ministry” and was in full bloom, with fruits and lush greenery.

Ps Sabrina knew the time had come.

She said: “God, if this is the right time, let Ps Yang ask me again.”

A week to the day, the call came: “Sabby, are you ready to step into full-time ministry?”

Ps Sabrina’s spiritual father, Ps Yang Tuck Yoong, continues to mentor her in her journey as a church planter and pastor.

She was convicted, but wanted to first have her parents’ blessings.

At that time, Ps Sabrina’s mother had been hurt by the church and warned her daughter never to enter full-time ministry or risk being disowned.

Said Ps Sabrina: “The Lord works in wonderful ways. Instead of calling my mother, she calls me. She’s in tears. My parents and another couple had just finished praying, and their friend said to my mum, ‘Christine, your daughter has a calling from God and you cannot stop her from answering. If you stop her, she is going to miss the boat of destiny in her life.'”

Ps Sabrina with her parents, Benson and Christine, who gave their blessing for her to enter full-time ministry in 2010.

And so, with her parents’ blessings, the young woman began her full-time journey on April 1, 2010 – April Fool’s Day – as a youth pastor in Cornerstone.

Surely, Ps Sabrina said, the Lord has a sense of humour.

The first steps into Sarawak

One and a half years into her full-time ministry, Ps Sabrina was invited by Ps Rachel Bulan to speak at her church’s youth camp in Miri.

Brimming with passion for Jesus, Sabrina began her full-time journey as pastor in Cornerstone Community Church Singapore’s youth ministry, Generations.

Although it was her only rest week that December, having committed to speak at three other camps, the Holy Spirit prompted her to go.

“I was informed there would be 60 to 80 youths, but when I got there, there were only 18 sign-ups and 10 of them were the camp committee!” she recalled.

As she wondered why she had given up her precious rest week for such a small camp, the Lord answered with a mighty move of His Spirit.

So powerful was the camp and the response of its young attendees that lasting fruits came out of that weekend. Until today, the camp’s attendees remain on fire for Jesus.

“That’s me praying for Ps Rachel at the youth camp in 2011 that brought me to Sarawak for the first time. The rest is HIS-story!” said Ps Sabrina.

An impossible sign displayed

When Ps Sabrina returned to Singapore, she found herself waking up every morning thinking of Miri.

Two months later, the Lord spoke to her clearly to plant a church there.

It was such a drastic call that Ps Sabrina asked the Lord for an impossible sign that she had not been mistaken. “It’s not my habit to pray and ask for signs but this was such a major decision. I pleaded with the Lord for a clear and impossible confirmation.”

Scheduled to meet a youth for lunch one day, she asked God to bring to her a person with a leg problem. If the call was right, she would pray for the person and they would be completely healed, she told God.

True enough, as she was queuing up at the ATM, a young woman with a bandaged knee limped along the street toward her, supported by her mother.

It was lunch hour and Ps Sabrina did not want to step out of the queue, so she did not move. Regretting her decision later, she desperately looked for the pair to no avail.

But two hours later, she was sitting in Starbucks when that same young woman walked in.

Ps Sabrina approached her without hesitation. After two rounds of prayer, the young lady was completely healed.

It was the confirmation Ps Sabrina needed.

From a bustling city to a quiet town

She sought Ps Yang’s counsel and began monthly trips to Miri to run the youth service at a local church where Ps Rachel’s father, Ps Solomon Bulan, was senior pastor at the time.

But God was preparing the hearts of Ps Rachel and Ps Sabrina to start a church of a “new wineskin”.

On one occasion when Ps Sabrina was in Singapore, the Lord woke her up at 2am and gave her a vision of an impending revival that would come upon Miri and then spread to other regions.

“The Lord said, ‘You say, what good can come out of Miri?’ Watch, for revival is going to come through Miri. My winds are going to come and spread across the region,” Ps Sabrina recalled.

This vision was later confirmed when Ps Rachel had a similar encounter in Miri on the same day.

This prompted the pair to partner together in ministry. On August 2, 2014, with Ps Solomon’s blessing, the duo birthed Cornerstone Community Church Borneo in Miri.

Serving under God’s favour

The church grew as God gave them blueprints. He told Ps Sabrina: “You’re not to focus on growing a big church, but on growing big people.”

Cornerstone Miri was birthed in August 2014. In October 2023, the church opened its new building and dedicated it to the Lord.

That steered the course of their church-planting journey. Quantity always comes after quality, she stressed.

In a few years, Cornerstone Miri had over 300 members. In 2018, a second church was planted in Kuching, Sarawak.

In 2018, the second church plant was birthed in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak.

In October 2023, Ps Rachel and Ps Sabrina led the organising committee of Tribal Gathering, a powerful three-day rally that saw 4,000 believers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei gather in Miri to pray for revival.

“You can toil all day and night, and catch nothing. Favour with the Lord is always better than labour. When that convergence happens, your effort and fruits get multiplied,” said Ps Sabrina.

Small is the new big

What lies ahead? Ps Sabrina does not fully know.

While she is a planner by nature, she has learnt to walk in rhythm with the Lord.

“Small is the new big – that’s what He’s said. Church decentralised. Whether we are being prepared for persecution or another pandemic, we must ready the Bride of Christ for what is to come,” she said soberly.

The passionate pastor challenges others considering the full-time call to seek godly counsel, spiritual covering and accountability.

“Once you’ve tasted the goodness of God, you’ll never want to go back to what society deems normal,” she says emphatically, challenging believers to live and walk in the Spirit.

Ps Sabrina’s testimony of her life saved by grace shows how God can take even the most rebellious heart and transform it for His purposes and glory.

It’s been over a decade of church planting, but Ps Sabrina knows there’s more to be done.

For one, the Lord has laid a few places upon her heart to plant churches in.

“May my life be broken bread for the nations,” she said. “Here I am, Lord. Send me. My heart’s cry is always for revival to the nations and reformation to society, that God’s glory would fill countries and people groups.”

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