As a Hong Kong female singer and actress, Zhou Huimin grew up in a Christian family and participated in campus fellowship, but in the ups and downs of life, she brushed shoulders with faith many times until she truly received this grace and returned to the arms of her Heavenly Father in 2009.
After the faith, Zhou Huimin’s life was completely renewed and changed, she was enthusiastic about her faith, and even made a comeback, returning to the entertainment industry, not only releasing her first gospel album “HIM”, singing for God, but also joining the new movie “Waiting for a Person’s Coffee” in 2014, and the theme song “Coffee is Waiting for a Person” is also a song of the gospel disc.
On January 1, 2015, “Angel Heart” published the cover story of the January issue, entitled “Grace is waiting for a person – Zhou Huimin”, in which she explained the ups and downs of her life and how to meet the wonderful experience of grace, which is tortuous and wonderful.
Spend your childhood in worry
In the magazine, Zhou Huimin mentioned her childhood, which was supposed to be the happiest and carefree period, but Vivian was the opposite, she was a girl with a lot of worries when she was a child. Since she was a child, she would worried about her mother’s health and worry about practical problems in life, and spent her childhood in anxiety.
When her father died of a heart attack, Vivian had not yet been born, so she never saw her father and the whole family was supported by her mother alone. In the washing and polishing of the cruel reality, Zhou’s mother became serious, not smiling, stubborn, and played the role of the head of the family, while Vivian’s grandmother played the role of a mother, not only very gentle but also laughed with her, so the optimistic part of her personality was influenced by her grandmother.
However, when Vivian was less than 10 years old, her mother fell ill and needed surgery urgently, which could be life-threatening, which made her very panicked, and during the long wait for her mother’s surgery, she thought about many things: Will she never see her mother again after the operation? Grandma is old, if her mother has any strengths and weaknesses, who will take care of herself? and so on.
Fortunately, the surgery was a success and her mother gradually recovered, but Vivian still worries about her health from time to time. She knows that her mother works hard, so as not to worry about her mother anymore, she will automatically do her homework consciously after class, go to bed very early at night, and gradually develop a stubborn character behind self-discipline.
Because there is no man in the family, when she grows up, the responsibility of supporting the family gradually falls on the seemingly weak Vivian, but she is very stubborn in her bones. Because she doesn’t want anything wrong, people like her tend to be more anxious than the average person.
Since she was a child in a Christian school, Vivian has always been involved in school fellowship, but she knows little about faith and does not take it too seriously, but because of the difficulties she will encounter in life, she gradually develops the Xi habit of praying, although she is not sure whether God is listening, but she has no one to talk to, so she has to express her heart in prayer.
First time going to church: Heavenly Father, I’m home
Vivian, who has always been Xi to relying on herself, went out to work in her teens after graduation and felt that she could not be bullied and must be self-reliant, so she was in a state of “fighting” for a long time. In a testimony she wrote on Christmas Day 2013, she said that relying on others or religion is an act of weakness.
Until one day in 2009, a casual conversation with a friend turned her life around. “That day, I had a casual conversation with a friend who had no religious beliefs, and he said that many religions focus on personal cultivation, but those self-imposed standards are indicators that are difficult for mortals to achieve. Christianity emphasizes ‘salvation by faith,’ but I have a hard time accepting this argument because this kind of free salvation is completely contrary to my usual beliefs.
But when I think deeper, if what the Bible says is true, then no matter how good my cultivation is, because I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I am still a sinner; even if what the Bible says is not true, I actually have no loss after reading the Bible, and my cultivation will only improve, not regress. I shouldn’t judge what I don’t understand, but I am only qualified to judge when I read the whole Bible and go back to church to hear the pastors preach. ”
It was this mindset of learning a little more that suddenly swelled up in Vivian’s heart, wanting to understand this belief that she had previously held biases. At the same time, she also told her husband Ni Zhen about this idea and received support.
Vivian’s first visit to church was at the Easter service in 2009, when she was so excited that she struggled to suppress her tears. She turned to God in her heart and said, “Father, I’m home!
Witness to faith through music
When she got to know God again, Vivian knew that her singing gift came from God, so she was willing to sing for God, hoping to interpret God’s faith through her music. When she conceived the gospel album, the words of the Bible became her inspiration, and she knew that the gospel disc was made for “God”, so the album was titled “HIM”, which means God. In this album, each song conveys a different theme: judgment, gender relations, life and death, and the heart of a child.
This was the first time Vivian had written a song for God, and she wanted to write about the title “Ribs” from the very beginning. “God created Adam first, saying that it was not good for the man to live alone, and decided to create a spouse to help him, and I realized that this woman was created to fulfill Adam, and in other passages of the Bible, the husband is described as the head of the wife, so I understand that a wife needs to be wise to submit to her husband’s leadership. And how did God make the woman? He put Adam to sleep and took out a rib to create a woman, and Adam woke up and said, “This woman is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, so husbands should love their wives as they love their bodies.” As I studied this passage in detail, I gained a deeper understanding of the roles of men and women and how partners treat each other. ”
In addition, she composed a song “A Love Like This”, which counted the grace in her life. On January 8, 2015, she wrote on Weibo, “After writing the song “A Love Like This” last year, my intuition is very compatible with the English lyrics, writing about grace and faith to change my life, and the music part is conceived to tie Him, a fresh and simple arrangement so that the vocal’s feelings can be highlighted. ”
Vivian put a lot of effort into making this gospel disc. She mentioned the creative team in a video posted on Weibo on January 9, admitting that although the creative team is not all Christians, the requirement for choosing a lyricist is that she must be familiar with the Bible, because ordinary unbelievers may feel that Christianity, like other religions, leads people to goodness. But in fact, many Christian values are not universal values, so as the creative supervisor of the whole album, she must make sure that the lyrics are correct and do not misinterpret the Christian faith. To this end, Vivian spent a lot of time writing the concepts behind each track, and communicating with the lyricists.
It took a whole year from the preparation to the production of the gospel album, and Vivian admits that she has experienced a lot of waiting and a lot of struggle. On January 9, 2015, “Zhou Huimin Idea Studio” Weibo posted a video of Genesis TV’s interview with Love Earth Observatory “Zhou Huimin Sings for HIM”, in which Vivian talked about her process of recording the album. “I want each song to be produced by a different person, to be able to record in different studios, so that Xi can learn to let go of the old way of recording over the years and open myself up to work with the team instead of being the controller. I have experienced a lot of struggles in the process, because I am a very demanding person, and I have to let go of myself and accept other people’s opinions humbly in teamwork, so when there is a break in the studio, I will calm down and pray, and give everything to God, because I don’t want to be a disc that makes a singer, this is a disc that makes someone else. ‘HIM’, or God, is the protagonist of this disc. ”
She also talked about how to face criticism after public belief because she is an artist, “Since I have faith, I have found that I don’t worry too much about people’s criticism of me, and I won’t pursue it according to world values or universal values, because I won’t measure it according to this ruler.” I don’t use my standards to ask others, which is a big change for me. ”
At the same time, she also mentioned that one of the songs in the gospel album, “Stone Rain”, is precisely about the judgment of the world, inspired by a well-known biblical story: the story of a woman who committed adultery and was stoned by people. “A lot of people say I’m an artist, will I be hypocritical? Some people will say that an artist is a hypocritical person. Sometimes I think about this story, I think people who believe in the Lord understand very well that everyone is full of a lot of sin, and if we are all full of a lot of sin, what right do we have to comment on others? So in the title of each song, you can bring out a lot of thinking. Vivian added.
In the final video, it says, “May Vivian be able to use her gifts to do more beautiful testimonies.” I believe that this is also the expectation and blessing that God and every Christian expect from her.
另外她还作了一首《A Love Like This》，内容数算了她生命中的恩典。2015年1月8日，她在微博上写道，“去年写了《A Love Like This》的曲后，直觉很配英文歌词，写恩典和信仰给我生命的改变，而音乐部分构思以结祂为主，清新和简单一点的编曲效果，令vocal的感情可以突出一点。”
由筹备到制作福音专辑，足足花了一整年，Vivian不讳言经历过很多等待、很多挣扎。2015年1月9日，“周慧敏主意工作室”微博发布了创世电视访问——爱地球观察站《周慧敏为 HIM 唱歌》的视频，其中，Vivian谈到自己录制这张专辑的过程。“我希望每首歌都由不同的人去监制，能在不同的录音室录歌，从而学习放下自己过往多年来的一套固有录音模式，开放自己去配合团队，不要成为操控者。过程中经历过很大的挣扎，因为我是一个很高要求的人，团队合作中必须要放下自我，谦卑地去接受别人的意见，所以在录音室当一有break，我便会静下来祷告，把一切交托给上帝，因为我不要做一张造就歌手的碟，这是一张造就别人的碟。‘HIM’，即上帝，才是这张碟的主角。”
