Gratitude
I am so thankful to God for our meaningful Easter worship service on April 21, 2019. We had four people who shared how the Word of God has changed their lives. As you might guess the most beautiful fruits in the community of God are the fruits of the Word of God. The sharing of “Before” and “After” stories, remind us that God is always working in our lives.
As the people of God and Christians, it is our hope and prayer that our lives will be transformed by the Word of God. A life transformed by the Word of God is what God really wants for us in our lives. We heard inspiring stories about how God has worked in the lives of members of our Church family. I hope and pray that we can continue to share stories about the way God is working in our lives.
Prayers
I am asking that you continue to hold me in prayer, particularly during the next few weeks, while I am in Korea from April 22 to May 10. I will attend the Annual Conference, Missionary Conference, and Mission Conferences in Korea because I belong to the Korean Methodist Church. I am officially taking this year as a Sabbath year as a missionary of Singapore sent by the Korean Methodist Church. I am going to apply for an additional year, as I start the process of transferring from the Korean Methodist Church to the United Methodist Church. Please pray for my plan to finalize my membership in Korea and start my new membership in the United States with God’s intimate guidance for my path.
Follow Up of 40 Days of Walking Together
Have you tasted a bit of what Christian life must be look like through the two 40 days? Christian life is basically the life of eating spiritual foods and digesting what we have eaten as we do every day for our physical body. We have had a special season of two 40 days to train ourselves and practice our spiritual muscle for our healthy spiritual body. How was it? Did you figure out what to do for your spiritual health? Did you get some ideas what to do for your spiritual growth? Did you find any pattern or habit for your spiritual health and growth?
There may be some of you who were disappointed with your 40 days experience. Please do not be disappointed. After such an experience, the worse situation is one in which you give up and you don’t do anything for your spiritual health or growth. We don’t have to compare ourselves to anyone else because each one of us is a unique artwork of God, which means no one is better or worse than anyone else. All of us are precious before God because God created each one of us uniquely. Therefore do not compare yourself to anyone else but just be faithful with what God has given to you such as, your time, your money, your talents, and your relationships. Plan something for yourself and work it out for your spiritual growth and health. This is the ultimate purpose of our 40 days of Walking Together journeys.
Another New Beginning
As you know, one of the biggest changes at our church is worship time change from 10 am to 11 am. To be honest I am more familiar with 11 am so I might not completely understand how many of you are feeling about this time change. I pray that we can find a way to enjoy it and make it special time for our church family.
There is a word, ‘Wee-Gee’, in Korean, which means ‘A crisis is another opportunity.’ Unexpected crisis gives us another expected opportunity. Crisis, problems, or troubles in our lives never go away. Don’t pray to God to remove those trials in your life. They never go away because God is molding you using those things. Why do we have to experience them then? We need to view these situations as another opportunity to move to the next stage of our spiritual growth. If we really want our church to grow spiritually and physically, for sure we need to spend more time with our church family, so we can be strengthened together.
My Prayer for CUMC as The Biblical Community
Acts 2:46-47 said, “They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord's Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity — all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”
Christians in the early church age worshiped together at the Temple each day and gathered in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity. They did two things regularly: worshipped together and ate together. If we can do these two things regularly we would experience what the people in the early church age felt about one another and what the church Jesus designed looks like.
It is my hope that moving forward, we can create more opportunities to experience time together. I pray that we can have more organic groups and times to worship and break bread together. Look for more detail with regard to this in future correspondence.
I must consult with the leaders of our church though. My personal plan for our church from July is that having different kinds of organic groups from 10 am to 10:50 am to keep learning something to grow in Christ, Sunday worship from 11 am to 12 pm, and eating lunch together from 12 pm to 12:30 or 1 pm as a church family. Although this might look new to many of you I hope and pray that as all of us put all our inputs and work them out together in order to make a biblical community of God in this town.