“I was called to serve God and His
people with a heart of a servant.”
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of
the throne of God.”
After our meeting with the leadership of the church, my
husband, David, walked closely with me as I processed my
thoughts and emotions. I was struggling with fear in my
life. I had fear of shame, fear of failure, fear of people, fear
of disappointing others, fear of the future, fear of the well-being
of my family, and the fear list continued. I remember
the very Sunday when David preached a message on fear. I
was sitting in the back of the sanctuary with our new baby
sleeping in the stroller. I heard David speak these words,
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1
John 4:18). These words spoke truth in my life. What is there
to fear when the perfect love of God has already cast out my
fears? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and
only Son” (John 3:16) to save us. Jesus’ last words on the cross
were “It is finished” (John 19:30).
William Barclay explains that Jesus “did not say, ‘It is
finished,’ in weary defeat; He said it as one who shouts for joy
because the victory is won. He seemed to be broken on the
cross, but He knew that His victory was won.”
Jesus had already won the battle for me. What is there
to fear when the battle is already won? Every morning and
night I recited 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But
perfect love drives out fear.”
Soon after my resignation at the church, David wanted
to enroll our family in a six-month missions program with
Youth With A Mission (YWAM). He had done the same
program in his college years and had always wanted to go
back with our family. He had mentioned missions program
several times a year throughout our marriage, and I replied
with, “Sure, one day.” But this time he was serious. I had
many questions, “Excuse me? You want to quit your job, take
our three children (and our youngest was only a year old),
and go do missions for six months? What are you going to
do after? We are pastors. It’s not like we have thousands of
dollars saved in our bank account. How are you going to feed
the family?”
David’s answer was very simple, “Don’t worry. God will
provide.” My answer that day (and many other days) was the
same, “No, thank you.” After several months of conversations,
tears and a few arguments, David stopped asking about it.
Later that year, a missionary came to our church as a
guest speaker. There was a special nudge in my heart. God
was telling me to ask him to pray for me. So I did what no
other polite Korean pastor’s wife would do when we had a
guest speaker. As soon as the service ended, I walked up to
the front of the stage with the stroller at hand and asked him
to pray for me. When he prayed for me, the Spirit interceded,
and I knew then that God wanted our family to serve the
pg. 12 — lightandlifemagazine.com
nations through that missions program and to share the love
of Jesus with people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.
God’s fingerprints were all over the process of getting ready
to go into the mission field for six months. We sold our
car, our piano, our furniture, packed other belongings in a
friend’s garage, and got on a plane to the YWAM campus.
The three months of training for missions was life-giving.
I was the eager student that would always sit in the front
of the class and cry during every lecture. It was a time of
healing and experiencing the Father heart of God. One of
the greatest things I learned in YWAM is to relinquish my
rights. God had led me into a season of humility so that I
can lift up the palm of my hands and say, “Yes, God, I obey.”
I was called to serve God and His people with a heart of a
servant. I was reminded of my faith tradition. My great-grandmother,
my grandmother, and my parents served Jesus
as humble servants. Jesus, the King of the universe, came into
this world as a humble servant who died the ultimate death
on the cross.
Our family went on an outreach to serve and love the
people of Asia during the missions program. I experienced
that God is bigger than I imagined. God showed me that His
mighty power was not just at work in North America but
in the most unlikely places of the world. He showed me His
infinite love for His people, for my family and for me. As I
served God in the unknown, I did not have a choice but to
walk very closely with Jesus. I had to fix my eyes on Jesus.
I believe that we are all positioned for a unique calling.
And along that path, there are storms that might come
our way. I find peace in the words of William Barclay as he
explains a scene with Jesus and Peter on the boat in Matthew
14:
“These verses finish with another great and permanent
truth. When Jesus got into the boat, the wind sank. The great
truth is that, wherever Jesus Christ is, the wildest storm
becomes a calm. Olive Wyon, in her book ‘Consider Him,’
quotes from the letters of the seventeenth-century Bishop of
Geneva, St. Francis of Sales, who had noticed a custom of
the country districts in which he lived. He had often noticed
a farm servant going across a farmyard to draw water at the
well; he also noticed that, before she lifted the brimming
pail, the girl always put a piece of wood into it. One day he
went out to the girl and asked her, ‘Why do you do that?’
She looked surprised and answered, as if it were a matter of
course, ‘Why? To keep the water from spilling … to keep it
steady!’ Writing to a friend later on, the bishop told this story
and added: ‘So when your heart is distressed and agitated,
put the cross into its center to keep it steady!’ In every time
of storm and stress, the presence of Jesus and the love which
flows from the cross bring peace and serenity and calm.”+
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