Throughout my life, various people have reminded me of the verse Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose”. This verse often encouraged me, but as I went along in life and encountered difficult situations, I found myself not loving God, although I was searching for Him. I couldn’t understand how I could live my life as such a sinner and still consider myself a “Christian”, let alone someone who loves God and expects His “blessing”.
Not till the fall of 2010 did God make His plan and purpose clear to me. After much turmoil in my life, I decided to move back to the city where I had gone to college. As details started to work out for my job and living situation, an acquaintance from my college days contacted me about a job opening at their own work place, and also invited me to join their Bible study. I had actually been concerned about my spiritual walk since I had never found a church home that I really felt was a place to grow and serve in my college town. My friend’s invitation to study God’s Word together was just the beginning of my prayers being answered.
As I have gone through the study, I have felt so relieved and incredibly blessed to receive this word of life. Since God is life and John 1:1 says that God is the Word, then the only way we can become spiritually alive and flourishing is by spending time not just reading the Bible but even writing this Word on our hearts. I have spent so much of my life praying to God to make my plans and dreams come true, completely ignoring and missing the fact that God has plans too. We so often think that God’s plans are for each of our individual lives- to “prosper us” by giving us a good job, a house, etc. However, we can clearly find in His Word that his plans are for His kingdom to come and for His dwelling place to be once again with mankind. Only when we truly know what God’s heart and plans are can we fully obey him- love Him-and be a part of the plan of blessing.
I am so thankful to the promised pastor for having the heart and courage to be obedient to his appointed task, and- like Jesus- to deliver the message of God’s kingdom to us. Just like the Jews at the time of Jesus’ 1st coming, the hearts of Christians today are hard and unwilling to accept the truth because it doesn’t fit the fantasy that they’ve created in their heads. If we want to be true Christians, then we must be those who work hard to get the weeds out of our hearts, so that we can accept God’s seed and plan and have the ability to discern the truth according to God’s Word. This is how we can be those who are obedient and those who will receive blessings.
I thank God for pursuing me and giving me the opportunity to hear and take to heart the Word of life. I pray that I would have a heart that God loves and that He would be able to use me to give many others the chance to hear this Word!
Shinchonji Unmasked 