From July 3 (Thursday) to July 7 (Monday) Missionary Nathan of Brazil and Missionary Philip Lee of Downey, LA visited Redding, Ca. It was a prayer journey, praying for Bible Brazil, Bible North America, and Bible Mainland China.
Nathan is a missionary to Brazil. He is visiting the U.S. to attend the wedding between Jing and Ryan. due on July 12. Jing is sister from southern part of China. She is now working on a Ph.D in business management. Ryan is working on a master program in Nevada majoring in earth science.
Missionary Philip brought lots of kimchi. During the Independence Day Missionary Philip fixed kimchi. In the evening we had a BBQ at my backyard. After dark we watched the fireworks.
Saturday we explored the Lassen National Park. There we did the Kings Creek Trail and the Bumpass' Hell Hot-spring. In the evening, I had a Bible study (1 Chronicles) with Nathan.
On Sunday (July 6) we had a worship service. Missionary Philip served a message on 2 Timothy 2:3-5. Then we made a visit to Lake Shasta Caverns.
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| Shasta Lake (Nathen -seated; Philip walking on a pier) |
During evening hours we had a Bible study on the Lord's world mission vision. Bible passages we covered included: Matthew 28; Romans 8:31; Col 2:15; Gen 13:14; Deu 11:24. Around 9:00 pm it cooled off, so we went out to the Turtle Bay and did the Sacramento River Trail. During the trail we could see the color of the Turtle Bay Bridge changing.
Good solder of Christ
2 Timothy 2:4-6.
4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs,
but rather tries to please his commanding officer. 5 Similarly,
anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by
competing according to the rules. 6 The
hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.
Today’s passage teaches us how to serve
God’s ministry and also how to discharge all our duties at work places and at
home.
First, look at verse 4.
4 No one serving as a
soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his
commanding officer.
We are not regular ordinary civilians since
we were bought by the blood of Jesus and became born again. We are disciples of Jesus. We are blessed to grow in Jesus and serve Him
and His Kingdom. So we do not live like
other regular civilians. How do other
regular civilians live? Their first priority is family oriented life or their
jobs or anything else they like to do in this world. But, the priority of Jesus’ disciples is to
please our commanding officer, Jesus. So
we focus on growing in the words of God and teaching his sheep and raising them
up as his disciples. It is easy to say
this, but this requires a lot of work and focus. If we do not focus on this, we are very
distracted by so many things in this world, and at the end we can not see good results. We can not raise up even one disciple. We are living in very distracting generation
with such as all kinds of media such as endless news daily through the internet. So we can waste our precious time at least a
few hours per day easily watching over those things on the internet. But, instead of wasting those hours a day in
that way, we can use for God’s kingdom purpose by writing letters to our sheep
or to prepare good Bible notes. The
followings are my prayer topics of this year.
- Reduce spending a lot of
time for news, sport updates on the internet, and use time in doing the
work of God.
- To feed David Lantow &
Alex Chu at Whittier college faithfully and raise them up as Jesus’
disciples.
- Study Portuguese &
Spanish in order to support missionary Nathan family in Brazil & to
serve Spanish speaking people.
- Pray for shepherd Max’s
new life.
- Continually support our
soccer ministry and feed our soccer students with 1:1 Bible studies. At this moment about 15 Warrant high
current or graduated students are coming to our Sunday soccer fellowship
faithfully
- Being faithful to early
morning daily bread and prayer devotion time.
- Continue to help our
children to eat and write daily bread at least during holidays and summer
break.
- Feed at least 5 new
students with 1:1s
- Write letters to God’s
sheep & coworkers diligently
What is the first prayer topic among these. The number one
is to reduce time to spend on the internet and use them for God’ kingdom
purpose because I am very distracted by the internet daily. I had to repent of spending much time on this
and make a decision to change as this new year started. May the Lord help us not to waste much time
on the internet, but use precious time for the work of God.
Let us read verse 4 again. 4 No
one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries
to please his commanding officer. I had one good experience regarding this
verse: Since I came to US, God’s mission field, in April 1995, as his servant,
for about 16 years, I could not meet my family in Korea not because I did not
want to meet with them, but because I could not have time and money to visit
them being busy serving God’s mission and raising children in this mission
field. We did not have enough money to
visit them. On the contrary we had a lot
of credit card debts such as $80,000 or $90,000. In some sense, I felt ashamed because I had
nothing to give them. But, during those
16 years, some students grew up out of students our family fished and served. And at the right time, God’s sent me and my
wife to our family in Korea after about 16 years, when we attended our UBF
international Bible Conference in Korea in 2012. We brought a lot of gifts for them. What was amazed was when I visited them, one
brother, two sisters, and one brother in law became evangelists after graduating
from seminary schools in Korea. I
realized that the Lord took care of them very well while I was busy in this
mission field. When missionary Nathan
decided to live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as a missionary, there was a great work
of God in his younger sister’s life and also in her husband’ life. His younger sister studies the Bible with
shepherdess Ataiena via Skype and she even goes fishing. Her husband also studies the Bible with
missionary Nathan via Skype.
Missionary Nathan, when do you think would be a right time
to visit your family in Paris, France? I
think at least it is after you graduate from your graduate school and get a
full time job and save money from your full time job for your family airplane
tickets and gifts for your family in France.
Plus, hopely after raising up at least one disciple out of Brazilian
students.
May the Lord help us to live as God’s servants not being
involved in civilian affairs.
Second, let us read verse 5.
5 Similarly, anyone who
competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing
according to the rules.
Apostle Paul compared a good servant of God
to a good athlete. We know how to be a good
athlete through Olympic games. In order to be a good athlete, he or she has to
go through a lot of training. Especially
to be successful athletes like medalists in Olympic game, it requires even more
intensive training. Likewise, in order
to be spiritual good athletes, we need to be well disciplined through such as coming
to early morning daily bread and prayers faithfully and preparing the good Bible
notes and messages faithfully and feeding sheep in Good times and in bad times. Let us read verse 5 again. 5 Similarly, anyone who
competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing
according to the rules. Apostle Paul
talks about “the rules” here. An athlete
competes according to the rules.
Regarding the rules, Apostle Paul refers the way of service, especially
in love, long patience, walking in the work of the Holy Spirit and everything
in prayer. We have to take long patience
and prayers over one student for many many years.
Out of “the rules”, serving the Lord
through prayers is the very important rule because everything is on God’s
hand. Although we work hard, if there are
no God’s blessings, we can not bear good fruits. This battle field belongs to the Lord and win
or lose belongs to the Lord. So we need
to always pray to the Lord. When
missionary Nathan left United States to Brazil, he desired to raise 12
disciples and then 100 disciples out of working with these 12 disciples. Without seeing these, he promised not to
leave Brazil to pioneer any other countries in Latin America. When he left United States for Brazil, he was
filled with desires to pioneer all Latin America. Do you remember this? But, as you know, raising up 12 disciples is
not an easy task. Raising up even on disciple is not easy. We can not do without God’s help and
blessings, although we have very strong desires. That means we must pray a lot for God’s
blessings.
Also, we should have a right attitude. For example, one person said “See other
missionaries, they don’t go fishing, they don’t raise any disciples, so what is
a problem for me not to raise up even one disciple. This kind of attitude is not graceful. We must have a right attitude and live before
God and live on this words. When we see
other missionaries not being able to raise up disciples, we should think in a
right attitude by making a decision to work even harder and pray harder in
order to take care of my portion and plus other missionaries’ portions. This is true love toward other missionaries.
Third, apostle Paul compared a good servant
of God to a hardworking farmer. Let us
read verse 6.
“The hardworking farmer should be the first
to receive a share of the crops”.
Here a hard
working farmer refers to a farmer who works hard, who is not lazy. A farmer should be diligent and work hard if
he wants to see good fruits. There are a
lot of work to be done for a farmer who expects to see good fruits such as cultivating
the land, fertilizing, removing weeds constantly, pruning, and harvesting
fruits or veggies, and delivering to right places, etc. There are endless works to do.
Last
Thursday, I and missionary Nathan brought 4 boxes of veggies and several other items
without missing even one important item to make Kimchi. See how we, especially I and missionary
Rebekah worked hard to make Kimchi. I
had to wash cabbages several times and also chopped many radishes to make
ingredients of Kimchi souce, and then my fingers became tired and worn
out. To make one valuable item like this
demands a lot of work. How much more we
have to work hard to produce spiritual fruits to present Jesus for eternal life
and everlasting rewards.
Let us read Galatians 6:7 “Do not be
deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” This verse explains well, whatever we do, we
reap what we sow. We work hard, we reap
good results. We do not work hard, then
we reap nothing or less. We can not
cheat the Lord. We work hard in our
spiritual battle fields with fishing and 1:1s, preparing good Bible notes and
feeding them faithfully and praying for them day and night, then surely the
Lord will bless our prayers and hard working with good disciples one by
one. On the contrary, we do not do this,
then there will be no good results.
Jesus also said in
Matthew 7:18 “A good tree can not bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can not bear
good fruit. Not only spiritual battle,
we also have to work hard at school or at work places as well. In order to get a nice job at nice companies,
Missionary Nathan has to work hard at a graduate school going extra miles,
going beyond his school classes. So
that he can demonstrate himself as an excellent and hard working employee
candidate when he apply for a job at good companies like Sao Paulo branch
office of Google, or Microsoft, or salesforce.com, or Cisco, or SAP, etc.
I have about 15 soccer
students. We started our soccer fellowship
with them about one year ago. I invited
them to soccer fellowship at Apollo park near our Bible center in Downey. Basically every Sunday, I carried goals,
balls, other equipments to keep fellowship with them. Finally we could build good friendship with
them and then they came to my house for my birthday party. I have never had a birthday party for the
last 19 years life in US, but this year I had the first birthday party only to
invite these soccer students to our house and to present our invitation to the
Bible studies. We had wonderful
fellowship even playing pin-pong together.
To attract students, it requires hard working, sacrifice, and
faithfulness like this.
Today we learned how to
be good servants of God, although there are many different kinds of Christians:
Sunday Christians, easy going Christians, easy going disciples, easy going
fathers, and husbands, but there are good and hard working Christians, fathers,
husbands who know taking care of their family and spiritual children well.
When we work hard, we must work hard with a right
direction. What is good if we work hard for
a wrong direction. So we have to think
and remember what the Bible says and get right directions from our Lord
Jesus.
For example, Mt 5:48: Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. We have to think how to have things done in
perfect ways rolling our eye balls to south, to north, to west, and to east,
observing everything going on.
Let us read verses 4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in
civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. 5 Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does
not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules.
6 The hardworking farmer should be the first
to receive a share of the crops.
One word: 6 The hardworking
farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.
