Good soldier of Jesus Christ

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.

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.

1. Reduce spending a lot of time for news, sport updates on the internet, and use time in doing the work of God.

2. To feed David Lantow & Alex Chu at Whittier college faithfully and raise them up as Jesus’ disciples.

3. Study Portuguese & Spanish in order to support missionary Nathan family in Brazil & to serve Spanish speaking people.

4. Pray for shepherd Max’s new life.

5. 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

6. Being faithful to early morning daily bread and prayer devotion time.

7. Continue to help our children to eat and write daily bread at least during holidays and summer break.

8. Feed at least 5 new students with 1:1s

9. 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.