Beginnings and Impressions

Annyong haseo from Seoul, South Korea! Above is my friend Samuel Yoo, the young son of Pastor Jae Yoo. He, along with the entire Yoo family, have been such a blessing to me in my first week here. I spent my first couple nights in there home, ate many delicious Korean meals with them, shopped at Costco with all of them, had many uplifting conversations with Jae and his wife Hannah, went with their family to a local church via the subway, and have been so richly and wonderfully blessed through their fellowship and kindness. I will try to take a picture of the whole Yoo family soon and post it here, so those of you who don't know them can have personal faces attached to their names and stories.

My first week here in Seoul has been primarily focused on assimilating into culture and life in Seoul, along with many preparations and meetings with Jae Yoo for the actual work of our Covenant Church Plant. The first few days were quite busy, as my dear friends Michael and Dorothy Preston were here to visit in Seoul and stayed with me for the weekend. Michael and Dorothy have been teaching English in Gumi, South Korea--which is about a three hour bus ride from Seoul--for a year, and will continue teaching through the end of February. Having them here was a tremendous blessing, as we spent one night eating with the Yoo's and playing Uno; the second night was spent traveling around Seoul to the famous Seoul Tower from which you have a beautiful, bird's-eye view of the entire city (see the header picture of my blog).

God has been very gracious in making the process of cultural adjustment smooth and growing. For the most part, I am moved in to my apartment room, being unpacked and comfortable in it. I am learning my way around the area I live in, and am so happy to be only 10 minutes from the Yoo's apartment. The food has been tremendous and quite cheap, as I've enjoyed great Korean dishes such as Bulgogi (marinated beef), Dduk (Korean rice dumplings--delicious!), and Galbi-jjim (Korean short ribs). Just yesterday, I traveled to Gumi, South Korea with Jae Yoo (Gumi is where Jae has primarily lived in Korea) where I am contracted to teach at Cornell Language Institute. God was gracious in enabling Jae and I to accomplish many important tasks there: purchased a cell phone, had a medical check-up required for teaching English, started a bank account, and established my schedule of teaching once a week after I shadowed one of the professors at the school for a couple hours. I am very excited to teach in Gumi once a week for many reasons. First, because I get to stay over night with Michael and Dorothy each time I go till they leave near the end of February. Second, I get to teach some hilarious and funny Korean kids, which will be highly entertaining, though I know frustrating at times too (to be expected, but that's where the growth comes!). Finally, it will be a great break from city life, since Gumi is a beautiful mountainous area of Korea, as I will especially get to see each time I ride the bus to and from Gumi. How good and gracious God is and has been in my first week here.

Jae and I have spent a great deal of time meeting, discussing, and preparing for the work of this Covenant Church Plant. Our current primary efforts are focused on establishing the values and vision of the church, as we are preparing to begin our church launch team, which includes 10+ people so far. I have been working on writing a short vision statement for our church geared toward expressing first, the overall vision of our church, as well as expectations and goals for the launch team. Our focus and energy will soon revolve around networking, connecting people, and spreading the word concerning this church plant to the people here in Seoul. In the next few weeks, we are hoping to find an affordable office space where we can have Bible studies, classes, and meetings with the launch team as well as any individuals interested in hearing about or being part of this church. The work has only begun, and we are entirely dependent on God for fruit. Jae and I have expressed and felt this reality each and every day, as we are learning and being continually reminded of the importance of resting in, depending on, and believing in Jesus Christ for this Church Plant and for our own continual growth in repentance and faith.

On my flight to Korea last week, I read Luke 4, which looks to Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. The passage begins showing Jesus' current difficult state: "for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry" (4:2). As Satan so craftily works, he uses Jesus' state of hunger (his momentary, present need), and seeks to deceive Jesus through trying to make that current need most valuable to him and make him use whatever means he can to fulfill it. Jesus responds with a very brief quotation of Scripture, just as He does in the following two times Satan tempts Him: "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'" What? That's a pretty brief and basic response, I thought, for Jesus to make after He is obviously feeling unspeakably weak and hungry from fasting. But then, I looked to Deuteronomy 8, the passage Jesus quotes from to Satan, and discovered the brilliance and gospel wisdom found in His response. As God speaks through Moses to His people Israel,

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (8:1-3; italics are mine)

Just as with the Israelites, so it was with Jesus, that there time in the wilderness for forty days was about far more than mere hunger. God was testing them and showing them how important it was to depend entirely on Him for their every need. In other words, there is far more in view here than food in Satan's temptation of Jesus: Satan is seeking to lead Jesus to make his present felt needs more valuable than God, trying to lead him to not trust that God will provide and take any means necessary to personally meet his own need. What is on the line here is our salvation, as Jesus' response would change the scope of our redemptive history. If he were to follow the voice of his own present felt need, our hope would be crushed, and we would be left to our deserved inheritance: judgment. If Jesus would have, we would not be judged unfairly, since as the rest of Deuteronomy and the Old Testament shows, Israel failed to live dependent lives of faith in God's promise. Instead, they obeyed and listened to their present felt needs first and foremost, forsaking God in times of hardship and famine, while forgetting Him in times of prosperity and blessing, even as God warns them later in this passage. Israel's story is not alien to our lives; it is also our story. As a professing believer in Christ, I continually seek refuge in my own present felt needs, valuing them more than God. When times are difficult and I am in need, I seek refuge in people, pleasure, and worldly comforts, rather than in the God who has made me and continues to sustain me. When times are great and I am blessed, I exult and delight in the blessings and gifts God has given me, rather than in God Himself, forgetting Him just as Israel did. But thankfully, Israel's and my story is not defined by our own failures; rather, our story is Christ's story, one of faithfulness, obedience, and victory; one of dependence and complete faith in God in the face of being forsaken, despised, rejected, hungry, hurting, and needy. Jesus felt the same hurting, evil, needy reality that we experience every day, and that Israel experienced every day; yet, He was without sin and perfectly righteous in depending on His heavenly Father to remain faithful to His promises to uphold him and through him to bring salvation to all people's through His life, death, and resurrection. Wow--a response I once thought so basic and insignificant suddenly contained the whole story of our redemption!

"Hallelujah, What a Savior! Hallelujah! What a friend! Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He is with me to the end!"

I praise God that the final word of Scripture and concerning my own and your story does not lie in our selves and our own merits or failures, but that the final word is Jesus Christ! For, "because of him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). My prayer for you and what I hope your prayer for me will be, as we face the struggles, and intense felt needs of life, is that you would know and love Jesus Christ alone--growing in love for Him, depending on Him, putting your faith in Him, abiding in Him, resting in Him, finding your value in Him, confessing and growing in Him, giving your sorrows and joys to Him, giving your work to Him, committing your desires to Him, and believing that He who began a good work in you will carry it on till the day of Christ Jesus.

In His grace alone, so long and good night from Korea (or for those of you who are 15 hours behind, good morning!). Thank you so much for your continued love and support. It means more than you could ever know.