Losing Self; Resting in the Shadow of the Almighty

It has recently been pointed out to me that I've been in South Korea for over 6 weeks. One thing in life is for certain: time never stops or slows down. The fact that I'm 23 and a college graduate is absurd to me. I definitely don't feel like an adult but more like I'm in a bizarre, undefined location between youth and adulthood. I don't know. Everything seems older than it actually is until you become that age yourself. Then, it's just you, feeling like the same old, familiar you. Other people seem to fall into clearer categories as they age; but when it comes to 'me' everything seems more blurry, experiential, and harder to define, since I don't get to watch myself living but simply live experiencing, feeling, and processing all the many different things God brings in my life. That's probably quite a blessing in disguise, since watching myself would more than likely be a terrifying experience, even as most pastors will say that listening to their own voice in sermons is terribly distressing, even as our voices sound different in actuality than we perceive them to sound. Anyway, enough with time and aging, it's been a while, and an update on what God is doing on the other side of the world is in order. : )

God is continuing to move and work in building His body here in South Korea, Covenant Church Outreach Center. As I said in my last update, we're officially and fully moved into our church office, and have been freed to begin reaching out into our community to serve people, telling them about our ministry, offering our nearly free English classes, and inviting anyone to come and be a part of them. This past Saturday we had our first community outreach event, as we set up a booth and had a Survey Questionnaire for Koreans. The goal of our survey is to learn about the needs of the people in our Jamshil area so that we might better know how to serve them, along with learning about their beliefs and views concerning the church to understand where they're coming from, while also telling them about our Educational program to see if they would desire to get involved. We made a sign for the event that said something like, "Free 10 Minute English Lesson from Foreigners", as two other fellow foreign friends of mine and I spoke to over 20 Koreans that stopped by to take the survey with the help of the Yoo's and one of their Korean friends. It was a very encouraging time to see more people show interest and curiosity concerning our program, and to actually hear from the people that we're going to serve. This week we're finalizing our Covenant Church Outreach Center Brochure, and I will begin teaching our first class tomorrow night with a few children, teaching Bible Stories, Phonics, and playing games with them--should be a lot of fun. Also, Pastor Yoo is going to begin teaching a class next week to college age students called "Gospel Foundations", as I met and became friends with a few Koreans, who showed interest in taking some classes from our Outreach Center. Please keep our Church Plant in your prayers, as we seek to reach out into this community and share the love and knowledge of Christ with them through our Outreach Center. Pray that God would bring the people He desires us to serve. Pray that He would equip us with wisdom and insight concerning the needs and hearts of those we serve that we might love and proclaim the truth effectively to their hearts. Pray that God would bring others to join our Launch Team that would have a heart filled with love for Christ and the gospel, and a desire to share that good news with others. Pray also that the Yoo's and I would never cease to rely on God for strength, energy, wisdom, holiness, growth, salvation, love, hope, joy, and endurance, always growing in love for God and each other.

I've been reading through the gospel of Luke, an absolutely beautiful, soul-stirring, convicting, Kingdom-driven account of Jesus Christ. God has impressed two very familiar, powerful verses on my heart in the past couple of weeks: "Then he [Jesus] said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (9:23-24). Gospel wisdom is counterintuitive: The way to life is death. The way to gain is to lose. The way to come is to deny. Really? How could that be when it is utterly against our nature to live this way? And how is this the way to freedom? After all, isn't freedom the ability to choose anything I want, living in the joy of unlimited possibility and options? How my flesh wishes this were reality, as I begin living each day entirely oriented toward my own needs, wants, and desires. Yet, when I honestly face reality, the truth of the gospel concerning freedom emerges: the freedom my flesh thinks is freedom in being able to choose from an unlimited number of possibilites is actually bondage, as I live entraped in my own unsatisfied, unquenchable state of unfufilled desires. In seeking with all of my heart to gain, make, and possess life through fulfilling desire I lose myself and life, being left with the emptiness of self apart from Christ and my own failed schemes of earthly joy. That's just it: Adam and Eve thought in eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they would be truly free to see and choose as God does. Yet, what they thought would bring freedom was the source of all evil, bondage, sin, death, and misery that has followed men, women, and children for the rest of human history and existence. Our flesh is convinced: our way to life is better. God's way can't really be. Our sinful default mode of the flesh screams against death being the way to life, as we so desperately seek to live in our own strength and wisdom, even and often in God's name and in ministry. Sure, it's easy to proclaim His way, His word, His gospel; but when our way is clouded, our plans fail, and we come to the end of ourselves, our anxiety and emotions reveal hearts that are not resting and trusting in God and His way and His plans and His gospel for our salvation, ministry, and lives.

Though God's unconventional, counterintuitive gospel seems to be opposite of joy and freedom, in our experiences it is revealed over and over again that our own--my own--way, idea, and vision for fulfillment and life leads to alienation, not loving relationship; bondage, not freedom; sorrow, not joy; death, not life; anxiety, not peace; weariness, not rest; doubt, not security. As the wise words of Provers remind us, "There is a way that seems right to a man, and in the end it leads to death" (14:12). It isn't just that our plans and schemes for joy in this life, whether seemingly worldly or seemingly godly, miss the mark, leading nearly to happiness or good; rather, our plans that seem right--that we believe consciously or subconsciously in our hearts probably with good biblical backing in alignment with our own starting point--lead to death. What we think will bring us joy in whatever area and avenue of life actually will lead to death. We aren't just partially flawed people; we need new hearts, dispositions, desires, and wills. How sweet that in arriving at this dark, distressing reality, as we lose hope and trust in ourselves, that light and hope comes outside of us in the face of Jesus Christ. The one who truly was free, possessing all things, joy, and beauty in Himself, gave Himself up to die, so that we might truly live, being free from our self-deceived, sinful selves to become one with God in His family, Kingdom, and gospel. Jesus wasn't bound to do this; yet his own loving, relational nature led Him to choose death over holding the joy and glory He had with the Father and the Spirit to each other. Their desire was to share that love, joy, and glory, enduring all for that end. Not only did Jesus sacrifice Himself willingly; He sacrificed Himself joyfully: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2; emphasis is mine). It was Jesus' joy to die for weary, deceived, lost, totally depraved sinners. The better way was the way of death. The way to joy was sacrifice. The way to gain was to lose. There is the gospel! There is our hope! There is our joy! There is the way to relational wholeness and not alienation; the way to freedom, not bondage; the way to life, not death; the way to peace, not anxiety; the way to rest, not weariness; the way to security, not doubt. It is the way of the cross, the way of love, the way of sacrifice, the way of losing yourself in relationship to God, just as Jesus did.

In being led to a way that our earthly nature thinks will actually enslave us, we're brought to finally find security and freedom in the loving arms of God, our Savior, as we're defined in Him alone and not by virtue of ourselves and our efforts. In losing ourselves in Christ, we're brought to the joy of being free from self-absorption that alienates us from the people around us, being enabled to actually invest and lay our lives down for our brothers and sisters in Christ, friends, and enemies, since we can rest secure in Christ and not in what others think of us. In losing ourselves in Christ, we can actually face the reality of who we are in our sin, fear, hurt, and doubt, casting all our cares and anxieties on Him, and living in His sufficient strength and power, not our own. In losing ourselves and dying daily to our flesh, way, schemes, dreams, and vision, we're restored and made alive through the Spirit of God inside us, as He shows us how much higher, greater, wonderful, and glorious God's ways, thoughts, desires, and plans are. Not only this, but He shows us that His ways and plans can be trusted, convincing our hearts more and more that He is good, faithful, and forever loving. In losing ourselves, we are brought to rest in the shadow of the Almighty, as Psalm 91:1 says: "He who dwells in the shelter of the most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." Rather than resting in our own feeble strength, nearsighted vision, self-centered heart, and ever-changing plans, we can cast ourselves in our identity, holiness, dreams, desires, nature, and heart into the hands of the Almighty, relational, loving, merciful, holy, powerful, sufficient, omnipotent, good, never-failing, Sovereign, gracious, omniscient, faithful God and King. Though my flesh cries out for its former nature, and I struggle each day to die to self and my own plans and schemes I've had since the day I was born, God is convincing my heart that His way is best, His Kingdom is greater, His love is better than life, and His plans are to give me hope and a future, not to harm me. My time in South Korea has brought me to wrestle and see this over and over again, as I learn and relearn, discover and rediscover how faithful and loving my heavenly Father is. In being brought away from what I know as home through family, friends, and familiar places and times, God is revealing that what I need is not what my own heart and flesh desires and longs for but Him. What I need is not the perfect job, the perfect relationship, the perfect place, the perfect friends, the perfect life; I need Jesus, which means dying to self and living to Him. How sweet and freeing to discover His goodness, beauty, and love that truly are better than life! How cool to also see that it is this discovery and death to self that enables true love, community, prayer, joy, service, calling, and beauty to be born and made alive. Please pray that God would continue this work on my heart, as I get busier and busier and tempted to rest in my strength, striving, efforts, self-worth, relationships, flesh, and desires. Pray that the love of Jesus would be my source of joy, holiness, endurance, faithfulness, love, forgiveness, repentance, belief, and power. I struggle daily to believe this, whether conscious of that struggle or not, living more often than not through the quality of my circumstances, the strength of my own striving. This results in me falling on my face, while being reminded gently and lovingly through the discipline of God to cry out to Him in prayer for needs only He can meet. Though my heart and flesh cries out against giving up and this death to self, I find in doing so freedom, power, strength, and love through the Spirit of God alive, at work, and inside of me. How beautiful the gospel is! How wonderful to live for more than ourselves! How glorious to lose ourselves in Christ! How sweet to give up our lives in service to God's immense, glorious, and loving Kingdom where we find true justice and mercy co-existing!

Thank you immensely for your prayers. They mean more than you--and I really--could ever know. God is alive and at work through His Spirit in my life and the Yoo's in South Korea, and I know that He is alive and working in you, dear family and friends. Please know that you are in my thoughts and prayers continually in the midst of the daily battle you face to die to self and lose yourself in the gospel. Know that the battle is not in question you are victorious! Christ has purchased eternal life for you through His blood, giving you the certain promise of an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Therefore you fight for the faith, struggle, pray, and live to God not to obtain favor and relationship with God but for the sake of the spread of the gospel and the glory of God, that His name might be proclaimed, made known, embraced, and called upon by men, women, and children from all nations to the freedom and love that are found fully and solely in Christ! May you and I live in the strength and persevering grace of Christ, even as our ancestors of the faith and Christ cry out, cheer for, and call us to God's better Kingdom way of self-denying, other-centered love:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility from sinful men that you may not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12:1-3).

May you rest in the peace and grace of God. Good night from Seoul, South Korea, and good morning to all of you. : )