Full Living in Korea

Today is Chuseok weekend, one of the biggest holidays in Korea! For the first time since I've been in Seoul, the city isn't actually overflowing with people, cars, and busyness! I've also been blessed with a weekend break to rest, reflect, and also to share with you of the many things God has been doing here in Korea. (Oh, and for the information of my Grandparents and family, I spent much of today with Kristin Mutchler, her husband Gary, and her parents who are visiting from China! We had a great time together! God is so good to bring family together on this foreign holiday!).

These past couple of months have been full of many significant happenings, graces, lessons, and blessings. One of the first to note, as most all of you probably know, is that my Grandparents, Packa and Geemaw that is : ), came to visit me in Seoul from August 20-September 3! I was blessed so deeply to have them here, amazed by the bravery and love of my Grandparents to come half way around the world to share and experience the new life and world God has brought me in. We stayed in a beautiful hotel together with a breathtaking view of the city. Among my favorite times, in fact, with Packa and Geemaw were simply sitting together to fellowship, eat, and talk, while looking out at the wonderful view we had. Spending time with Packa and Geemaw always reminds me that the best moments and times in life don't center on events and what you are doing; rather, they center on just being in the presence of the people God puts in our lives to show us His truth and love. That is not to say, however, that we didn't have many adventures together! On the contrary, our time together was very eventful, as we traveled to a beautiful Korean Island overnight, enjoyed seeing the COEX Aquarium, took a day trip to the Demilitarized Zone that divides South and North Korea (a very moving time), and took a cruise down the Han river on one of our last nights together. I also was blessed to hear Packa preach again one of the Sundays he was here, hearing another great sermon from Hebrews! It was wonderful to have my Grandparents worship in the church I'm serving in here and to meet our body and the people that God has brought into my life. I mentioned in my last blog how having Will Joseph here provided one of the first moments where the two worlds I've experienced finally intersected. Having Geemaw and Packa come made these two worlds merge ever closer, bringing such a significant part of 'home' into this new life. Now, through people in Covenant church meeting and seeing me with my Grandparents, I feel far more connected and known. What a blessed grandson I am to have my Grandparents! They are some of the dearest and best friends I have, and I am so thankful God gave us this time together. I will never forget it.

I also mentioned in my last update that we were prayerfully considering and looking for a new place for our church to move. Well, September 7, we moved into a new space! We were waiting for a big commercial building to open that real estate people were telling would be open for months. Yet, it just wasn't opening and kept getting pushed back. Then suddenly, this space opened up with a reduced price at a much better rate than normal, and God paved the way for us to move! We have since resumed our Korean worship service, along with continuing our English worship service, and are just starting to get settled into the new place. There is enough space to fit well over 100 people in the sanctuary, and there is also plenty of room for additional class rooms and office space! God has certainly been very good to us! I would ask you to please pray that God would continue providing for our church plant. The new space is more expensive, as it is very costly to move into any spaces in a metropolitan city like Seoul. Pray that our trust and efforts would all be grounded in unwavering, firm trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, Lord, Sustainer, Guard, Guide, and Treasure. So much is happening and it is very easy to miss the purpose for all that we are doing. We are getting ready to Launch Small Groups in a couple weeks. We are starting an evening fellowship meeting with the young men in our church, including me, to lead messages through the book of Acts that starts October 11. We've just been blessed with another full-time staff, Jin Won, a married 30 year old Korean, who will play my role in the Korean service and work to connect more Koreans and people to our body. We are getting ready to reach out much more fully into our community through offering many classes for children, and a few for adults as well, while also just trying to serve the people and city we are in to share and show the love of Christ. Not only that, but Pastor Yoo has asked me to preach for the first time in my life on either October 25 or November 1. Pray for me, the Yoo's, Jin Won, and all our church to be grounded and centered in Jesus Christ that all we do as a body would be subordinated to our chief purpose of sharing Christ and His gospel in truth and action. Pray that, as we serve, we would rely wholehearted and solely on Christ, who alone is the architect and builder of the church. Pray that in the midst of all our efforts we would submit to Christ's vision and purpose for our church that is far beyond our imagination and expectations.

Recently, God has been showing me how in spite of my constant application of the gospel to the lives of others that I rarely apply the gospel to my own life. This truth hit me deeply on my day off this Monday. I was alone the entire day with little activity and felt completely worthless. I tried filling the time up with significant things I could do...reading, thinking, brainstorming what I could be doing. Nothing came. I tried getting together with a couple people, and sure enough, as I was informed later, they didn't have their phone with them. Little did I know what God was up to. I went to Hangang park, which is about a 15 minute walk away from my place. Attempting to rid myself of feeling useless and insignificant, I read through a couple books while sitting out on a bench with a view of the Han river. I read and read and read, trying to piece together my cluttered mind. Finally, after reading sections of a couple different books for around an hour and a half, I started writing. In the middle of writing, trying to make sense of where my heart was, suddenly the truth dawned on me: "I want so desperately to wake up one day and just be whole, together without need. The truth is, I want the gospel for others but nor for me. I want to master the gospel without having to need the gospel. I want to prove that I know and get the gospel without having to see my brokenness, depravity, incompleteness, insufficiency." You see, you can never be a master of the gospel but always a student of it, because one can never fully grasp the gospel. You can never plumb the depths of what Christ has done in the gospel and what it means for yours and my own lives. I had forgotten. I had tried to be a master of the greatest mystery and glory that has ever existed, rather than submitting, resting, and trusting in my gracious, good, kind, and glorious Master in the midst of life. All the while, I forgot the mysterious ways of God revealed in giving us this life that is filled with blessing in all different shapes and providences for our growth and trust in Him: days that are lonely, dry, ordinary, tough, wonderful, clear, confusing, sorrowful, joyful, memorable, forgetful, dark, bright. He does this, so that I wouldn't seek blessings from Him in certain types of days and moments, but so I would actually learn to rest, trust, hope, and find my greatest treasure in Jesus Christ, the fountain of living waters. How sweet to have my heart reopened to Christ and the beautiful gospel that enables me to face life, face me in the hardest, weakest, dullest, most hypocritical places of my being. Pray that God would continually give me a broken and open heart to see Christ no matter what He sends me. Pray that I wouldn't rest in feeling significant in myself and my performance, but that I would trust daily and entirely in Jesus in the deepest places of my heart. Ministry isn't glamorous or significant in itself. In fact, it is usually quite ordinary and humbling, anything but what I expected. Yet Christ is in all of it, breathing His life into the seemingly mundane and, in the process, transforming me, a supposed minister, through giving me Himself not what my idolatrous heart expects and wants for myself. Oh that I would see, believe, and behold Jesus more and more! May I endless pursue to know Him more and more, while always remembering that I can never see Him clearly enough, nor ever get beyond Him. May I, finally, through seeing Him learn to live humbly as His follower to serve faithfully, patiently, and continually to show Christ no matter what the circumstances are.

Thank you for how you have shared and shown me Jesus Christ, family and friends! I love you guys so much and pray that you would be filled with the grace and love of Jesus Christ in whatever place God has you in your lives. He is greater than our circumstances. He is greater than our sin. He is greater than our desires. He is greater than our fears. He is yours and He is mine now and forever. May we learn to rest in Him in all that He sees fit to give us.