Welcome to Korea

Annywonghaseyo and welcome to Korea.

Kimberly, Tj, and I flew into Seoul July 19th. It was a fourteen hour flight from Dallas Texas and we are crazy jet lagged. So far the Koreans are very friendly, nice, and helpful as well as busy. Kimberly and I are staying with a nice host family that lives close to the school where we will be teaching. The father is a pastor with two daughters who are in fifth and seventh grade. The family cooks us breakfast and takes us around town.

Koreans live in tall apartments instead of houses; often in restaurants you eat on the floor with mats; you take off your shoes before entering special places or houses; and the weather is crazy humid with really hot rain.

The food here is interesting. It's definitely totally different from what we are used too- and sometimes hard to digest. I try to avoid the fishy foods and eat the rice and noodles. Tj and I decided that we would not get hungry in Korea because we would choose not to think about eating. This has worked successfully so far as yesterday our host family forgot to feed us dinner.

Today our host family took us to see the Chang Deok Gung Palace. It was huge and beautiful and we got to enter the Secret Gardens. To travel to the palace, we took a subway and busses. Here are some pictures of the palace.

Like a child

Mark 10:15 and Luke 18:15

Many people love children: their smiles, happy giggles, playful spirits, genuine trust, and eager acceptance of love. Children don't have many enemies. If they make someone mad they are quick to forgive.
I can regretfully say many people don't love Seventh Day Adventists. They are known to worry a lot, complain a lot, judge a lot, hard to please, and few of them smile or laugh often. Sometimes when we have to explain what an SDA is it seems so complicated: don't do this, do that only when this.. so many rules.
What if following Christ was as simple as accepting our role as a child of God? Have we been missing out on the blessings of being part of Christ's family with God as our heavenly Father by worrying about many meaningless things?

Unless you feel you need God, and are as dependent to God as a child is to their parents' care, you will not enter the kingdom of God.

Children are..
-needy
-trusting
-submitting
-obedient
-honest
-sincere
-simple
- non-judgemental
- caring
-accepting

Like a child, we should have a relationship with God and trust Him fully; we should be so eager to search God's word, pray to Him, and spend time with Him like a child wants to know and be like his parents; we should be as honest as a child to God and the people around us.

Father God, please accept us as your children and teach us to follow you and trust you like a child.

Prayer

At Wewoka Woods this summer, staff would perform a different prayer skit every night during campfire, teaching the campers how or how not to pray. As I reflect on the skits I watched time and time again, I realize how important prayer is in my life and the lives of all believers and how far away my prayer life is from where it needs to be.

In the skits of “how not to pray” prayers were short giving God no time to talk, selfish asking for things they didn’t need and treating God like Santa Clause, impersonal failing to address heart to heart subjects with God and simply going through the motions, or given at night when no attention was really being given to God because of sleepiness. As I think about these skits, I realize that I have done all these things far too often. How often do I wait to pray til I desperately need God and only choose to use Him as a Santa Clause or wish giver? How often do I run around throughout my day ignoring Christ until bedtime when I mumble a few holy words then shut Christ up and go to sleep?

In the final prayer skit on Friday night, prayer was personal and conversational. God had a relationship with the girl and she would listen to God give her advice about every part of her day: from the guy she liked to her mom nagging at her sister. Christ wants to talk to me like that. He wants to talk to you like that. If we only realized, how much prayer could transform our lives and make us totally different people. Christ wants to live in us. More importantly He wants us to get to know Him.

Ephesians 4:22-24 “Put off your old self which is being corrupted of its evil desires, to be made new in the attitudes of your minds, and live and put on the new self; created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Jones writes that less than ten percent of all Christians spend time with God other than during church services. This is tragic because it shows that less than ten percent of all self-proclaimed Christians actually know who God is. Hearing about Him from others will never be the same, we have to know Him for ourself.

We have power beyond what we imagine when we live in Christ and when we pray. We must learn to pray continuously. I want to live and breathe Jesus Christ, his plans, and His thoughts all throughout my day.I know that is the only way, I will be able to survive in Peru next year as a student missionary

So if praying changes our lives and gives us power why do we hate is so much?? I don’t know about you but honestly I just don’t feel like praying a lot of the time. Mike Jones writes that “the reason you and I often don’t feel like praying is because it’s in our DNA not to feel like praying. Human nature seeths with the things of God like Bible study and prayer.”

Long distance is hard- it can be said that being far apart for a time either makes or breaks the relationship. Yet imagine a long distance relationship with no communication- that’s no relationship. No relationship at all because if you can’t see a person’s face and look into their eyes, you need to be able to talk to them, and if you can’t talk to them and learn about them you really don’t know them. If we hate praying right now it’s ok. If we think it’s boring that’s fine. But we have to change that if we want to know Christ. Because without prayer, we will never have a close relationship with Him.

In Matthew it talks about judgment times and when Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats. He writes that many people will say “But what about I Jesus?” And Jesus will respond “I never knew you.” Sure, we hear about God. We go to tons of church services, sing tons of songs, and even listen to a bunch of prayers with pastors or other people. But if you want to get serious about someone you have to invest time in them and them alone. You have to spend alone time talking to them.

How do we learn to pray? First we die to our selfish desires and realize that prayer will be difficult because Satan is doing everything in his power to keep us from praying. Second, we become intentional and focused, setting ourselves up for success making sure that we follow through with our communication with Christ.

If we truly want Jesus we have to die. We have to choose God before what we want to do and what interests us, our hobbies, our passions, our relationships, and our time. We must decide that we will die to anything that separates us from Christ It’s going to be hard but it takes a conscience choice to surrender our own will day after day and just do it: fall on your knees and pray. It will get easier if you start doing it, but if you don’t start now, your relationship with God is not going to simply fall in place. If you want to know God, stop right now and tell him that.

 

 

Goodbyes

I hate goodbyes. In the past, I tend to run and hide and avoid them altogether. But this year I'm not just saying goodbye for a little while. I'm saying goodbye to many close friends and family for an entire schoolyear. PERU PERU PERU is echoing in my mind right now like hard core even though I'm flying to KOREA today, in just 20 minutes.

God is good and has blessed me with wonderful parents, a crazy brother who I love to death, supportive friends, and good opportunities. He is providing the money that I need to go to Peru. He is doing everything.

As for goodbyes, I won't forget. You don't have to forget. I will smile because God is so good to me. I have had an amazing summer and I have the best friends and family ever. My dreams are all coming true quickly. I want to travel the world and I'm so excited to begin my journey! So Korea ya- I can't wait- bring it on; first stop: Seoul.

Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.”  - Dr. Seuss

Persecution

"To the saint personal insult becomes the occasion of revealing the incredible sweetness of the Lord Jesus."- Chambers

I love this quote. It's so beautifully true. When someone persecutes you or insults you, the worst comes out. Character is not only who you are when nobody is looking but also who you are when someone is yelling at your face.

This week, since I am the lake director (yay me) and nominated myself crowd control coordinator (yay me again) =p I have learned that I am not as great at handling yelling and criticism as I thought I was. Both yesterday and today I acted quite defensive when people began to complain and yell at me and the end was not so good. I would love to see Jesus when He talked to the Pharisees and even the crowd condemning Him at the cross. I can only imagine the love and genuine concern in His eyes in contrast to the sarcasm and hatred in mine. I know that as lake director I have a reason to defend myself and my workers. But Jesus never felt the need to defend His ways sarcastically or angrily to his followers. He knew that His work was justified before God and God alone.

There is a quote that Oswald Chambers writes in his devotional it says "Every time I insist upon my right, I hurt the son of God; whereas I can prevent Jesus from being hurt if I take the blame myself."This quote stuns me. I want to protest and be like "No people are just going to walk all over me, use me, and take advantage of me- that's not even fair. I'll be misrepresented." But then if you think about it- that's just like Jesus! If being like Jesus is our goal, we will need to learn to stop defending ourself and start accepting criticism and persecution.

Matthew 5:39 ,"But I say unto you, That ye shall not resist evil.; but whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Falling

“My goal is God Himself, not joy nor peace. Not even blessing, but Himself, my God.”

“The spiritual saint never believes circumstances to be haphazard, or thinks of his life as secular and sacred, he sees everything he is dumped down in as the means of securing the knowledge of Jesus Christ. There is a reckless abandonment about him. The Holy Spirit is determined that we shall realize Jesus Christ in every domain of life, and He will bring us back to the same point again and again until we do.

In whatever we do we must take the initiative to look for Jesus.

Honestly right now that quote slaps me in the face because I feel like I need Jesus more than ever right now yet I feel so far away from Him.

I’m freaking out right now. Everything is hitting me like a hailstorm, making me gasp for air like the tuber I knocked off yesterday. I have one more day of camp with all my friends, then three weeks teaching English in Korea, a week and a half to tell my family and friends goodbye, and then a plane ride across the world to Peru where I will serve and be a doctor for 8 months!!! 8 months that seems so long- and Peru seems so unimaginable. I mean yes this has been my dream for a long time. I can’t explain how excited I am, but at the same time, I am scared.

God has definitely done the whole Peru thing for me. He made the decision that I was going—he gave me all the right signs. I definitely trust Him and I have no second guesses about my decision to go for a year, even when leaving some pretty amazing friends here. But even though I know Peru is where God wants me, I’m nervous. I really want to reach the people there. I really want to make a difference. I want to learn medical things- so I can heal the people. I really want my life to change- but I really desperately want people to see Jesus through me. I don’t want to go there and stay the same. Honestly, I don’t know how I will be able to come back to selfish America? Ok I’m sorry but we are just so selfish here. I’m tired of living life so much about myself. I know that’s bad and I know people are all like “Well you don’t need to go around the world to love other people and not care about yourself and you don’t need to go be a missionary to find God and get serious.” And I know they are right, you don’t have too. But also that verse in the Bible where it says it’s better to cut off your arm then send your whole body to hell.. I kinda get from that that we need to take initiative to put ourselves in the best positions to seek God’s face and find Him. Because in the end that’s all that matters- our relationship with Him!

It’s really hard for me- my walk with God-especially right now I’m really struggling with it. I mean it’s easy to be nice, I know I’m not nice all the time, but I mean I can be nice enough, I can even suck up. And it’s easy to follow the ten commandments by “law” but it’s harder to love like Jesus Christ and live out the fruit of the spirit. Even harder for me then demonstrating Christ’s love, is the actual relationship. I just find so many distractions in my day, and I want to spend quality time with God. But time and time again I deny Him and I put Him off until I’m way too tired and I fall asleep. This really frustrates me! It makes me so mad!! Sometimes I feel like if I can’t have a steady walk with Christ how can I take any other relationship seriously? I really do need God. But sometimes if I’m distracted it’s harder to see how much I need him. I really do love God so much but it’s definitely still hard to make time for that relationship.

Today I’ve come to that point where I know without a doubt that I can’t do this without God. Sometimes it takes a fall to make you look up and realize you have a Savior that is waiting for you to grab his hand. Today was a really rough day at the lake and a really hard day in my brain. Thinking about everything happening just doesn’t make sense to me. I got really mad today at really small things and honestly I would like to just run away from everything. But I won’t. I can’t. Because I know with Christ’s strength and His help only I can do the seemingly impossible things.

Isaiah 50:4-7 is a paragraph I memorized when I was a little kid and I love verse 7. It says “For the Lord God will help me. Therefore I will not be disgraced; Therefore I have set my face like flint and I know I will not be put to shame.”

Psalm 55:22 “Cast your burden on the Lord and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.”

Philippians 4:6,7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Goodbyes will be extremely hard. I will get homesick. There will be cultural shock. Things will change quickly. Life will move on. But in the end it will be ok because God is there. He has a plan and He knows everything from the beginning to the end. I pray that you trust God with every part of your life as well and realize how crazy He is about you.

"There are times, says Jesus, when God cannot lift the darkness from you, but trust Him. God will appear like an unkind friend, but He is not; He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not. He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not. Keep the notion of the mind of God on all things strong and growing. Nothing happens in any particular order unless God's will is behind it, therefore you can rest in perfect confidence with Him."- Chambers

the Wedding

"Every vision will be made real if we will have patience. Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry. The vision is not a castle in the air but a vision of what God wants you to be. Let Him put you on his wheel and twirl you exactly as He likes and as sure as God is and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with His vision. If you have ever had the vision of God you may try as you like to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you."

Revelation 19:7-9 Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

Revelation 21:2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

A wedding begins with a dream or a vision, a hope for a passionate life with one lover that will last until death. God has a vision and a dream for a marriage with each one of us. He pursues us day by day, minute by minute, waiting for us to realize how crazy in love with us He is. As we begin to accept His love, we begin to trust Him more and finally we begin to commit our lives to Him.

A wedding is designed as a ceremony of purity and holiness to join two people who are committed together for life that they may never be unbound. To prepare for a wedding, two people spend a long time together learning all about each other and serving each other in love. They do everything they can to learn about their partner in the goal of setting themselves up for the best marriage and married life as possible.

God wants to be our bride. He wants us to submit to Him and He wants to live with us in purity and holiness. We cannot be married to Christ if we are sinful because He is a God whose purity radiates fire which would destroy us, the sinner, immediately. If we want to be married to Christ, we must make the decision to take our relationship with Christ  seriously and abolish all sins and idols in our lives.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

John 14:1-3 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Christ loves us more than we can ever imagine. He has a plan for us that is bigger and better than our craziest dreams. He has a home for us that lasts for eternity. Sometimes thinking about all that God has done for us seems too good to be true, and it is. But God's love for us is real and His gift of eternal life and peace is true. What do we have to do? We have to prepare for the wedding. We have to seek God passionately and purposefully so that we learn His character and He transforms our evil hearts to pure. Christ will continually pursue us, but we must pursue Him as well. We must purify our lives.

Revelation 14:1-20 Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless. ...