Who is the Lord?

In the earlier stage when I met the Lord, i.e., not long before I realized the profound word of God, the idea that I should have 3 or 4 days off from office came across my mind. I unfolded the Christian Newspaper the same day to find a leaflet showing that a famous pastor would come and preach at the nearby church during the same period of my holidays. I knew that God led me. So during the holidays, I attended all the morning, day, and evening services from Monday evening to Thursday, omitting none of them. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

In the first day of the revival service, he preached that you should be eager to give collection and tithes and respect the pastors who led you in your church so that you might believe in Jesus in the right way and might be well blessed, and that the church members belonging to your religious association was the best. He has been revivalist preacher over 30 years so he skillfully led those who gathered there, sometimes making them laugh.

 

During the second-day services, I thought without reason that all those church members looked pitiful, so I cried quite a while because he did not preach the true gospel to them who panted for the word of God but he only told them to regularly pay collection and sincerely serve their pastors.

 

I came back home and prayed to God on the evening of the same day. I asked, “Lord, do you love that revivalist pastor?” He said, “Yes, I do.” I asked again, “Did you lead me to attend this gathering during my holidays? He said, “Sure.” I asked the third time, “Are you with this gathering?” He answered in the affirmative. I felt really abashed because he preached with very low-level contents but He told me that He loved him and He was with the gathering, which dissatisfied me.

 

I made up my mind to attend it to the end considering that the Lord was with it, but I could not hear the sermons, even a single word. During the subsequent service, I browsed through the Bible and God told me with Deuteronomy 5:2, “Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.”

 

Upon reading it, I easily concluded that He just simply scolded me because I fussed over the gathering without faith, grumbling about the pastor’s message while knowing that God told me to join it.

 

In the daybreak service in the next day, I judged him much about what he preached.

 

It was some 7a.m. when I am finished with the daybreak service. I had parked my car by the roadside before the service, but I came out of it and approached my card to find that I got a parking ticket from a ward official. I thought “How strange it is. He should have protected my car because I’ve attended the service He told me to go.”

 

In addition, the officials who ticket illegally parked cars generally move around after the work hour begins, but I felt embarrassed about it that I got a ticket very early in the morning. However, I had no idea why I was ticketed.

 

I guessed that the Lord would have this parking fine paid in a certain way. When I asked Him, “Will You do so?” He answered to me by saying, “You pay for it.” I go t struck dumb, but had no idea what was going on.

 

Missionaries dispatched to Africa

 

Some days have passed, and a pastor and his wife who were sent to Africa as missionaries confessed what they did there and preached a sermon in the Wednesday service of our church. They told a lot of experiences they had undergone in their extremely hard lives.

 

Their confession touched my heart to some degree although I compared some part of it with mine and I disagreed to another part of it. Particularly, her prayer before she began her experience was very much humble and each of her calling “Father” sounded like that it came from her experience with God.

 

But I thought that she would force the audience to give collection after having said her hard story. As I guessed, she said that each donation of $1,000 would build a church and anyone moved by Him would give collection. It was impossible for me to be moved about giving collection because I had such a arrogant and wicked mind. My wife, sitting next to me, was moved to make up her mind to give it.

 

The pastor named those who would give the collection, and when the service was over and we came out of the church, one of my acquaintances came to me and extended his hand, smiling, as if to say that I did a great thing. “Frankly, I didn’t do it…”

 

I found my car’s rear view mirror on the side of the passenger seat broken after the service was over. I spoke ill of the bad guy who had broken it and sped away over and over again. I had no idea whether my wife standing by me knew my situation, but she told me to give thanks. I may have blamed him about three times by talking to myself, “Give thanks? Oh, no…” But it suddenly occurred to me that He made this thing happen to me because He wanted me to realize something.

 

This reminded me of it that the Lord told me to pay the penalty with my own money when I was ticketed because of a parking violation and I guessed that He would solve it since I attended the revival service in obedience to God’s will.

 

I found the reason of these two cases after having come home and prayed to Him: I arrogantly judged the pastor the Lord had ordained.

 

During the revival service, I judged the pastor, insisting that I knew the word of God and I was on God’s side, and shedding tears with all of my eagerness. But such a conduct was not of the Lord. It was my righteousness. The trick of the old man, my righteousness, is deep that much. The old man is stronger than me, sitting on the top of my head. If you think that you can hear the word of God, overcome the old man, and accordingly heal yourselves, you are deceived completely. The old man is stronger than us as God is stronger than us.

 

Further, when the missionary told what God did for him, I was too proud to reject the Lord so He fulfilled His will through another person. He loved me and He broke the rear view mirror so that I might realize my fault.

 

The true Lord

 

I have confessed the story in the earlier stage when I met Him, but all of us must meet the same Lord. If we believe in Jesus but fail to meet the Lord, the heart of such God, we will be deceived by our own old man even if we believe in Him.

 

We are born as sinners and we are “flesh,” and even if we hear the word of the Lord or His voice, we will interpret it as the “flesh” pleases. Therefore, we cannot hear the voice of the Lord who says to lay down our lives of the “flesh” fundamentally. Even if we hear it, we will transform it on our own. Accordingly, we cannot believe in God and Jesus by ourselves. The Lord, the man of God, must come as another man beside us.

 

All the prophets and the Son of God came as men, and they did not teach them in the Bible study class but they introduced such God and led them to the way to the oneness with God. So those who had believed them and followed them were born again as new “spirits,” were set free, and were used by the Lord. We should meditate on it again that Jesus is both “man” and “God.”

 

Each of us must choose one of the two: the slave of the sin or the servant of God? They who are subject to the bondage of sin are mistaken thinking that they are free, so they think of being servant of God as being placed under the restraint of God all their lives. But, if we become servants of God, it signifies that we have the heart of God, and we will then be set free in the true sense.

 

Some people visit our church because they found that our church proclaimed very profound words of God. I welcome all of them. They will hear new words here, but they can also find many other churches that will let them know the deepness of the word of God. The Lord, the word, who is alive will be introduced to them in our church, as well as deep interpretation of the word.

 

I hope that you should also meet the Lord I introduced in my confession. Further, I pray that you follow Him to find that you are utterly tainted with sin and you cannot escape from the depth of evil at all if it were not for Jesus. If you meet the true Jesus, the antichrist will be found in you. If you believe in Him without knowing this fact, it will be nothing but it that the antichrist in you is busy in believing in Jesus Christ.

 



by Chung DuckYoung, pastor