St Timothy Presbyterian Church in Toronto: Sermons

Scripture Reading

Philippians 1: 3-11

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Let us hear the word

Today’s scripture passage is taken from Philippians 1:3-11

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

As I look back on the last 20 years, the first thing that comes to my mind is, wow, time really flies. 20 years have already gone by. And another thing that comes to my mind is thankfulness. I’m thankful because God has been so good to us.

We’ve all experienced God’s mysterious hands leading this church. The mysterious hands of God. These mysterious hands of God not only lead this church, but I believe that they lead our lives. Our lives are led by God’s mysterious hands. The way our lives are unraveled is a mystery, I believe. It’s not what we make. It is a mystery. And there are God’s mysterious hands that lead our lives. As he has lead this church for the last 20 years, I do believe that God will lead this church in a way we cannot even fathom. How God will lead this church in the future is unknown, I cannot even fathom it, but there will be the beautiful hands of God that guide us mysteriously.

As we live our lives, my friends, I believe that we should live with confidence. Live your lives with confidence, because there’s a big difference between living your life with confidence and living your life without confidence, and I’ll choose to live my life with confidence. Confidence is so important in our lives. Doesn’t matter what you do, confidence is so important. When we live with confidence, we are not scared of challenges. That’s what living with confidence is like. You’re not scared of challenges. Sometimes you may fail, yes, but failure is no longer a reason to quit. When you have confidence, failure simply means learning a good lesson. That’s all. Failure is not a reason to quit. Failure is simple; a good lesson for you to learn from and move on.

That’s people with confidence. We dare to try new things. New things will always bring us the uncertainty and the unknown, but the uncertainty and the unknown are not a reason to quit. Embracing the unknown, that is the beauty of God’s gift. Longing and embracing the unknown, that is the beauty of God’s gift. Uncertainty doesn’t cause fear. We’d rather have beautiful longing and we embrace the unknown because that is the gift of life, and that is the gift of God for all of us. The uncertainty and the unknown mean going beyond where we are. That’s all it means. Going beyond where we are. It means new opportunity and new change. And when we have confidence we have peace of mind because we know everything will be alright. That’s why you have peace of mind. There may be difficult times, but we know that difficult times will not be with you forever. Soon good times will come. That’s why you have peace of mind when you live your life with confidence.

So we wait with peace, but when we live without confidence we’ll have no strength and no passion. We’ll constantly worry. We’ll constantly let fear consume us and paralyze us. We’ll be busy maintaining the status quo. People who live without confidence, when there is no change, they think that’s good news, because they’re scared of changes. They don’t want change, so there’s no change and then they say, “Oh, good life.” They will never get out of their own boundaries because they are continuously searching for safety.

For people with confidence, walls are only hurdles for you to overcome, but for people without confidence, walls are protection, so they build higher walls. That’s the difference between people who live with confidence and people who live without confidence. So living with confidence is very important, but the question is, where do we get confidence? How do we have confidence? From our own ability? Or are we born with it? Some people are born with confidence. Some people are born living pessimistically. Some people are more pessimistic by nature, more cynical. Some people are more positive and I don’t really know why.

But I do know where St. Paul got his confidence. This is what he said, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” That was the source of Paul’s confidence. The one who began a good work will bring it to completion. That was where St. Paul got confidence. Not from his ability. I don’t know whether he was born with it or not, probably not, but he knew that the one who began a good work will bring it to completion, so he doesn’t worry. Everything is a process, but in the end God will bring it to completion in God’s time. Paul’s confidence had nothing to do with himself. It wasn’t from his ability or from his nature. It was God. Paul’s confidence was God.

And that’s what I believe too. I have confidence not in me, but in God. I do have confidence. That’s what I learned from my ministry in this church. God who began a good work will bring it to completion. I was 33 or 34, I spent my golden time here in this church and I’ve learned so much from the ministry, but one thing I learned, I have confidence that God who began a good work will bring it to completion in his time.

This church is not in our hands. This church is in God’s hands.

As a matter of fact, your life is not in your hands. Your Life is in God’s good hands. Do you believe that? Your life is not in your hands, your life is in God’s good hands. That’s what I believe about my children too. As I raised them, I was so busy so I couldn’t spend much time with them. I always felt sorry to Josh and Grace. But I always believed that God will take care of them. God who began a good work in them will bring it to completion at the right time. And we don’t decide that right time. God decides that right time. So all parents, trust that God who began a good work in your children will bring it to completion in God’s time.

I realized these days, life is too big to hold with my two hands. I realized that. Life is way too big. When I was younger, I thought life was pretty small. I thought I could control it. I could put it in my hand. But as I got older, I realized that life is too big to hold with my two hands. We need other people’s hands. That was what the last 20 years were like. There have been so many people who gave their hands to hold up this church. We can never do it alone. There have been so many good hands. You don’t know, but there have been so many good hands that help hold up this church.

Romans is a beautiful book and there are a lot of good lessons and as we study Galatians, it’s a beautiful book too right? We learned so much from Galatians, but Romans is much later. It was written when Paul’s theology was much more mature. It’s a beautiful book, but what is most inspiring for me is the last chapter. In the last chapter, there’s no teaching, there is nothing. But in the last chapter, it just says greet this person and that person, he just makes a whole list of greet all these people and while I was reading that, I realized that these are the people who were with Paul in his ministry. All of them work so hard, so it was not Paul alone who built a church. All these people worked together to build the church. Our life is like that my friends.

We never made it all by ourselves. I didn’t make it, 20 years of ministry in this church, more than I shaped this congregation. I think this congregation shaped me more. They taught me, they have shaped who I am and my thinking. This congregation has shaped me tremendously.

Our life is like that. You don’t make your life by yourself, you are being shaped by the people around you, whether you like it or not. They have shaped you, your parents and your friends and all these people have shaped your life. Our life is made by others and with others. Sometimes we argue, sometimes we disagree. We challenge each other, but we pray together. We cry together. And most of all, we all know that we are all in this ministry together.

More than anything else, it was God who has been all along as an invisible presence. God’s invisible presence is the most powerful presence. When we were down, we cried out and God lifted us up. When we stood helplessly, not knowing what to do in order to go, we prayed, and God broke open the door for us to go through. In spite of many mistakes we made, God worked through our mistakes.

When I look back, all I can say is this, I didn’t know any better.

That’s all I can say. When I look back, I didn’t know any better. Don’t you feel that sometimes? When you look back at your life 20 years ago, 30 years ago, or some of you are younger than 30 so, when you look back, “Oh geez, I didn’t know any better.” I just see how blinded I was, but God did not mind it God worked through our imperfections. Now we are entering into a new chapter of our church, not as a teenager anymore. Twenty years is not a teenager anymore. You’re entering into adulthood. As we enter into adulthood, I hope that we also become spiritually more mature.

I don’t know about you, but I do believe in the church. I think among human communities, the church is the most beautiful place and now I see why God chose Church. So I believe in the church, not necessarily as an institution, but as living body, as a living community. We have all come together here.

Let us build this church beautifully together. Small hands that you give, they matter. In the next 20 years, let us build a beautiful church together and then give that church to our children so that they may carry it on. Let us build. Let us place the soil. Let us work hard. You don’t come to church just for yourself. You come to church to build community. Then your children and their children after them, they’ll benefit from this church. You are doing valuable things, worthy things in your life. If we build this church together. Let us have confidence in God who began a good work and God will bring it to completion in God’s time.

Congratulations, and may God be with you in your ministry.

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Scripture Reading

Luke 4: 16-21

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Today’s scripture is taken from Luke 4:16-21.

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

This is the word of the Lord.

We are studying Galatians on Fridays and also Tuesday, and we’ll start a Wednesday Bible study too. And also since we’re at the end of the year, we are busy planning for 2017, next year. It is our 20th anniversary for this church and we need to think about what ministry is all about. And actually, what life is all about, because ministry and life, they are not separate. What life is all about and what ministry is all about.

Vision is very important. Without vision, we are dead. Vision shows where we need to go. It shows us clear direction of where our life needs to go. That’s what vision is. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we must do it with vision. In our scripture passage today, Jesus, before he did any of his ministry, he laid down his vision. He did not come up with his own vision, he took it from the scripture, Isaiah, and then he took the vision for his life and for his ministry. And this is what he said, “He has come to bring good news to the poor. He was sent to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” That was Jesus’ vision for ministry and that was Jesus’ vision for His life. Think about it. Meditate upon that. That was what Jesus Christ came to do, and that was what his life was all about.

I’d like to talk about vision today with you. What is the church’s vision? What does the church need to do? What is the church’s mission on about? In this day and age, I admit, that church is not a place where people love to gather together. There are not many people who say, “I love to go to church.” Or, “Church is a place that I love to be.” You know, we get 50,000 people. I had Roger Center, but not at the church all the time. Even people who are going to church are kind of confused about what the church is all about. Why do I go there every Sunday? What is church all about?

It is very important for us to know what Jesus came to do, and the church needs to continue what Jesus came to do. If the church does that, then I believe that the church is relevant to people’s lives, and I do believe that church is relevant to people’s lives. Even though Roger Center may be gone, but the church cannot be gone. That’s what I believe, because the church is a very relevant, very important place. It doesn’t matter how many people gathered together. Jesus was the one who established the church and the church is going to continue with the vision of Jesus Christ. And we’re going to carry out what Jesus wants to do in our lives. In today’s scripture, Jesus said he came to bring good news to the poor, to release the captives, to recover the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim jubilee.

Look at it… When you look at this vision statement, one word comes to my mind? What is that one word? It is freedom. That’s one word that comes to my mind. Freedom. At the end, the year of the Lord’s favour, that is called ‘jubilee’. Jubilee comes every 50 years, and on jubilee, they let the slaves go free. So even the jubilee is about freedom, and I do believe that Jesus came to bring freedom from suffering.

When we studied Galatians, we heard Paul’s interpretation of what Jesus came to do. Oh, I’m reading a book right now, Paul – was he a follower of Jesus or was he the founder of Christianity? It’s a very interesting book because Paul never met Jesus and then Paul never quotes Jesus in his letter, and yet Paul captured the essence of Jesus so well. He never met Jesus, but he captured who Jesus was so clearly. All other disciples could not do it. He was able to summarize what Jesus came to do, what Jesus’ ministry was all about. And this was what is what Paul said about the coming of Jesus. Paul said, “Grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to set us free. ”

Freedom to set us free from the present evil age according to the will of our God and father. Freedom. You know, freedom to the powerful and the privileged is to be free to do whatever they want. Because they have the power to do whatever they want, so for them, freedom is to do whatever I want. That’s what freedom is to them. To me, that’s a corrupted understanding of freedom. Freedom is not to do whatever you want to do. Freedom means to be liberated from what enslaves them, what oppresses them, and what makes them not to be who they are meant to be. That’s freedom. Whatever enslaves you within you, if you are free from that, that is freedom.

God wants all of God’s creation, every single one of us, to live abundantly. Abundant life, that’s what God wants from all of us. God doesn’t want us to live a miserable life. God wants us to live an abundant life. John captured that very well in Chapter 10. This is what Jesus said, “I came, that they may have life and have it abundantly.” That’s why Jesus came. To give us the abundant life. My friend, money does not give the abundance of life. Don’t be fooled. Money does not give the abundance of life. “Oh, money will give me the abundance of life!” That is a slogan of capitalism. Don’t be fooled by the propaganda of the system of capitalism. “Money will give me abundance!” Lie. That is a lie. Deception. Sometimes money can even enslave you rather than giving you freedom and abundance. I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in that slogan. Money may give me convenience, but not abundance. What gives the abundance of life, I believe, is freedom. Only freedom can give you abundance. Jesus came not to give us money, he never said that. Jesus did not come to give us money. Jesus came to give us the freedom that makes our life abundant. You know, people work and work and work, and they make money… but when they go to a restaurant or when they see people around them who need their help and all that, they don’t give any. You know? They all always think about getting it rather than paying for it. They have lots of money. Can we say that that person is abundant? That that person’s life is an abundant life? Can we say that? Even though they have lots of money, they never pay, they never give for people around them. What do we call them? Cheap. We don’t call them abundant, we call them cheap. They only think about themselves. They never share to give to other people. Abundance does not come from having money. Abundance comes from sharing the money. When you share more money with others, then you are abundant.

Today and tomorrow we are going to collect offering for Haiti. I hope that you give generously. There are people who are suffering tremendous human suffering. I think that it is right, just simply right, for us to share our resources with them. Don’t just give 10, 20 dollars. We’re talking about people who are suffering or dying. When we are able to share freely with those who suffer around us, I do believe that that life is an abundant life. I think that that definition is a much better definition and understanding than the slogan of capitalism, that money will make you abundant. Don’t be a slave and fool of capitalism.

You have to have a philosophy of life. People who are the powerful and the privileged, they need to be free from the greed and selfishness. And that applies to most of us. To us, freedom is to be free from the greed and selfishness. As they share freely with those who are suffering around them, they shall be able to enjoy the abundance of life, and also help the poor and free the captives from their suffering. That should be our humanity. That is simply the right thing to do as a human being.

You know, I’m envious of Jews, Jewish people, because they have wisdom for thousands of years. It is recorded in their document and then they lived with that wisdom of life from generation to generation. I mean, these documents gave them – “This is what good life is supposed to be” – so I’m really envious of them. Our Christian history is very short, a few decades or a few hundred years, but they have thousands of years. They have this wisdom in that book, and that wisdom taught them how to let live their lives. This is what it said, “When you read the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the very edges of your field or gather their cleanings of your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the alien. I’m the Lord, your God.” How wise that is. Don’t be aggressive for your own profit and benefit. Don’t like deals so much. Don’t like sales so much.

Don’t be so aggressive for your own profit and benefit. “Oh, $1000 TV? I got it for $200! I’m so smart.” Be generous. That generous spirit is the abundance. Generous spirit. Having money is not the measure of abundance. Sharing money is the measure of your abundance. Saving money for yourself is not the best life philosophy or policy. Sharing the money with those who suffer around you is the best philosophy and policy. That is a principle of blessing. Again, I’m envious of Jewish people because they have all these things in their scripture. This is what God said to Abraham, listen, “When he first called Abraham, He said, ‘I’ll bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.'” Blessing to who? To others. I’ll bless you so much that you’ll be a blessing to other people. You will be the source of blessing. That’s what blessings are like. Blessing is a flow from me to others to others and to others. It’s a flow. If you’re stingy, if you’re greedy, you block that flow of blessing. My friends, please don’t be a slave of capitalism. Please don’t. Money doesn’t make you abundance. Don’t be a fool believing that!

You will be destroyed. Your soul will be destroyed if you keep going that way. Share what you have with others. That is the purpose of life, not making money. Truly your soul will die if you keep doing that. Joy will be gone, peace will be gone. And then we don’t even know what the purpose of life is all about after all. Blessing is a flow. Don’t break – don’t block that flow. Break it open, so that this flow really smoothly goes from one to another. Jesus came to break open this flow. Jesus shared everything he had – his time, his talents, his love, his gift. I see so much of enslavement in this day and age. People are dying. In the modern world, in the name of false abundance, so many people have become enslaved in their own greed and unhappiness. Why do you think people are so unhappy? Because they don’t have money? No, because they have money.

They don’t experience the freedom of life, and they don’t experience the abundance of life. You know, you cannot enjoy the abundance alone. You can only enjoy the abundance with others, together. So in that sense, abundance is like a party. You cannot enjoy the party alone. “Oh, let’s have party!” But you’re all alone… How can you have a party? Abundance, same thing. You can only have abundance with others, together.

Let us not be fooled by the false teachings of this world. It’s enough. We are being fooled enough, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to say, “Enough is enough.” It’s time to say “No. I’m not going to be fooled by that anymore. Because my life is very short. I’m not going to live for the rest of my life chasing after the money.” Let us learn from God. The way to be free and abundant. You have enough material to enjoy the abundance of life, but only one thing that you need right now. That one thing is freedom. Freedom to share. Won’t you join me doing that? Try it. Have freedom to share. You will see more abundance in your life. That’s what a blessed life is like, and I do believe this philosophy much more than any other teaching.

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Scripture Reading

Hosea 11: 1-2

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What I’m going to share is the essence of Christian belief and a core of what we have on the foundation of Christian belief, and you will realize that that is quite different from the teachings of the world if you’re not careful, we just bring the teachings of the world into the church and just change the labels and start thinking that that is a message, Christian message. But that is not Christian message. So I like to share with you so it can be counter cultural message for you. In Hosea and other prophetic books, we see a very angry guy. It is a kind of scary to think of the all mighty, all powerful God being angry because you will know what this powerful all powerful almighty God may do to you. So a lot of people live with the scary image of God. Whenever people think about God, they think of the scary image. But this time when I read Hosea, I saw another aspect of God.  I saw God who was emotionally very vulnerable. Yes. Every one of let us hear the word. Hosea one to two “When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me. They kept sacrificing to the gods and offering incense to idols” but it has nothing to do with age. I was like that when I was 20. I forgot. Anyway, let’s go back. So this time, this time when I read Hosea, yes, I saw very angry

God, but I saw another aspect and that aspect is I saw God was emotionally vulnerable. That was quite the revelation to me. I never thought of God that way. I never thought of God being vulnerable emotionally. I never thought of God who, cannot control himself. I always thought that God is always in good control, never gets affected by human beings, never gets angry. He’s kind of aloof, distant. He’s not affected by human beings, but I realized that God was affected so much by human beings that he got angry with them. I mean who are we to make God that affected? And I saw that image of God this time. He wasn’t like parents who say anything if they’re getting angry with their children in a lot of times they don’t mean what they say, but we say things anyway, I’ll kick you out. I will never feed you. I know all kinds of things that we say to our kids, but we will never kick them out. We’ll never not feed them, you know, so like almost like I saw God’s tension in that passage. That was really refreshing the other day Kee shared with us, you know, whenever she goes into the van and the kids already have earphones and don’t listen when she talks. “So how are you?” They pretend that they’re not listening. So kee this time when she entered the van, she put earphone first and then show us. The kids are very confused. “Well, what is going on here?” And then “mom, I had a math test today.”

Oh, what is he saying? You know, parents are like that. We threatened them, you know, we shout at them and then. But will never not love them, right? Love our children that is helpless image of God, and I saw a helpless God rather than the Almighty God in the books of prophets. God saw Israel running away from him, and yet God cannot do anything to stop them.Listen to what God said in verse two, the more I called them, the more they went from me. They were running away from God, the almighty God who could just destroy them, right? Right there, but he couldn’t do anything. Helpless God I saw, and I realized that that image of God is very different from the image of God in the world. When we create idles. When we create images, when we create God, we always create a powerful God. God who can do anything, we will never create a helpless God, but book of Prophets, they present the helpless God.  Many times the God we’ve created is a personification of the desire, our desire to be powerful. And we translate that into God who has absolute power? And we call that God, but the God that is shown in the book of profits is very helpless God. You know, when it comes to New Testament, Jesus captured that helpless God image very clearly in the story of the prodigal son, in the story of a prodigal son, it is not about the prodigal son. That story is about God. This prodigal son, his son give me my inheritance. Father did not die yet, and this rude, arrogant son comes to him, give me my critic tense and the father gifts that inheritance and his son runs away. It goes away from home and the father cannot stop it. He helpless. Wait and wait and wait until he comes back.

You don’t see all mighty God who controls his children. We see a helpless God who is waiting for the son to return. I think Jesus captured that image very well. I experienced that in my own life. What transformed me more was my mother rather than my father. My father was a strong man. He was going very well, but my mother was never an aggressive woman. She was always soft, gentle, soft spoken. She never told me what to do. She was simply there and when I was hurt, she was just there because she didn’t know what to do. I could see her helplessness. She wanted to do something for me, but she could not do anything. What could she do? I was hurting  I was going through pain, but she was just there hurting with me. That helplessness, but behind that helplessness I found tremendous power of love working and that power transforming me, that power changed me. I thought in that helplessness there’s no power, period, but in that helplessness there was tremendous power of God’s grace working. Isn’t that what the cross is all about? Isn’t that what we believe about the cross? Jesus died on the cross. Helplessly, People were yelling at him. If you were a truly the son of God and has that much power to save us, save yourself! Do something about it. Show your power, then we will believe you as a savior, as Messiah.  Jesus didn’t do anything. He just as helplessly slowly died on the cross. He was just hung there helplessly. Behind the helplessness, there was a power of God’s grace flowing out of him, and he moved us, and transformed us even on the cross, the only thing that was in Jesus consciousness or mind was, forgive them. How could he do that? And the last moment of his death, all he could think about was people. Forgiveness of people. In that helplessness there is powerful love. The power of love working. I mean that’s why St Paul said this message for the message about the cross is foolishness because he already helped this. Just there. It is foolishness to those who are perishing to those who don’t understand, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. He dares boldly proclaims the cross is the power. Think about that. Whether that is the message that you learn or you get from the world, we’d never want to be helpless. You want to be powerful even in serving God. We want to be powerful with that power. We serve other people. Being in the position of helping others is good, but he sees you and it can be tempting while helping others. You feel powerful. You have all the money and help other people and you feel powerful sometimes having lost some money and help the poor and the need is good and I do believe there is good and noble.

Having power and using the power and help the powerless is admirable. Having the power and using the power and help the powerless, it’s admirable, but my friends, the power Jesus showed us is different. It is the power of the cross. It is a power of helpless love, and then I realized this wisdom, this truth. I realized that scary God will never change people. Only love of God change people. In front of scary God you pretend that you changed. You want to think. You want to believe that you want to change, you change before the scary God, but only the love of God can truly change us and transform us. As parents, what I learned was helplessness, and babies cry all night just helplessly. “Wait, please baby, why do you cry so much? What’s wrong?” Well, you cannot do anything about it. When they become teenagers and go through their own rebellious time in a difficult time we just sit there. My goodness- Why don’t you think? Don’t you have a brain to think? I mean, well, my kids were good about that. I spoke a message all other people, but I cannot speak a message to my own kids! Then I feel so  helpless and powerless, and well, that’s what you’re gonna learn powerlessness and helplessness. No, but behind that helplessness and powerlessness, there is true power of your love. As minister. I’ve done ministry for 20, 30 years and what I learned is helplessness. Even today, even today, but day by day, I feel helplessness. No, I try to give the best messages as I can. I try to help out people as much as I can. I want people to really enjoy the community. As you know, I try my best, but one day people just leave and have no reason to leave. You know, that hurts as a minister. Whereas if there’s a good reason, yeah, but for them, maybe it’s a casual decision. “Oh, I decided to go to another church, whatever”, or “I decided not to not go to church at all”, but that careless decision for the casual decision for me, I stay up all night hearing that. All I learned was helplessness, but behind that helplessness, I do believe that God’s grace is working. This is what St Paul says, “my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness, so our boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I’m weak, then I am sure.” What a powerful truth. Whenever I’m weak, I am sure.

I want this church to reflect on this power, a helpless love more deeply, and through your helplessly love, many people will be transformed. They will experience God’s grace. Christian ministry is not about path. People you change. That’s not Christian ministry. Christian ministries simply loving them, serving that sometimes powerlessly and helplessly, but God’s grace will work within it. Very different message from the world. I do believe this world says, be powerful, be strong, have influence, and with that change people, I think Christianity started getting corrupted from the moment it was adopted as Roman religion, when Christianity is connected with a power that is the way to be corrupted, I hope that we, this church, turns around that message and then be the counter, proclaim the counter message counterculture message be different, right?

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Scripture Reading

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18

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While I was sitting there, I realized how blessed I am and how privileged I am, and we are, you know, once a week we gather together. We are here every Sunday. What a blessed time it is, it’s better than any concert, it’s better than even a blue jays game to me. Just being in touch with the holy spirit, being on your own, thinking about where my life is going and things like that. That is just wonderful kind of system that we have in life. Once a week we gather together and make this a rhythm of your life. Just once a week we come together and then for an hour we get that kind of time, quality time with ourselves, with friends and with family. I think you do deserve that. Today I’d like to say that life is wonderful. I dare to claim that life is wonderful because when you look around us, not always can we say that life is wonderful. We see tragedy, many people dying, many people experiencing tremendous hardships, suffering and difficulties, especially down south because of the storm and so many people lost their homes and family members and they’re in deep sadness and sorrow. The hundreds of people were killed because of the storm. We need to pray for them, but in spite of all that, I dare to claim that life is wonderful. I believe that life is wonderful, too short maybe, but it is wonderful and that’s what God wants our life to be. He wants to make our life wonderful and he wants us to enjoy that wonderful life. We want it, and God wants it, but strangely and ironically, we don’t always experience that life is wonderful.

There are people who hurt us so we don’t want to see them. There are problems that have no solutions, so we don’t want to face those problems. We don’t always find life exciting. Sometimes life can be dull, boring, and monotonous, in some extreme cases some people even question why do I continue my life? They question seriously about their life, “Why do I need to continue my life?” They suffer so much, to many of us and to many of them life seems like an endless chain of one misery after another. We easily forget that life is good and life is wonderful. You know, the biggest problem, especially for me, is that we often forget that life is wonderful. When we hear the sermon. Yeah, life’s good. Life’s wonderful. But as soon as you enter into your life, you experience challenges and difficulties that you easily forget that life is wonderful. We’re so forgetful. I’m so forgetful and we are also forgetful. You know, about being forgetful. One of the elders in the KSM, you know, a costco toothbrush, when you first buy them, they’re clearly red and blue. You can see that, but after you use two or three and the color is kind of blurry, is it red or blue? It’s not quite clear. Is that for men is that for a woman? So this elder, after using the toothbrush the first two times, they get confused, which toothbrush is theirs right? So one day they said, okay, we’ll wrap the thread around it, right? So this is mine. And the one without the thread is yours. After a while they forgot who’s one is threaded.

I mean, as you get older forgetfulness becomes a symptom and that is also my problem too. But we forget so easily that life is good. But let us remember that life is good. Life is good because God is good. Not because our circumstances are good. Life is good because God is good. Our Sunday school students always say this, God is good all the time, all the time. God is good. They recite that every morning, every Sunday morning. Why don’t we do that together today? Okay. I’ll say God is good, “all the time,” all the time, “God is good”. Yeah, life is good because God is good. We have to constantly remind ourselves that life is short but worth living. You know, our life is shaped by our thoughts. The things that you think all the time, shape who you are, affect your mood and affect who you are. That’s why Saint Paul said this, “finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” All these good things, think about it all the time as you think about them, you will be influenced by your thoughts all the time. If you’re thinking about gloomy things, negative things, miserable things all the time, then you become miserable, you become negative and you become very unhappy. Your thoughts, you need to discipline to think about honorable things rather than gloomy and negative things. Because we are shaped by what we think. It is God’s will that we live a wonderful life. Last week we talked about the specific will of God, but the general will of God is this, in today’s passage. “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus, for you.” Don’t just do it. This is the will of God for all of you, we need to constantly remember, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.

That’s what good life looks like. Just because you have a good time that doesn’t make your life a good life, just because you have lots of money and a good career and honorable whatever. Just because you have that, that doesn’t mean that doesn’t make your life good life. Good life is very simple: rejoice always, being joyful, being prayerful and be thankful, anybody can do it. You don’t need a university degree to do that. You don’t need millions of dollars to do that. Being joyful, being prayerful, being thankful, that’s what a good life looks like and that is the will of God. Every one of us deserves to have a good life and good life looks like this. Doesn’t matter what circumstances you may be in. You can always be joyful. You can always be prayerful. You can always be thankful, but even in good circumstances, you can always complain.

You can always be dark. You can always be negative, so we have to choose. Do you want to live a good life or do you want to live a not so good life? I hope that all of you live a good life. Always every moment, being joyful, being prayerful, and be thankful, being thankful, and I’d like to say a few things about each one very briefly. What does being joyful do in our lives. Being joyful, it defeats the darkness of life. That’s what being joyful does. When you rejoice, it defeats the darkness of life. Don’t let your gloomy circumstances take away joy from you. If you don’t have joy, life is not worth living. Why live when you don’t have joy, so don’t let your gloomy circumstances take away joy from you being joyful to me, means being full of life. That’s what being joyful is. When you’re full of life, you’re joyful. When you’re joyful, you’re full of life and this is what Jesus said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink, as the scripture has said out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” From their heart, rivers of living water will flow, that’s being full of life. From your heart, living water will flow. I mean of course Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will give you full of life and when you have full of life, then your life becomes joyful. And I learned the secret. You know when I tend to be gloomy, I say to myself, be joyful. I remind myself, be joyful. Sometimes I even commend me, be joyful, and then soon I realized I changed my perspective and joy flows out of my heart and I realize it’s not just me. Some writers say this, “Why are you cast down? Oh my soul,” he’s talking to himself. He’s kind of. He’s not within himself, he separated himself from himself and then tells him, why are you cast down? Oh my soul. And why are you disquieted within me? He is commending, he is rebuking himself. When he becomes gloomy and dark, he comes out and rebukes himself. I think there’s wisdom in that. There’s wisdom in that, instead of just letting your heart influence you, you direct your heart where to go. You are the rider that controls the horse. Don’t let the horse go everywhere it wants to go. You are the rider, you direct where to go with your heart with your horse. So same thing with your heart, you have to do that. You have to direct where to go. In every situation, simply remind yourself to be joyful.

Being prayerful defeats worries and anxieties. Being joyful defeats the darkness, being prayerful, defeats, worries and anxieties. This is what Saint Paul said, “do not worry about anything but in everything, by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. When you pray, the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. You know, I realized that worries and anxiety that they look like water, in a building when there is a little opening, the water seeps in or it goes in, you don’t know where the water goes after it goes in. It just goes all over the place. So once you have the water, you have a problem. My condo upstairs, it’s leaking water, and one day I came to my room and it was kind of warped right. Maybe my vision is getting warped or blurry, whatever. Why is this happening? I mean all of the sudden, I thought it was myself. And then one day my wife came in. How come your floor is worked? Really? Yeah. So I’m not the problem. And then I realized that water was leaking from the upstairs and came down. We don’t know where it went. And then it affected my floor. It affected my kitchen area and, and all that. Now we have to change the floor and oh my goodness, just thinking about it gives me a headache, but it’s worries and anxieties like that. Once you go in there, once you have a opening in your heart and it goes in and you don’t know where it goes, as soon as you realize that you’re filled with worries and anxieties. If you don’t seal yourself, if you don’t guard your heart than worries and anxieties will easily come in and did you notice that worries and anxieties is endless. One worry brings another worry and that brings another worry. And then all day you can worry, you will never get bored because it’s endless. The worries and anxieties are endless. Being prayerful defeats worries and anxieties. When you worry about something, don’t sit down and worry. Turn it into a prayer topic. Present your request to God. Simple. So whenever I have worry, I always pray. I stop, “Lord, I’ll leave it up to you. This is a problem that I have right now. I worry about that, but I leave it up to you. I know that you will take care of it. You said, let your request be known. I’m making my request known to you,” and then soon you have peace of God, life is too big to control. Don’t try to control it. Just leave your request to God. God will control it, God will take care of it, so worries and anxiety can be defeated by your prayerfulness. Sometimes you can’t fall asleep at night because you worry so much. Are you stressed out? Your life is full of stress, and then you get your health gets affected. Learn how to pray. Prayer is a powerful tool. Learn how to pray. Just simply leave your request to God and God will help you in a way that you will never know and that’s I think a better way than trying to control your life.

And third, being thankful. What does that defeat being? Thankful defeats, complaints and anger. When you complain, more and more, you complain, it becomes anger, so when you are thankful, that defeats complaints and anger, so why don’t we just go over the first thing there? When you rejoice, what does that defeat, darkness. Second, when you pray, what do you defeat, worries and anxieties, and third, when you’re thankful, what do you defeat complaints and anger right? Yeah, so when you’re thankful, it defeats complaints and anger. You know, being a complainer is such a wimpy thing to be. You know who complains usually weak people complain. Big people don’t complain. What do they do? They think about solution. Weak wimpy people, they always complain, “Oh, this is wrong. I don’t like this. I don’t like that.” Big people “Ok if I don’t like it, I’ll do something about it.” They will find a solution. They think about solution rather than just complaining about their life and their situations. If you’re not careful, you can easily be consumed by complaints and anger. So many people are angry about life. They are so angry. I don’t know what they are so angry about. They’re angry about everything. They complain about everything in life. The best remedy is to be thankful. Learn to be thankful, it is not an automatic thing. Thankfulness is not an automatic thing. It’s not a natural thing to do. For many of us, it is something that you have to learn, to be thankful. Once at a retreat I talked about having a notebook on Thanksgiving, every day, write down nine items that you’re thankful for, you’re life will change. Every day nine things that you are thankful for write down. Your perspective will change. I realized that my heart, if I just leave it, it has a tendency to go down into the darkness. This is strange, I don’t know why it does that? If I just leave it, don’t control it just goes down and down and down, deep into darkness. So the songwriter is right. Sometimes you have to command yourself, “stop it” you have to tell your heart, “stop going there.” So instead of letting the heart go down. You have to direct your heart to be joyful, to be thankful, and to be prayerful. If you catch yourself complaining all the time, I hope that you do something about it very fast. Otherwise it becomes a habit. You may think your logical and you’re right in complaining. You may be right. You may be logical and you may be right to complain, but if you keep it up, you’re not going to be a very happy person. Do you want to always be right? Do you have to always be right and be an unhappy person or do you want to be always thankful and be a bigger person? You decide. What does it prove at the end of the day that you’re right, but you’re unhappy or you be thankful and become a bigger person. You decide, which one is more logical, which is better, which is wiser. I rather choose the latter. I don’t need to prove that I’m right all the time. I’d rather be thankful and become a bigger person rather than being right and an unhappy person.

Being dark and heavy, always constantly worrying and being anxious and complaining all the time and being angry, these three things are poisons. Pillars that destroy your soul, kill your soul, take away your happiness. These three things. You have to defeat these three things with these new three things that is being joyful, being prayerful, and be thankful by doing these three things, we have to defeat all these negative things that take away joy and happiness from your life. My friends, life is wonderful. I dare to claim the life is wonderful. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. That’s what life is all about.

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Scripture Reading

Romans 12: 1-2

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Let us hear the word, Romans 12:1-2.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Today I’m going to talk about the lifestyle, lifestyle of seeking God’s will. I think that’s a lifestyle, you know, knowing God’s will is not really specifically; what do I eat today or what do I wear? It’s not like that. It is a lifestyle about continuously – every day, every moment – your lifestyle is seeking God’s will. That’s what Christian lifestyle is all about. Christian life is not just what to do, what not to do. Not only that, but a general Christian lifestyle is about; “What is the will of God for me?” So daily you’re searching for the will of God. To me, the most beautiful image of a human being, any human being, is the image of a person praying to God, struggling to search for the will of God. I found this image there, a person praying to God, asking God to show or reveal to me the will of God.

In that sense, the image of Jesus prayer in Gethsemane is to me, the most beautiful image of any human being. Jesus was praying and struggling hard to ultimately search for the will, the will of God, not his own will. That is the most beautiful image that I can think of. But it’s not just Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. What is beautiful about Jesus is that throughout his life all he did was really search for the will of God. You know, what impressed me about Jesus is not that he was so wise and smart and powerful and performed a lot of miracles and ultimately sacrificed and suffered and died… it’s not really that. What really impresses me about Jesus was that all his life he was searching for the will of God. And that is the most beautiful thing, the most beautiful lifestyle I can think of.

In modern days, for many of us, searching for the will of God is a foreign concept. We don’t do that anymore. And also, sometimes it is an uncomfortable concept, because many people did horrible things in the name of the will of God. Even now, there are people who are doing horrible things saying that, “oh, this is the will of God. God told me to do this.” And so that’s why the name, the will of God, got a bad name. We don’t even search for the will, and we don’t even know the will of God. So it’s hard to really talk about the will of God in that way. Many of us gave up living out the will of God. We gave up searching for the will of God. “I’ll do my best with my life, with my morality, with my best effort, I’ll work hard, I’ll take care of my family. I’ll do good, try to do good things as much as possible… But the will of God? I’m not sure. I don’t know. First of all, it’s hard to find out what’s the will of God, and I just don’t know how to go about doing that.” So a lot of us just gave up a the will of God. But you know, Christian life, the will of God is the ultimate purpose and ultimate goal of human life. Ultimately, if it’s not the will of God, what kind of life is that? We’re believers. We do believe that God exists and if God exists, God has something to do with this world, and God has something to do with me, and God must have some kind of will for this world, or for me. So if we don’t really seek the will of God, what is that life? What is that Christian life? All of us, we wonder. So the will of God is the most important ultimate goal of life but in modern days, people don’t care about the will of God. Very sad in a way. Very sad. As I was preparing this message, I was even asking myself, “Will people care about the will of God?” That constantly kept coming to me. “Will people care about the will of God? Then what will I say to them?” In modern society, in the modern world, the will of God has become a very foreign concept.

In today’s scripture passages, St. Paul said, “So that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Hear the words, “so that”. “So that” means ‘ultimately’. You do all these things so that, ultimately, you may be able to find the will of God.

That was like Paul’s life. Ultimately he was searching for the will of God. He didn’t just live a good life, he was searching for the will of God. His life was not to actualize his potential to the maximum. It was not to become a good example to other people. Paul’s ultimate goal of life was to understand the will of God and live accordingly. That should be what we need to seek every day, the will of God, because that matters. There are things that matter in life and there are things that do not matter that much. The will of God is one of those things that matter a lot, and everything is a means by which you find the will of God. So in life we have to understand the difference between the goal and means by which you achieve the goal. If you get confused with goals and means, your life becomes ruined. If means becomes goal, then your life becomes ruined. We make money but that’s a means, by which ultimately we may find and search for the will of God. That is the goal. There are means by which we achieve the goal, and making money itself cannot be the goal. Becoming a great person cannot be the goal. Or just taking care of family cannot just be the goal. Those are means by which ultimately we search for the will of God, and that is the goal of our life.

When God first came to Moses, “Moses, you go. My people are suffering in Egypt. Go and free them.” And Moses said, “Lord, God, I can’t do it. I’m very, very comfortable here. You know, I have wife and a family and, oh, this life is really, really good. I’m 80 years old, I just want to stay here and finish my life peacefully. And also I cannot even speak well. I’m not eloquent. Can you send somebody else? I think they will fit better. They’ll do a better job than me.” But ultimately at the end, Moses found the will of God and he went. I thank God that Moses understood the will of God. Without, Moses, God’s history would not have continued, and we thank Moses for taking the will of God seriously.

Jesus could have lived comfortably as a nice guy. If he didn’t really care about God’s will, then there is no cross, my friend. If he did not take God’s will sincerely and live out the will of God, we don’t have the cross. We don’t have salvation. We thank Jesus and all others who lived a life of searching for the will of God in human history. They’re great people, great people who were looking for the will of God and lived out the will of God, and they made a dent in the universe. They made a difference in the world.

My high school friends, from when you’re young, search for the will of God. I wish, I pray that from this church we may produce those great people who make a difference in the world. When you find the will of God, I believe that we can do that. The will of God, you cannot just find it just like that. You continuously search for the will of God and then slowly and slowly you become formed in a certain way, and then you realize when you look back, “Oh, that was the will of God.” It’s not like, “Oh, this is the will of God, do this.” But as you try to really put your life according to the will of God, then your life flows in a certain way, guided by the will of God, and when you look back, you realize that, “Oh, that was the will of God.” And you will do tremendous good to humanity. You will do tremendous good to all of the people around you. What is the will of God? Seek it. Jesus said, “If you seek it, you will find it.” So what is the will of God? Seek it. Don’t give up, and you will find. Knock on it. The door will open to you.

Each person has a unique will of God. I don’t know what is the will of God for you. You have to find it yourself. There is something that you need to do. I cannot tell you what is the will of God for you. You have to find your own will of God. The will of God is not something that you create, or one day be like, “Oh, I’d like to do this. This must be the will of God.” No, that’s not how you find the will of God. You wait and wait and search and search and seek and seek, and ultimately you understand… “Ah, this is will of God.” So when I look at Jesus’ life and when I l look at Paul… wow, they have a power of life. How do they know for sure about what they would need to do and what they want to do? That’s amazing. Most people; “I don’t know, I just live.” That’s how most people, mediocre people live. But these great people, they know what is the will of God and really have a conviction about their life. And that’s what is great about these great people. So search. Seek. And you’ll be able to find and understand the will of God in your life.

But even though I cannot tell you what his will of God for you, I can give you two kind of helpful attitudes. That’s not something that I got, it is something that Paul teaches us in today’s scripture passage. First thing is, to not be conformed to this world. Do not be conformed to this world. That doesn’t mean that this world is bad and there’s evil and not have anything to do with this world because this world is bad. “Get away from this world and live your own life or go to the gulf or to the mountain and live your own life.” That’s not what he’s saying. To not be conformed to this world means that you don’t get immersed in this world. Don’t get immersed in this world. When you’re immersed in this world, you lose your spiritual sense. You’re filled with this worldly thinking. You cannot have a spiritual sense. You become desensitized to God, to spirituality.

So you become desensitized, you cannot feel the spiritual guidance. And that’s what happens to many, many of us. The will of God is a very foreign concept, so do not be immersed in this world. Sometimes you need to separate yourself and be your own person. Don’t be influenced by your friends. Don’t be influenced by people of this world or think that this is what is life supposed to be about and that this is what life is like – do not just listen to them blindly. Think for yourself, “Is that really what God wants from your life?” It doesn’t matter how many people around you do it. Hundreds of friends, they may do it, but ask yourself, “Is that really what God wants from me?” rather than blindly following them. You need to be awake and you have to know yourself, who you are and what you want, and then find your own way of living. That’s the first thing. Do not be conformed to this world. Don’t try to be popular. Being popular doesn’t last too long. That’s should not be your goal. Don’t try to be popular. Find your own life. Find your own way. That is what it means not to be conformed to this world. It is about your mindset.

Second thing, St. Paul said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Transformation. How do you be transformed? I think the best way is the scripture. Scripture study. That transforms us. Scripture study, gives us critical thinking. We just started Wednesday Bible study, Women’s Bible Study again. We finished the second week. I already see the difference in the second week. First week I get them together… nothing really. I mean, we haven’t done it for a few months and they’re just… And then second week, they’re getting focused again. We are so fragile. If you don’t study the scripture, it’s hard to get critical thinking.

So I’m sorry, but if you’re just living a religious life, coming back forth, just to church and home, there won’t be much of a difference. You will be just a church person. That’s fine too. That’s fine with me. But finding the will of God that way, it’s going to be very, very difficult. You need to be transformed by the renewing of your minds. In other words, the critical thinking has to go on in your brain every moment. Every single moment, your consciousness needs to be enriched by the word of God. The word of God is not just memorizing the scripture. It’s the way you think, critical thinking, because as you study the scripture, you see how different that teaching is from the teaching of that world when it was written. They all had critical thinking.

We need to understand that to be able to discern the will of God. The will of God is not what popular people or most people follow, okay? Just because majority of the society follow a certain way, I don’t believe that that is the will of God. The will of God is not determined by the multitude. Jesus was a lonely voice. Paul was a lonely voice. That’s why they were persecuted, and ultimately they were killed. But that lonely voice is a beautiful voice. That life is beautiful life, I believe. And I’d like to see that kind of real, cool people. You need to be tough in your thinking, in your mind. Searching for the will of God, living out the will of God, that’s the goal. That’s the most beautiful thing you can do for yourself, for your family, for the church, for the world, and for God.

Let us sing together.

*praise music*

Let us have a moment of silence and meditation and thinking. Have you lived blindly or mindlessly? Something in this world… did that take that mindfulness away from us and make us spiritually paralyzed, and emotionally paralyzed, and we just become mindless and blind? Let us pray. Lord, give me the sense of living. Give me the sense of searching. Our ancestors, they searched for the truth. They searched for justice. They searched for life. In the modern world, people have become paralyzed and we don’t search anymore. We don’t seek any anymore. We just live and live and live mindlessly and blindly. Let us pray, so that God may empower us and restore that searching spirit within us.

*more praise music*

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Scripture Reading

1 Corinthians 9: 24-27

{Transcript}

Let us hear the word of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

This is the word of the Lord.

The image of running always inspires me. I mean, running is not unnecessarily a fun activity for everyone to enjoy. It can be boring because you repeat the same monotonous movement for two, three hours. Marathons are longer than that, so it’s not really a fun activity, but for those who love to run, they seem to enjoy it so much. Every moment of it. I heard that something comes out of your body, a hormone or whatever, when you run. Running inspires me because it is associated with sweating, perseverance, discipline, hard work, and being active.

So whenever I think about running, I think about a lot of inspiring movies about running like the old movie Chariots of Fire and also in Forrest Gump, he continuously runs and runs and runs, and also people like Terry Fox. In spite of his physical illness and even though he was crippled, he did not give up. He ran and he inspires so many people. He still remains as an inspiration because he would not give up.

I guess I’m not the only one who is inspired by running. Our St. Paul seems to be also a inspired by running. He used the image of running to explain our spiritual life. He said run in such a way that you may win it. I don’t think he meant competitiveness. Winning is not the only goal. I think what he meant was do your best. Don’t just run, run hard, run as fast as you can. To win a prize you have to run your best.

When I look at the Olympics, I’m glued to the TV, especially with running, because they really run their best. They want to be faster than others by a fraction of a second, and they run and run and run, and that really inspires me.

Life is like running hard. Life is like running as best as you can. Don’t sit around, get up and run, because that’s what life is supposed to be.

We all know that running is not easy. It requires discipline. St. Paul said, athletes exercise self control in all things. He also said, I punish my body and enslave it. He didn’t mean literally punishing his body, but disciplining his body. Training his body, so that he’s able to run fast and run well. Running also requires a clear sense of direction. You can’t run aimlessly, you have to have a clear focus of what you’re running for. St. Paul said, “so I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air.” So you have to think, you can’t just run around. When you look at the Olympics, they choose the shortest course and they think about themselves. “Okay, up to that distance. I have to use this much energy and after that distance I have to save this much energy.” They always think about that, they ration themselves very well. They always think so that they can run a successful race. You have to think to know what to do.

Wayne Gretzky said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” You have to think if you’re going to be a good athlete. You have to be smart to be a good athlete, good athletes don’t just have physical ability. They are very smart in knowing exactly what to do in each situation. So when you look at really good athletes, they are very, very smart. That’s why we call them geniuses. If you’re not smart, you cannot be a good athlete. When you know exactly what to do, you know how to use your body to get the maximum result. You have to always think to do so. In the same way. You have to be smart to live a good life. You have to know what to do in given situations so that we don’t live aimlessly beating the empty air.

All these things are involved in running but I was thinking, why don’t people live like they’re running? What is one cause for people not to run? I was meditating on this, what is that cause? I realized, it’s discouragement. People get discouraged. That’s why they don’t run. It’s not that they don’t know how to run. It’s not that they don’t know what is required in running. They get discouraged. They cannot get themselves up to run. As we deal with challenges in life, problems in life, somewhere along the way, unfortunately, you shouldn’t do it, but we develop a defeated mentality. That’s really sad. We live with a lot of encouragement but, at one point we adopted this defeated mentality from the discouragement of life. We get tired, we get discouraged and we compromise with what we have. We stop in the middle of our journey. There’s still a journey left for us to walk and run, but we just stop. We don’t run anymore. We don’t take the journey anymore because we are discouraged. We have developed this defeated mentality.

We human beings have a higher calling. We cannot just compromise with what we have. St. Paul said, I press on towards achieving the goal, the higher calling that God calls us from heaven, and then at one point we see ourselves. We get satisfied with the security and comfort that we have created and we say to ourselves, this is good enough. And we don’t think about anything else in that very moment, your life is dead. At that moment, we lose aspiration for life. We lose our goal. We don’t even have what we truly want from life anymore. When we were young, didn’t we all have something that we wanted to achieve?I want to be like this. I want to have this, this is what I want to do with my life. And then at one point we don’t even have that.

We just coast along without much passion and aspiration. And the sad thing is we comfort ourselves, saying life is good. Wow. My life is good. What do you have? Comfort and security, that’s all. What do you do? Nothing much, but life is good. We comfort ourselves saying that life is good. To me. That is defeated mentality. You’re just comforting yourself saying that life is good. Just because you say life is good doesn’t mean that life is good. When you live for a higher calling, you cannot call that a good life. When you live just for security and comfort, you cannot say that your life is good, because we human beings are not created to live like that. If you don’t have a higher purpose to live for, I wonder whether we can say life is good. Having enough money for security and comfort itself cannot be enough of a condition for a good life. A good life is more than that. For animals, yes, they can say it’s a good life. If they have food, if they have a security and comfort, yes, animals will say it is a good life, but not for human beings. Human beings are given intelligence to know better than that. Not to be satisfied just with what we have.

We human beings live with a higher calling, for a noble purpose. We always strive for meaning and purpose. That’s what human beings are. When lions hunt, they have intensity. You see their eyes burning, their eyes are sharp. They are passionate. When they follow their prey, they run fast, they’re fierce, they’re so focused. But once they have food, all they do is sleep. So if you want to see a lion hunting, you can hardly see it. Even if you go to Kenya, all you see is sleeping lions, because as soon as they have food all they do is sleep because they don’t have the intelligence to do so. They’re just satisfied.

But we human beings are given intelligence to go for more than that. People who are satisfied with security and comfort, it doesn’t matter how much money they make, I don’t call them intelligent. I don’t call them smart. They’re dumb!

Even if we have enough food, we run for purpose and meaning. Yes, many times we get discouraged, but that does not paralyze us. We stand up again and challenge ourselves and challenge our limits. We push our limits to be able to run, to overcome our discouragement. We need faith. We need spirituality.

We need faith in God who strengthens me. Let us not live with a defeated mentality. You are better than that. You’re stronger than that. Don’t be fooled saying that life is good. We need faith to overcome our discouragement. We need faith to go beyond where we are.

Isaiah gave us good advice on spirituality. He said, “why do you say o Jacob and speak o Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God.” Of course, that somebody is very discouraged and God doesn’t want them to develop a defeated mentality. Why do you say that? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He’s smart. God is smart. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youth will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.

Be a smart person. Don’t be dumb. Don’t be stupid. Saying that I have security and comfort, that’s saying you’re stupid. That’s what you just said. You fool, you say to yourself, “oh, I have enough to eat in my barn” and all that. You fool. Tonight, your soul will be demanded. Jesus called that foolishness. God gave us the intelligence to take care of the earth, to live out for higher calling.

St. Paul confidently said “in God who strengthens me, I can do all things in life that push us to our limits to achieve God’s noble purpose that is a life worth living.” Let us not live life that runs aimlessly. Let us not be a boxer that beats the empty air. Let us trust God and run with faith. God will renew our strength and that’s what I’d like to see with our congregation. God built this congregation. Let us run together to build this congregation so that this congregation may be the light for the world.

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Scripture Reading

Matthew 25: 31-46

{Sermon}

Let us hear the word of the Lord Matthew Chapter 25 verse 31 to 46 “When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, come, you are blessed by my father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him. Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and give you food or you thirsty and gave you something to drink and when was it that we saw you, a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing and when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you and the king will answer them. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these or members of my family, you did it to me that he will say to those at his left hand, you there are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also will answer, Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you? Then he will answer them. Truly, I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me, and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life .

Her life that matters. It’s in my sermon topic. Does my existence matter to anyone? I think this is a very important question. We have to ask ourselves all the time, does my existence matter to anyone? Are there questions that will shape my life? These questions we have to ask ourselves continuously, for example, what shall I eat or what shall I drink? What shall I wear? Those are not important questions. Those are the questions that will shape my life. That’s why Jesus said don’t even question those things but, there are some crucial questions that shaped my life. One of those being, does my life matter to somebody out there? I think that will shape who we will be if our existence matters to others, we can say you’re living a good life. That’s what good life is. Good life is not about good food and good enjoyment, good life is if your life matters to somebody dearly, then you are living a good life. But if people don’t care whether you exist or not, if my existence doesn’t matter to anyone than it is sad. Sometimes I go to a funeral and I see these grandchildren coming out and see them share about their great grandparents in tears. You know, whenever I see that I feel good. I mean their grandchildren, they probably did not spend much time with them and they are not friends, but the grandchildren missed them so much and mattered to them quite a lot explaining why they cry so much, thinking about their grandparents. Then some of them share the life lesson that they taught them throughout their lives and things like that. When I look at that, in the funeral, I realized that they lived a good life. Their life mattered to their grandchildren dearly. You know, our existence cannot be defined in itself. We cannot define ourselves within just us. Our existence can only be defined in our relationship to others. I am who I am because of the relationship that I have with other people. there’s a South African saying, I am because of who you are, because you exist I exist”. My existence can only be defined in our relationship to others not in itself. As you look at this passage, this is what differentiated the sheep from the goat. This is what Jesus just said, For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me . Their lives matter to those who are hungry, who are strangers, who are naked, who are sick and who are in prison. Their life mattered to them. A few days ago on September fourth, Mother Teresa was canonized as a saint. Her life mattered to many people, not only to poor people in Calcutta, but too many young people. Her life inspired many young people and gave them New Vision. A life can be like this, not everyone is selfish, not everyone is hungry. It’s not just for money and fame, there are some people who live selflessly. There are some people who sacrifice their lives for other people. There are people like that, and she set the standard for them. She gave the vision to the young people, that you can also live a good life like this.  She is a saint in every sense of the word because she lived a good life and her life mattered to many people. You don’t need to be rich to live a good life, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe in materialism in that way. You don’t need to be so successful to be happy, to live eighth, so called good life. You don’t need to be so smart and powerful to have a fulfilling life. That's illusion, don’t go after that. Young people don’t go after that. At the end of it, you’ll be so disillusioned, that’s not what makes a good life. Good life is if your life matters to somebody, what we need is just simple, your desire to live a life that matters to people, that's life.

It’s now September, we are entering the fall. Fall is a season where we think about the abundance of life. Abundance of life is not about how productive or how great you are. It’s not about you. Abundant life is not about you. Abundant life is about how enriching your life is to other people, how you enriched other people. That’s what abundant life is all about. Abundance life is fruitful life, fruit does not exists for itself, fruit always exists for others to enjoy. So living a fruitful life is not just for yourself. You living a fruitful life is to live a life that enriches other people and heal other people. When you live that life, that is good life. That’s my definition of good life and that is the definition of good life in the Bible. The good we do to others is humanism. Yes, that is humanism. Humanism is a good thing. Humanism is something that we have to strive for, something that we always be mindful of, but to us as Christians, that is also our spirituality. It’s not just humanism, it is our spirituality. Jesus said this, “Truly, I tell you just as you did it, to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me, so what we do to people right in need is not only humanism, but spirituality”. Good that you do to other people, is something you do to Jesus. To Jesus humanism and spirituality are not different. They are very deeply interconnected, in Jesus’ mind. Being spiritual is being humanistic. Humanistic is being spiritual. They go together. Our service for the people who are in need is our devotion to the Lord Jesus. Loving Jesus is not expressed through our emotional response to Jesus. Raising your hands and praising God and saying I love you, Jesus , that’s not you. Express your love to Jesus. I mean that’s one way, but the inferior way. Superior way is through having heart for those who are suffering around us. When we have heart for those around us, that is having a heart for God. That was a central teaching of Jesus Christ, wasn’t it? Jesus said Love your God and love your neighbour , they’re connected. Jesus said, humanism and spirituality are connected with each other. First of all, who brought those two together and then made the greatest commandment? Love your God and love your neighbour. He’s the one who connected those two.

A reporter once asked Mother Teresa, Why do you do what you do? What you do is like  throwing eggs against the rock, you won’t change the problem of hunger in the world by doing what you do and why do you do what you do? and Mother Teresa simply answered like this, “You know? when I look at the eyes of the hungry children. I see little Jesus. That’s why I do that, to Mother Teresa humanism and spirituality we’re not separate. when she saw hungry children, she saw Jesus right there. When we see people who are suffering around us. We should be able to see Jesus, little Jesus. We should see in each other little Jesus in each others eyes. Well, why don’t you look around and see the people around you. Do you see Jesus or do you see devil? Jesus is not way up there. Jesus is right here amongst us, in anyone eyes who’s suffering. Jesus is right there because they need Jesus. Mother Teresa might not have had the gigantic economic plan to relieve the hunger problem of the world, but there’s one thing that she taught us and that is very important lesson “Have heart for those, for suffering”, I think that is the greatest lesson. That is where everything begins. Have heart for those who are suffering. If you see the neighbouring country suffering, have heart for those. If your neighbour is suffering have heart for those, that’s how everything begins. We are living in a heartless world. We don’t care about anybody around us who suffers. We need to restore their heart. That is what healing is all about. We need to restore their heart for those who are suffering around us. You don’t need to go to prison. You don’t need to go out the street. Just look around you. There are people who need your attention and have heart for those. That’s what humanity and spirituality is all about.

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Scripture Reading

Matthew 7: 1-6

{Transcript}

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

As you read the scripture, sometimes you encounter a passage where it is really impossible to apply in our lives. And those passages is not difficult to understand or because it is hard to practice, but simply because it doesn’t make sense. So you may wonder why do I need to practice that? And today’s passage is one of those. Do not judge. How can you live without any judgment? Is it even good to live without any judgment? And you may say that it’s not good to live without thinking, without clear judgment about what you’re doing. We always need to judge what is right and what is wrong. And I agree. I agree with you 100 percent. And also whether we like it or not, whether we try or not, we always judge. We may not express our judgment on the outside, but deep inside of us we have our own judgment. We make an ethical judgment, political judgment, and financial judgment.

The passage we read is easy to understand but it doesn’t make sense why we should live without any judgment. So we say living with critical thinking is very important. That something that we’d like to encourage people. You should live with critical thinking. You have to know what is going on in your life and you have to know what is right and what is wrong. You cannot just blindly, aimlessly live your life. You have to live with critical thinking, but critical thinking without a clear ability to be able to judge is not possible. So we wonder whether we can take this passage literally. So when we read the Bible, we cannot just take one sentence out of his own context. For example, we cannot single out one sentence such as “do not judge” ignoring the whole context. We have to consider the whole context.

And today I like to examine with you the whole context of today’s scripture passage. First of all, let us think about judgment. I think there’s a difference between judgment and judgmental-ism. I don’t think judgmental-ism is an English word, but let’s just use it for our own purpose. So I think there’s a difference between judgment and judgmental-ism. Douglas Hare, one of the scholars who write on the commentary on Mark, I think he defined judgmental-ism very creatively and very insightfully. So let me introduce that. Judgmental-ism is a social sin. It is the habit of constantly finding fault with what others say and do. It is a disease of the spirit. The critic arrogantly assumes a superiority that entitles him or her to assess the feelings of others. I think the important word is entitlement.

The people who have arrogance in their hearts think that they are entitled to find fault in others. To say aloud the faults in other people. This entitlement, the attitude of entitlement. Judgment is a disease of the spirit, it is also a  social disease. It is something that we need to be healed from. It’s not just because of the great people have this judgmental attitude. It is some people who are suffering from something, they have this judgmental attitude towards others. So judgmental-ism and judgment are two different things. Judgmental-ism is the attitude of constantly finding fault in other people. It is the attitude of “I’m better than you.” They won’t say it, but deep inside it’s an I’m better than you kind of attitude.

I suspect that that is the kind of attitude Paul had before he met Christ. I think he lived with a superiority complex, Paul before he met Christ. That’s why he wanted to kill all the Christians and the thinking that “you are wrong and I’m right, so I have to persecute you. I have to imprison you, have to kill you.” I suspect that, whether he suffered from the superiority complex before he met Christ but after he met Christ, he saw himself differently, more honestly, more in a real way. He was able to say, I’m the least of all the apostles. That requires tremendous courage to be able to admit that I’m the least of all the disciples. Something came off from his eyes and then he was able to see himself in a real way, in an honest way, to see yourself in an honest and real way. To me, that person is quite a confident person. That tells me a tremendous confidence. When somebody fabricates or colours themselves as all that, I see that. And then I see their weakness, but somehow somebody who’s really weak and vulnerable, who shares about their own suffering and difficulties, I see strength in that person. You’re quite confident about yourself to be able to say that. But the people who suffer from lack of confidence, they always have to brag about themselves. They always have to show that they are better than other people.

I was reflecting on Jesus’ last sentence. “First, take the log out of your own eye and then you’ll see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” I was wondering what that log is. What’s that log? Whenever I read this passage, I always thought like this, you’re worse than other people, who do you think you are to judge other people? You have a log in your heart and, but other people have only a speck, how is it that The person with a log tries to condemn the person with only speck. In other words, you are worse than other people so don’t judge other people who are better than you. That’s how I took it.

But when I read this passage, this time I thought of something else, there’s something else that Jesus was trying to teach. According to what Jesus said, this log is something that blinds you so that you’re not able to clearly see the speck, see the scripture, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will clearly see the speck. Then we can take the speck out of our neighbor’s eye. Also, I realized that when I see other people’s fault and mistakes, I don’t see a speck, I see a log, I consider that a log. What I’m saying is when a person makes a mistake, we blow it up, so that we paint a person with their one mistake that they made. Instead of seeing that he or she has many other great qualities and made a small mistake, we take that small thing and we make big deal out of it. We would be like, “oh, that person always lie,” “that person is always this or that.” We paint that person, so we see log rather than a speck. We don’t see problems of people in perspective. We tend to paint the person with that small mistake that they make. That is judgmental-ism.

People are both good and bad. There’s nobody who’s always good. There’s nobody who’s always bad. They both have good and bad character. We don’t need to characterize a person with our sweeping judgment. We’ll never learn to appreciate people. We will always see them with cynicism. That’s sad. Living with that kind of cynicism is not a happy life. That’s not what life is supposed to be. You’re supposed to appreciate other people. You’re supposed to love other people, but if you make a judgment about a person, How can you love that person? The person who has a log in them, well, whatever goes into them becomes ugly. When you have a log inside you, whatever goes into you, it comes out ugly. Even the good things will come out ugly. How can you love ugly things? We’re supposed to love one another and that’s a good life. That’s a happy life. Loving other people, appreciating other people. That’s a happy and good life, but when you always look at the fault in other people, how difficult that must be every day, you have to be filled with negative emotion. Whenever you see people, so in that way, you can never have a good relationship and friendship with people. This log is many things. It can be your self-righteousness. The log can be your hurt, your baggage or your pride. It can be whatever. So once you have this log inside you, your eyes become blind and you see people in a very negative way, cynical way. And with it, you can never love and appreciate other people.

Jesus called us to love one another. Jesus’ greatest commandment was to love one another. Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. And when you’re not able to love other people, then you are breaking Jesus’ greatest commandment. That’s what Jesus wanted us to live with. But when you see negative things about people, then you can never love them and appreciate them. You always put them down and you see things negatively because inside of us, there’s a lot of negative things that are going on. It is hard to see positive things in people. We need to be healed from the ugly things within us, we need to take out the log so that we may be able to see clearly.

Yesterday I had a Bible study and one of our members said, “I go to the hospital to see my father who is 90 years old. He is suffering from Alzheimer.” And he said, “my father, whoever he sees, he says negative things. Every single child. They come and he criticizes. He criticizes everyone” and it drives him crazy whenever he visits him and all he gets is a negative criticism from his father. And then he said, “I’m scared that I’ll be like that when I get old.” We need to be healed from this negativity within us. We need to take out the log, so that we may be able to see other people and appreciate other people. People have beautiful qualities.

Every single one of them is beautiful because you all have God’s image. You’re created in God’s image. You are beautiful, but we can never see the beauty of people. But we have a negative attitude. You will become very lonely when you start seeing people in a negative way. You won’t make friends, and one by one they will leave you until you’re all alone. As you get older, that becomes worse. I know many older people who don’t meet anybody, they’re just on their own. They want nobody to visit them. They don’t want to visit anyone. They’re just all by themselves. That’s a sad life towards the end. You’re supposed to have many good friends and appreciate each other’s beautiful quality. Jesus, die for you. You are extremely precious. Jesus will not die for somebody whose existence is meaningless. Jesus died for you because you are very precious. And we have to understand the preciousness of each other. When the log is out of you, only then you can see the beautiful quality in other people. When you see negative things about people, don’t think that you’re very insightful.

Don’t think that you’re so smart about seeing through people. What is more important is to see the beautiful quality of a person. So sometimes when I meet a person, I always feel that I’m a very precious person. This person doesn’t even give a compliment or even say anything, but when I just standing with them, it makes me feel valued.  That you’re very valuable and precious person. But when I stand with somebody, somebody makes me feel like garbage. So whenever I feel that I want to run away from that person as soon as possible. We need to learn to build the skill, to be able to see beautiful things in other people.

Don’t fake it when you see ugly things like, “you’re so beautiful.” Don’t fake it. It doesn’t work. You’ll have to see the beautiful things. Then you can appreciate that person. It is even the same as your children, you have to see the beautiful quality. Then you’ll be able to love them. Loving others is not a sentimental thing. It’s not something that you’ve decided either. To love other people, the first thing that you have to do, the most important thing that you got to do, “is you’re such a precious person.” You appreciate a person. Then you can love that person. So be careful with your mouth. Be careful with your words. Don’t think that you are entitled to make criticism. I mean, who are you to say? Who gave you that entitlement? Nobody gave you that entitlement. That entitlement is from you, your ego, your arrogance. Always appreciate other people, respect other people.

Christian ministry is not about putting people down and changing them. Christian ministry is serving them, stand below them and appreciate them and serve them. Jesus used that method as his ministry. That’s why he died on the cross. That’s why he knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. That’s something that Jesus showed us. Our ministry is to kneel down and serve one another. That’s what Christian ministry is all about. God chose Ministry to change people. God did not choose politics or corporations. God chose ministry to bring about change and the core of their ministries is kneel down and serve. To do that, you have to learn to appreciate each other. Take out that arrogance out of your heart, out of your brain. Don’t easily criticize people. Learn to appreciate one another. Your life will become much better. Let forgiveness be the living principle of your life. Whatever happens, that forgiveness is the living principle of your life. Your life will get much better and you’ll become a much happier person and you’ll be able to help out the other people in a better way.

Hating somebody or seeing people negatively take so much energy. It just saps the energy out of us. Living like that is a misery.  Being able to love somebody, being able to appreciate the people around us is a beautiful thing, is a beautiful life. Let us pray.

Lord, we have experienced many failures and brokenness and sometimes we have become hardened and within us, there is a log and because of this log, we are not very happy with people, with ourselves, with family and with close friends. Lord, take the log out of me so that I can freely love others, embrace others, appreciate others. Let us pray so that God may help us do that.

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Scripture Reading

Ephesians 4: 17-24

{Transcript}

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Today is the first day of September. September is kind of new beginning. January is the beginning of the chronological year, but September is another kind of a new beginning for a lot of us. The hot Summer is over and you feel the cool air in the morning and in the evening. Last night I went out just to walk around for about five or ten minutes. It was so beautiful. We feel that coolness in the air already. Students enter into a different grade and some students start university life. Wow. That’s a very, very different life from high school. So you’re going to start a new kind of journey in a new place, maybe Kitchener, Waterloo or London or Queens. Some students experienced totally new journeys. Some people are getting married and others have new babies. Some people bought their first house and some people start a totally new direction, new life direction, completely different life direction. A lot of changes. All the things that I mentioned just now is what’s happening within our own community. That’s what people are going through within our own community. These are all examples of kinds of new beginnings.

I'd like to reflect on the beginning today. T.S. Elliot said, “what we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning”. The end is where we start from. We realize that the beginning and the ending are closely connected. Without the ending, the beginning cannot happen. In today’s scripture passage, St Paul also said, “put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts”. He tells us to end the old life. And then he said, “be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to clothe yourself within yourself”. So and the old self and then begin the new self. So he’s also talking about ending and beginning. They’re closely connected with each other. Wherever beginning happens, there is all always ending. Whenever ending begins, there’s always a beginning.

When you graduate, what do you call that? Commencement. You graduate, you’re finished school, but you commence, you begin something new. So we have to  reflect on old and the new. When we look at our old life, as we look back, there are things that we regret. The longer you live, the more things that you regret, actually and unfortunately. There are more things to celebrate too, but also there are more things to regret. Our life is, mixed with all kinds of emotion, both joy and sadness. Exuberant joy but at the same time we have baggage with us. We said what we should not have said and we did what we should not have done. We are sometimes blinded our own foolishness. Why was I so foolish? What was I thinking?

It was almost like I wasn’t thinking at all. I just lived my life by the passion or emotion that I had within me when I was younger. So when I look back, I think “what was I doing? What was I thinking?” So sometimes we are completely blinded by our own foolishness.

You know, if we could go back, create a time machine, and if you could go back I’d like to fix it, but thing is we cannot. That’s why, all of us, we live with regret, guilt and burden. These things are always with us. It’s just a part of us ingrained within us. Regret, guilt a burden, no one lives free from those. We all live with those things, but one thing bad about those things is sometimes these things hold us back and do not let us go forward. It’s like dead weight. We all have regrets and guilt and burdens, but these things hold us back so we can never start a new life. You can never start a new beginning because these are within us. Sometimes we even feel stuck and we become victims of our past. Too much pain and too much disappointment. Sometimes I discover people, they don’t change at all. It’s not because they don’t want to change because they cannot change. This baggage of the old is too strong. You’re stronger than that.

But sometimes we feel weak because this baggage is so weighty that we cannot really make changes. You can be exactly the same old person. Our thinking doesn’t change. Our habits don’t change and how we feel about life doesn’t change. We’re just repeating the same thing over and over again with the same feeling. You’re better than that. We are more than that. You’re stronger than that. Just living like that. To begin a new life, we have to break away, break away from what? Break away from the old self that enslaves me with apathy, fear, helplessness and hopelessness. Unless we break away from those things, we can never start a new beginning. In other words, you gotta have the courage to be able to let go of our old pattern of life

Just because we have lived in a certain way all of this time. That doesn’t mean necessarily that that is a right way or the absolute way that we have to follow. Just because you have lived like this, that doesn’t mean that you have to live like that, in the next decade or two decades. You can start new. If we blindly follow the old way– I saw three reasons why we follow the old way. One is laziness, the other is fear. And third is weakness. I mean, laziness. We’re just, everything’s a bother. I don’t want to do anything new. You’re too lazy to think about new things because you’re comfortable. And also fear: there’s always new things that are threatening and it’s scary. You know, things are much better when we know what to do. They are much more comfortable and much more convenient because we know exactly what to do. Or weakness; many times we feel powerlessness. We feel powerless to change anything or sometimes change seems like a illusion. Oh no, no, we can’t change. We think that nothing will change and we feel powerlessness and helplessness. We are stuck in this pattern of life and will die in this pattern of life. It is our weakness speaking if we blindly follow the old way because of our laziness, because of our fear and because of our weaknesses, we cannot make a new beginning.

I do believe that every morning is a new day and new beginning. I do believe that we can always start a new beginning. That’s my philosophy. It is human courage to break away, break ourselves away from the chain of the vicious cycle of the old pattern that sucks the life out of us. I do believe that we have that courage –we should have that courage. That was what Jesus wanted to do. He came to start a new beginning. This why old people are very, very smart and wise. Are they count the years starting from Jesus. So to this year is 2016 the year from the beginning of Jesus. Why? Because Jesus came to start a new beginning. That’s what Jesus Christ came to do. He wanted to start a new beginning. This is what St Paul said, let us carefully read this, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new”.

This is what St Paul said. “”In Christ everything has become new. Do you believe that you can have a new beginning? Yes, we can have a new beginning. The age doesn’t matter. Age is just an illusion. I do believe age is an illusion. You can always start a new beginning. That’s what I believe. Not because of me, but because I’m Christian. That’s why I believe that everyone can start a new beginning because I’m a Christian. When I look at myself, sometimes I wonder whether I can ever have a new beginning, but in Christ everything has become new, so I do believe. The new beginning, my friends starts from here. Nowhere else do beginning starts from within. Not changing our circumstances necessarily. From here, our thinking has to change. Our minds have to change. That’s why I St Paul said, “be renewed in the spirit of your minds”. He was wise. Your minds have to change first. You know, old people don’t change much so don’t be like old people you know. They don’t want to change. Be young, it doesn’t matter the age. Be young, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds. There has to be change in your thinking and unfortunately my friends, I’m so sad when I look at so many people’s minds. Their minds are polluted, their minds poisoned somehow. Polluted and posing with what? With the thinking that a new beginning is not possible. I will never change that kind of thinking. Pollutes your minds and poisons your mind.

These are the words of who? These are the words of victims of the past. The victims of the pastor always said, ‘we can never change it. It’s too late’. All the victims of the past always say that. Don’t ever listen to that. Don’t ever listen to that philosophy. Don’t ever that message. Listen to the message of Jesus Christ. Listen to the message of St Paul. “In Christ we are a new creation. The old has passed away. The new has come”. How clear can Paul get about life? I do believe St Paul, I do believe Jesus. I don’t believe people’s victimized philosophy. Don’t let them poison your minds, but be renewed by the teaching of Jesus Christ who wants to always give us a new beginning. The problem is the message is not just out there. Sometimes the message is within us, because we have an old damage itself within us. This old damaged self within us tells us whenever we tried to start a new beginning, “Who do you think you are?” It always ridicules us. “Who do you think you are?” Whenever you start a new beginning, you hear that question, but next time when you hear that question, answer it with this. “I am the beloved precious child of God. I’m a beloved son and daughter of God”. So next time you hear that question, answer it with that answer. Of course you cannot do it alone. You need God’s help. Everyone needs God’s help. The spirit will help you. You are much more than you think. You know. Scotia Bank commercial says you’re richer than you thing. I always liked that, so I watched that commercial very carefully.

I think you are more than you are. Think about it. You have lived only a certain part of your life. There’s a bigger part of your life you have not lived yet, but because of your damaged yourself, you’re just you’re stuck there. Instead of just living out your old pattern, explore the new things within you. That’s a new beginning. You have not known– you don’t know everything about life. You are more than you think you are. Explore it, and once you find it, start new. Life has got to go forward, not backward or stop. Fish, if they stop, what do they do? They die. They have to swim all the time to survive, to live. If you stop where you are, then you die. You have to always start a new beginning. You can do that at any age.

What defined Moses’ life? What age defined Moses’ life? For the first forty years, he lived in a Palace, nice luxury and everything, but that didn’t define Moses. The next 40 years he was in the green pasture. He had wives and the good houses and all that. It was comfortable, very comfortable for 40 years, but that didn’t define Moses and last 40 years, God called him. ‘Go into the wilderness, start a new journey. You will take these people out of Egypt into the promised land’. Then last 40 years when he was 80 years old, last 40 years of his life, defined who Moses was. What defines you? You are not finished yet. Explore, have courage, be strong. Don’t be wimpy, don’t be wishy washy. Stand strong. Stand tall and take the challenge instead living like a victim of the past. All the university students remember this message when you enter into new journey of your life.

{Reflection Song: Amazing Grace} 

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Matthew 16:13-20

{Transcript}

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

What you see in today’s passage is the highest compliment any human being can get. It was more than Usain Bolt and more than Michael Phelps, much more than what is given to almost super human beings. I watch the Olympics. I enjoy it thoroughly. Bolt did not run like human being, he ran like a horse. Just amazing. They were amazing. But what Peter got was a much bigger compliment. Jesus said, He would give him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. He said, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will loose in heaven . What kind of amazing privilege is that? What kind of power? The keys to the kingdom, the keys to heaven! That is amazing authority, power, privilege, compliment and praise he got from Jesus. Jesus gave him a new name. He was Simon sort of Jonah, but Jesus said, now you will be called Peter, which means rock. He said, “I’ll build my church on the rock”. That is a high privilege, glory and compliment that he got. I wonder what Peter would have thought at that time. I don’t think Peter had any idea of what Jesus was talking about. He probably had an open mouth and was wondering, ‘the keys to the kingdom? On me? You’re going to build your church? What does that mean?’ Peter probably didn’t even understand what Jesus was talking about. Peter, whom we know, he was unlike a rock. His name was ‘rock’. The name was given to him, but he was not like a rock.

The name ‘rock’ didn’t really suit Peter. He was flimsy, he was very influenced by circumstances. He was a wishy washy person. At one moment he was saying one thing and the next moment here would do something totally contradictory to what he said. He said to Jesus, I’ll follow you to death , and as soon as the situation became very difficult, he denied Jesus three times. Simon was not at all like Peter the Rock, even though he was given that new name. I mean he did all this after he was given the name ‘rock’. So I wonder what Jesus meant when he said to Simon, you are Peter, because he was not like Peter. What did Jesus mean when he said that you are Peter. I reflected on this, and I realized that what Jesus really meant was, I will make you a rock .

I’ll make you Peter. You’re Peter now and you will become like Peter. You may feel that that’s not the end of it. You are still Peter and you will become Peter. Often we get discouraged about ourselves. We are affected by our circumstances. Sometimes our existence is so flimsy, we go back and forth, up and down. We don’t have a solid existence. We don’t have a solid life. Sometimes we are on very shaky ground and our emotions go up and down. Sometimes we feel good when we do well and we feel positive about our life. We feel confident that we can do almost anything. But when we fail, when we don’t do very well, we get so negative about ourselves. We get so negative about our life, we just don’t have confidence. We go up and down. Sometimes we even have four seasons in a day. We feel great at one moment. The next moment we feel so lousy. We’re not like a rock, we are not solid.

Look at Ryan Lochte. He got many medals. Once he even beat Michael Phelps. Even at these Olympics, he got the gold medal. He was at the top, the peak of his career and his glory, but on the way back to the Olympic Village, he had his friends vandalized the washroom of a gas stations and he lied. He said, I was wronged at gunpoint . The whole world was shocked. They thought that an Olympic gold medalist was robbed at gunpoint, but he lied just to cover his bad behaviour. He lost all this sponsorships. He doesn’t have sponsorships anymore. I don’t know if he can come out to the next Olympics. We are weak and fall short of God’s glory, but my friend, our solid foundation is not our strength. Our solid foundation is God’s desire to help us and make us the person who we’re meant to be. Our solid foundation is not on me. Our solid foundation is on God’s desire to me into Peter, the rock.

Peter did not become Peter by his own strength or because of his good solid personality. Peter became Peter because of God’s endless desire to make him Peter. If you don’t give up, God does not give up on you, but if you give up, even God cannot help you. Where is your solid foundation? You know my biggest problem of modern generation and the biggest problem of this generation is narcissism. I think that is the greatest problem. We have to fight against it. When things are going okay, that’s fine, that’s good. But once you start failing, you start losing yourself. Narcissism cannot lift you up, it cannot save you. That’s the problem of narcissism.

You are the rock, not because of who you are, but because of who God is. You’re the rock not because you don’t fall or fail, but because God does not give up on you. On you, God wants to build his church. Now we have to have confidence in our life. God gave you so much power and authority and God called you to be the rock, to be solid, don’t live by how you feel about yourselves or with the identity of the people imposed on you. Don’t let the world get you down. Don’t let your mind get scattered, you must have sharp focus like a rock and not like quicksand. What do you stand on? On yourself? Or on the God who never gives up on you as you strive to become the rock? I try my best in Ministry but many times I feel that my best is not enough. I fail, I get discouraged. I get discouraged about myself when it comes to Thursday. I get very anxious because the message does not come easily. I wait and wait, study and study but still the message doesn’t come. Even yesterday even, I told my wife “I’m in trouble. I have no message to speak tomorrow”, which was Sunday.

I have to wait. I get discouraged about myself and about my performance all the time, but I will not let myself down. I’ll try my best, but at the end of it I will always go back to God, who never gives up on me. No matter what happens to me, I’ll still go back to God at the end of it because God is a solid foundation, not me. Not my ability, not my intelligence. God is a solid foundation and I need to continuously go back there and pick myself up again and stand up.

If I use myself is a foundation, I have lived my life on very, very shaky ground. If you have this foundation, you will not have hope. Even when you are helpless, when you feel that you’re not good enough, if there is faith of a mustard seed, then you will have hope. That hope will not disappoint you. That hope will bring you back to be able to stand and move on with your journey. But when you trust yourself, when you are down then everything crumbles, everything dies. When you have the faith of the mustard seed, even when you are down, you will not lose hope and that hope will make us strong.

That is your foundation. Have the faith of a mustard seed. Just because you fail, don’t give up. Look to God and you’ll see hope. That’s good news. The good news is that my life is not just based on me. My life is based on God’s desire to make me who I’m meant to be. When I look at all of you, there is so much talent, so much ability. But we need more character to be able to persevere, to continuously persist, and to reach out for a dream that you have. I hope that through that faith, you build that character. The bottom generation was lacking in intelligence but our generation was lacking in character. If you’re narcissistic, you’d never build character. When you have faith, you’ll able to start building your character and that character will carry on. We all fail, we all get discouraged, we all fall, but who’s going to stand up and carry on? The one who has faith in God’s desire to want to help you. I hope that we all build that character in our lives. 

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