Are We Doing Our Mission Statement? from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.

Pastor Ray
Hope you guys are doing ok.
I have some bad news about bring in medical stuff into Belize. Lately they had several cases of bring iligal drugs and it caused some serious problem. Now whAt they are saying is that all medicine and drugs coming into Belize should contact to government at least 3 month ago. At this moment it doesn’t look good that medical stuff will pass through custom. Just pray that God will do something. I am trying different sources right now. Pastor Han
We are taking great amount of medicine

We really need God’s miracle!

Do Justice Dallas from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.

Do Justice from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.

Pastor Eom – North Korea Testimony from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.

Is it really necessary to carry around the Bible?

It is not a question regarding whether we should bring our bibles to the Sunday service or not.  It is a question regarding how much of the Bible do we actually consider worth reading?

I remember seeing someone carrying a very tiny Bible that only contains “Promises of God.”  I’ve also seen someone who tore the entire OT out from his Bible.  When was the last time you read the Book of Deuteronomy or Leviticus or Hezekiah or Obadiah?  Perhaps the reason that we do not understand God’s plan for us is because we have not read what God had revealed to us in entirety. through the Scripture.  Perhaps, we are just picking and choosing what we would like to hear but rejecting anything that sounds negative.

I was getting a contact information of one of the staff at IHOP-KC to inquire some housing information.  This person had stored the staff’s info on her phone as Kansas house.  The word “Kansas” was so obvious for anyone who can read English, but at that time I was so preoccupied with getting the information of this particular staff, I read it as 간사’s house. The word 간사 means staff in Korean.  I would transliterate that word as “Gansa” or “Kansa”.

I hope this embarrassing mistake that I just shared with you made you laugh, but at the same time I hope this has made you see the truth about ourselves.  We do hear about people taking the Scripture out of the context to understand it completely different from the intended meaning of it.

How many of us has Phil. 4:13 as your favorite verse?  It says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  I challenge you to read the entire book of Philippians.  You will understand that it is not a verse that we should use right before the important interview or exams.

Not only we take the Scripture out of its context, but we also mark passages as irrelevant for our own context.  Did you ever read the passage from Luke 14:26-27 that says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”?  What would you do with these verses?  Have you wrestled with these verses?  These verses make perfect sense when we read it with the Greatest commandment in mind.  When I love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength, God becomes number one in my life.  Anyone or anything that desires my care or love from me becomes secondary.  They (My wife, my children, parents, etc.) will contend for their spot on the priority in my life, but I will have to continue to make it know to them that God is number one.

We must take the Word of God seriously.  As we take the Word of God seriously and start digging into it as we should, you would be able to confess what David confessed: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Ps. 119:103).

I was welcomed by very friendly greeters who were strategically placed all over the church. The sanctuary was very well architectured with comfortable chairs, great acoustics, and wonderful multimedia equipments. The worship began with an introduction of the children’s choir from Africa that came to tour around US to raise fund for their country. It was great up to that point, but I began to feel little uncomfortable after the children’s choir have left the stage.  The worship Pastor came on the stage and said, “Today, we are going to use our good ol’ hymn books.  Please take out your hymnals from your pew pockets and shout out the hyumn number that you would like for us to sing.” There were several shouts from the congregation and the leader called out the number and said, “Ok, Hymn # 367!  We will sing first and last stanza.”  So the congregational singing portion ended with singing randomly picked stanzas from randomly picked hymns.  I am sure this is not this church’s normal way of worshipping on Sunday service, but I was getting little upset.  Where is the preparation of the worship?  Yeah, we got to sing some of people’s favorite hymns, but if we are going to do that, we should at least sing the entire hymn rather than picking few stanzas from them.

The children’s choir came out again and sang few more songs.  After they left the stage, big screen was placed on the stage as the associate pastor came out and said, “This morning, we will hear from a pastor of our church’s eastside campus.  The message is being broadcasted simultaneously as  the eastside campus is hearing this live.  We are starting a new sermon series called, Gospel Cinema…” Well, I was curious to hear what this was about.  By this time, I forgot about how upset I was with the congregational singing portion being so casually led.  I was excited to hear the Gospel being presented in a very innovative and creative way.  The pastor began telling a story about how everyone enjoys watching movies and went on about great menu of summer movies that are out in the theaters.  She devoted about 5 minutes talking about that.  And then, she began telling us about this particular movie titled, “August Rush,” and how she is going to introduce this movie to us.  Well, I will not bore you with every detail of the sermon I heard, but the 95% of the sermon was devoted to explaining what this movie was about in order to to build up to the big conclusion.  Those of you who have already watched this movie, you know what this movie is about.  It is about a son who was parted at the birth by force, but kept his hope in finding his mother.  Of course, the mom was searching form him as well.  Her conclusion was that God is looking for us as this mother in the movie was looking for her son.

When the message was finished, the holy anger came over me.  I felt like I came to this luxurious restaurant expecting a great meal, but leaving with such bad taste in my mouth and disatisfaction in my stomache.  Perhaps my analogy was poor.  I didn’t come to receive food, but to give my service to God.  No matter what experience the church provide, I should be able to worship God and find something to take back home.  I wasn’t angry because this church didn’t provide what I needed.  I was upset because this is the reality of many churches in America.  We became very casual with God and take the worship so lightly.  There is not much preparation with reverence and fear for God.  We are to usher people into the presence of God, aren’t we?  As a preacher, I realized how many of us, including myself, have been so preoccupied with concerns to make our messages relevant and to connect with people.  We spend great portion of our given time–30 to 40 minutes–trying to make people laugh or make some connection with people.  Because of that we have so little time to expound on the actual content of the message.

I am not criticizing this specific church.  I am in no position to criticize anyone.  I simply realized that this could very well be our church or what our church is trying to become.  We need to stop trying to become churches for people but churches for Christ.  I believe this is the very fact why Jesus became angry when he came to the temple.  Jesus said in anger, “This house is a house of prayer!”  People have made the temple to be a place of convenience.  They were to prepare and bring sacrifice from home, but they were selling those inside of the temple.  We need to be “Seeker-sensitive,” yes!  We need to make them feel welcomed and loved.  However, we should not neglect our God in the process of welcoming the seekers.  I pray that we will see more of God-sensitive churches.

40 Days from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.

Christian and friends enjoying water pool from Journey Of Faith Church on Vimeo.