Tell us a little about yourself. Did you grow up a Christian or later come to Christ?
I grew up in a Christian family, a very warm, loving, big family. We would go to church, and every week, I would play the piano in the youth band.
When I was in high school, my father decided to teach Bible studies again. So I decided to participate in them. I thought, “Hey, maybe this’ll help me become more confident in my faith.”
As a result, I came to know more things about Christianity.
But actually, it left me with more questions than I had before I took those Bible studies. It didn’t give me certainty about my faith. We learned some things about faith in general and about some history in the Bible. But it didn’t feel like I understood what God and Jesus really meant when they said something.
What specifically was confusing for you?
We learned that we had a body, a soul, and a spirit. So after I heard this, I was all curious. What is a soul and what is a spirit? What’s the difference? And what do they do?
The Bible study I took explained it like this:
One thing is more your emotional thinking, like the thoughts you have, your feelings. And the other one would be your rational thinking and your knowledge.
But that didn’t really make sense to me because what if I was thinking about a fact that I had learned before? Was that not my soul or my spirit?
And it also didn’t explain in detail about what would happen if I died.
Where would I go? And how would I get there? And how can I be 100% sure that I would go to Heaven? These questions were important to me because I knew that the other side would be Hell. So I definitely wanted to go to Heaven.
So in the end, what I learned from that Bible study and through conversations with many other Christians too was that we will never actually be able to understand God and that we just have to somehow believe in the Bible even though it sometimes doesn’t make sense. And we only have to believe in Jesus and live a somehow righteous life and then we will go to Heaven.
But I couldn’t rely on that.
So unconsciously, I made the decision to just believe in God and that He loves me and that He existed. But that I would actually not read the Bible anymore because I would not find answers anyway. And that I would probably find more questions which I couldn’t find answers for.
So yeah, I just stopped doing that.
What helped you become the strong Christian you are today?
Well luckily, I was able to meet some people from Providence Church.
They introduced me to the Bible lessons a Korean pastor named Jung Myung Seok put together. And through those Bible studies, all these questions I had got answered.
I was so amazed.
There was someone who actually knows about what all these stories in the Bible meant, why they happened, and what God was thinking about when they happened. He gave me very specific explanations about what the soul and the spirit are, what they do, what they’re like, and how the body can affect them.
Even about Heaven, before I came to Providence Church, I always thought, “Well, Heaven is a place—it’s a big space with lots of grass, some trees and very nice people walking around.”
But when I learned from these Bible lessons from Pastor Jung Myung Seok, I realized that actually going to Heaven means that I live together with God, like really close every day.
So I thought, “Oh my gosh. I can’t do that. I’m such a negative person sometimes. And I envy other people. So I would totally ruin Heaven.”
But through Pastor Jung Myung Seok’s sermons, proverbs, and other lessons, I learned how to change myself. I learned how to change my character, how to change my thoughts, how to change my whole behavior, and how to make myself into someone who’s worth God’s love more than I ever imagined.
He really taught me how to live my daily life together with God. And he taught me how to live with God for eternity.
What do you feel like changed the most after you learned from Pastor Jung Myung Seok?
In this process, I also started to read the Bible again. And when I read it, I can actually understand it now. It’s so amazing! I understand things when I read the Bible.
This Bible study resolved all the questions I had when I read the Bible. There were so many problems that I saw in the world. But most Christians just didn’t have an answer for them. The only Christian who was able to answer them was Pastor Jung Myung Seok.
Thanks to him, I was able to reach a truly deep understanding of the things I always wanted to know inside my heart. I wanted to know about God’s heart. Like, what was God thinking when all these stories in the Bible happened? What was He thinking and doing now in the world and also in my life?
So knowing all this and showing God my love through my daily actions, I came closer to God.
Now, I can say that I really live together with God in my everyday life.
My life just completely changed.
I’ve had times when I’m just walking down the street and talking to God. Then I would realize something about him and grin. It would make me look like a crazy person, so I would hide my face in my scarf.
I’m truly happy that I came to Providence Church. And I’m sure there are many more people out there who actually felt the same as me before. If they would listen to what I learned, then I’m sure they would be happy too.