Appreciating God’s Faithfulness by Joseph Jun

A junior high auditorium that could accommodate over one hundred people had a small church of 25-30 people every Sunday morning. That is where our church was only a few years ago. Some of us look back and remember how a third of the church (praise team) would move forward onto the stage to begin worship. Those days are gone. With that, I look back at those days and what immediately comes across clearly is God’s unending faithfulness to this church. We began our church with a few young college students in 1997 and nearly a decade later, we have people we see every week that we barely even get to speak with. In the early years, we all went to a food establishment called Sagami after church to fellowship and share a meal together. We got to speak to everyone and even had time left over to share about our weeks. Now we only have a few lunch tables left in our quad area that are empty.

But more on God’s faithfulness…

I remember when the leaders were struggling with obtaining a facility for our church. We were excited about being number three in line at the City of Irvine facilities reservations. We had some of our members sleep outside in front of City Hall so we could have first crack at the most coveted facility in Irvine. Turtle Rock Community Center. A place that could hold approximately three hundred people for worship, close to UCI and not having to worry about facilities for a long time. We were a whopping 50-60 people at that time. What we did not expect was to hear that the facility was unavailable for the coming year. We were now in a worse off position than before. We theoretically had no where to worship because we had anticipated a facility in one of Irvine’s community centers. The leadership had to seriously consider meeting at a park on Sundays or maybe Pastor Peter’s home. What it did was cause us to pray. When we thought all the facilities in Irvine were reserved for the year, God’s faithfulness to BCC was once again made clear. We received a phone call from the city and we were offered a place at Northwood Community Center. Praise God! This was a direct and visible answer to our prayers. This small story is only a small fraction of the struggles and trials we faced early on in this ministry. To tell you the truth, this happened in, I believe, year six of our church’s existence. The first years were probably the most difficult financially for our sole leader at that time and his family. Yet as we learned this past Sunday about God’s faithfulness to Israel, we have visible fruit of God’s faithfulness to his church and especially Berean Community Church.

I love this church. I’ve been one of the founding members of this church (Harvest Community Church in 1997) when I was only a young college student. Not so many years later, I was established as an “Elder” at this church at a ripe old age of 27. It has been my privilege to serve at Berean, and to be considered one of the leaders here is sobering. As many of you know, Biblical leadership is a high calling. Lord willing I have many more years to live to become an elder in the official sense of the word. But, I want to reiterate the tremendous honor and blessing it was to go through the hardships and struggles in the early years of this church. I appreciate so much more the place where we are now. In the same way, in our own personal lives many of you can look back where you were only a few years ago and praise God that he has brought you this far. Please don’t get me wrong, we still have struggles and different kind of difficulties now as we grow. I remember watching my parents help establish a new church when I was only a boy. I remember visiting this new church building and walking through walls that had not been completed. But most of all, I remember the sacrifices those individuals made for the church. At that time, people pawned their wedding rings to help financially and complete the project. Not only that, they gave their time, energy and money so that they could build something for God’s Kingdom.

I want to remind all of you that sacrifice is a noble thing. Our Lord Jesus sacrificed his life for this church. He purchased this church and you with HIS blood. You will only have a superficial appreciation for this church and God’s kingdom if you do not invest and sacrifice for it.

Sacrifice – The surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.

In light of this definition, what is it that you have that is more valuable then Christ? Is it hard for you to sacrifice your time, energy and finances for HIS church? I hope not. This is not meant to make you feel guilty. But if it does, I pray and hope that you’ll come out of it with a sense of appreciation for our God who loves us and continues to watch over us DESPITE our failures.

“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” – MLK jr.

Mark 8:35 – For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. – The LORD Jesus Christ

December M Report

The past three weeks were quite a blur with the visit from Pastor Peter and Valerie and just initiating a lot of talks about some things that we can do while we have 6-7 months left here.
Recently, we just celebrated Thanksgiving together, with us and some of our friends whom we met while here in Beijing. It was quite a crowd as we had about almost 20 people in the apartment. It was fun trying to make a Thanksgiving meal together and even more fun conversing with our friends. It was very encouraging to hear some of the things that they were thankful for, especially a few of them giving thanks to the Lord. It was assuring to know that there were natives who were willing to talk about their gift to others at that dinner as well. We are hoping and praying for more of these types of opportunities and to be able to share with them the gospel.
For the past four weeks, Jeni and I have been going to a local college (the same school that we go to every Monday and practice our English at) and have been teaching to the international college staff and teachers. It has been interesting, just going there and meeting the staff and the associate dean who works there. The team definitely feels this can be an ideal site for our next summer project, so please do pray that God will enable doors and opportunities to open for us to discuss the summer project very soon.
As for Jonathan, we have been texting each other frequently. He has been studying hard where his father is at. God has been convicting my heart to pray more for him and that his time spent over there will not be completely without fruit. I know when he gets back I am going to offer a more organized way of reading the Bible and see if he is willing to take that, so please pray that I can be diligent in preparing the material for him.

After meeting with Pastor Peter, a lot of things cleared up for me. I also was thoroughly encouraged. For work, I decided to cut down some hours at the tutoring center so I can invest in other things. As for the kindergarten, our last day there is the last Friday of January. As for other things, I’ve trying to meet with Dominic, but for some reason, he won’t answer my calls or text me back. I’m not quite sure what is up. I really want meet up with him, but it seems like as for now, I just need to wait and keep on praying for him. On the other hand, I recently met up with another person name Lewis. I met him at JMEC. He’s my age and he seems to have a lot of time. Unlike Dominic, this Lewis will take time. I’m trying to find the best way to share the gospel with him, but meanwhile, I’m just trying to get to know him and see where he is coming from.
As for working with the other 5, it has been awesome. They challenge me everyday to run harder and work harder. I’m definitely humbled and have much to learn from them. Just through my Bible readings and recent experiences (esp. with Dominic), I’m learning to be more dependent on God. He is causing me to pray a lot more, not simply for myself but for the people. Though I see myself being challenged and changed, I am not satisfied. I truly believe my heart desires to win souls. Everyday, I wonder if there’s anything more I can do. I also wonder if I did something wrong when I met with Dominic, or if I’m not praying enough. But I know deep down inside that it is only matter of time.
Please pray that I would not lose my whole eternal perspective, and that I would continue to grow in my prayer for Dominic and my trust in the Lord. In His time, He will make it happen. I see this event as a chance to test my genuineness to God. I’m excited, there are two choices from here: give up and move on, or I can endure in much praying. May God allow me to endure and partner up with Him in this task. From the beginning and all the way to the end, it’s always been for His glory and not mine. I ask that whether I’m used or not, He would grant Dominic to be a believer. I hope that Berean Community Church can partner up by praying for this task. It’s urgent and much needed, not just for Dominic but for everything and everyone.

God has continued to challenge me since the last update, and also added some projects to my calendar. We have been attending an English corner at a local university, and through those weekly meetings, I have come in contact with some students, and began meeting with one in particular. Although our meetings together are based around learning Chinese and English from each other, opportunities have already presented themselves to speak about spiritual things. I hope to continue to grow in this relationship as well as others started through the English corner – and know that God has some exciting times ahead for me and the entire team. Another contact was established during our Thanksgiving dinner – I will begin meeting with him this coming week. My meetings with him will be more focused from the get go, as I have learned of his previous exposure to God and subsequent hesitation to move forward with anything. Besides these new opportunities, I have also taken on another class at work which has doubled my weekly workload. Nothing big, but stricter time management will definitely need to come into play….

Life is good. God is good. These days I’ve been much happier because I’ve found a more efficient way of maximizing my time and energy. The age old cure of discipline has helped me spend more time with God and feel a great sense of peace and joy throughout my week. For awhile I felt very overwhelmed with a busy schedule, yet I was frustrated that I wasn’t bearing much fruit out here. Plus, I was getting sick every other week, so it was a challenge to not feel discouraged. Circumstances couldn’t change much, so I began to pray more. And as God always does, he has helped me to have a renewed perspective on things. Since what matters most is my relationship with God, my time with Him comes first and everything else comes second. It is not enough to simply have the good intention of guarding my time with him without ever making active steps to really make it priority. So with the simple adjustment of consistently sleeping early and waking up early everyday and offering the first fruits to God, life seems so different. I feel like I have a lot of time and a lot more energy! I feel my eyes are much more open to see the many opportunities around me and to be excited for them. I feel a greater sense of peace with God and thus peace in what I do everyday. I see that the true energizing power comes from my relationship with God more than having more time or getting more rest (though with discipline, these things are found and better used).
Jeni and I finished teaching our last session of FOF with our weekly small group studies. It has been extremely encouraging to see these students consistently come out and study with much eagerness. They have been asking some good questions and seem to be really chewing on the things that they have been learning. The unique thing about this group is that there are 3 Christians &2 non-Christians. One of the Christians, the youngest of the group (almost 20), seems to be growing and gaining more confidence, so she has been helping explain and translate passages and ideas. She is really eager to grow and understand the Bible, and she often asks questions about messages that she hears at her home group. What is also very encouraging is that she invited the 2 unbelievers to her home group last week and they found it very interesting. This coming Saturday, Jeni and I along with our FOF group will be visiting the campus fellowship of two of the Christians to see what it’s like. I’m very interested in learning more about work on campuses, so this is an exciting opportunity! Our weekly studies will actually continue after this week because all the students wanted to continue learning, so we will begin studying John soon. Please ask that God would continue to use our weekly study to grow and equip the Christians and bring the non-Christians to salvation.
I believe God is still working in our friend Rita. When Pastor Peter was here, she opened up a bit and shared with us how she felt. I think when she realized that she wasn’t fully ready to join the family her excitement quickly died. Then her interest faded, and out of fear that this disinterest would cause us to be less motivated to be friends with her, she hardened up so that she wouldn’t be hurt. She was afraid that we were only interested in converting her rather than genuinely caring about her, but we reassured her that we really did care about her and because we cared, we wanted more than anything for her to know God. I think this conversation quelled much of her fear and she has softened up a bit. She actually joined our baptism ceremony for Catherine and seemed to have been very touched by it. She was back to her usual self that night, eager to talk and ask questions. Please keep her in prayer, that God would continue to soften her heart and allow her to see the need for repentance.

Hello Berean! Yay for the update (finally)! Thank you for letting us borrow Pastor Peter for the week. It was really such an awesome time of encouraging refreshment for the lot of us, and it was so nice to be able to see a familiar face from home. Things have been going well on our side of the world. Temperatures dropped again; the forecast says it’s supposed to begin settling in the 35s for the highs and the 20s for the lows this week. Oh joy. I can feel the cold creeping into my shoes. hehe. But yes, recently, I have been able to keep consistent correspondence with 2 ladies from the nearby university we’ve been visiting on Tuesday nights. Please pray for these 2 particular girls. Their English is excellent and I think this weekend, I will try to meet one of them (let’s just call her Rye) and spend time getting to know one another. Please think for this opportunity I hope to have with her.
Also, please take pray to think for Catherine. Lately, it has been hard to meet up with her because of her busy schedule. She has been going regularly to her own home group time on Sunday but I don’t know particularly how she is doing at this point because our correspondence is so scattered. Recently, she has been really tied up at work and because of the many hours citizens are required to put in here, she constantly feels an obligation to put more hours in than she is scheduled to work in order to finish all they have given her to do. Please pray that she would be able to work hard and diligently in the time that has been set for her so that she would be able to make time on the weekends to spend time with our group.

Before any updates, I’d like to thank you for the gifts, cards and prayers that strengthen the weak (me)! As most of you know, I recently went on a missions trip with my sister. It was not what I expected due to several meetings that were cancelled last minute. However, since God is able to turn all things around for His advantage, I believe that what we experienced was good for opening my eyes and breaking open my heart to the situation in that area. I realize that I don’t have to physically be there to work, but that our God can use me from here in a variety of ways.
Things continue to get busier here with work and future projects. I’ve started teaching Business English now, and am excited to meet new friends. Tutoring is going well, although the kids have become more rowdy. I continue to appreciate Mrs. P more and more — not only as a language partner, but as a friend. I recently learned that she might be leaving in February to join her husband in South Korea for two years. Before I found out that info, however, God worked it out so that I would have an additional language partner with a Chinese co- worker, named Snow White. We are the same age and have been in the company for the same amount of time. During our first meeting, we met our mutual friend Matthew from 1-2 … he spoke only in Chinese, so it was difficult but rewarding. So … God continues to provide wonderful learning situations for me. Lastly, there are 3 potential new accounts (=Abundant Life, __ Chapman, and Xena __) for language/culture exchange. I plan on setting up some meetings/outings to see if they are good leads and also to do some seed planting.

Click here for the group Xanga!!!

Click here for the Lee couple Xanga!!! UPDATED

Men’s Accountability by a Brother

For about the past month and a half now, many brothers have been able to meet for accountability to get rid of any sexual impurities. For the longest time, for me and many others, this has been something that scares us at how much we are engrossed in it and how little at times we have done to stop it. For me, I felt content with the battling of the sin and never really felt the desire or the need to bring in others because I thought I was the only one struggling with it. However, starting from last year’s retreat and even more now, God has definitely been teaching me that that clearly is not the case.

The accountability comes from two meetings – a large group setting (everyone who chose to participate) and a more intimate one-to-one meeting.

The large group meetings are a time of encouraging each other and revealing with the whole group as to how God’s been challenging us. Elder Vince begins meetings with prayer and a time for him to share on the passage that we’ve been memorizing (Romans 6:1-14 last month and Psalm 51). After that, we pretty much went person by person sharing struggles, highlights, and encouragements as to what the past month had entailed with regards with this sin.

Our one to one weekly meetings are much of the same but more intimate and more specific. These meetings involved much prayer, much sorrow at times, and hopefully much joy. My accountability partner and I usually share day by day, almost blow by blow our weeks and look for ways in which we won’t fall again or at other times, how we can keep staying away from this sin. Other things we usually discuss involves things such as sermons that we’ve been listening to involve this sin and our struggles in other areas of our life.

Couple more things that we have chosen to do was read and memorize Romans 6:1-14 and Psalm 51. Having a scripture backlog in our minds definitely helps when we find ourselves in seemingly impossible situations and has served as a reminder to God’s thinking of sin. As well, we are reading through Joshua Harris’s book, Sex is not the Problem (Lust Is) to gain another perspective into this sin.

Much of what we do depends completely upon our own honesty and our own desire, because this is a sin we can chose to make private. I personally have been encouraged to hear the honesty and sincerity that I have been allowed to hear and has only encouraged me to do the same with these brothers whom God is allowing me to love more and more each meeting.

Over the past several years of my life, I have realized only more and more how hard this sin is to conquer by myself and I am so thankful that God has given me other brothers to love and to share my burden with as well as me to love and to share their burdens. We as men, the greatest struggle lies in the flesh. We definitely need all the help that we can get. Please don’t shun us because we struggle in such perverted manners at times but rather pray for us and keep encouraging us because we need it so much, thanks in advance for all that you guys will be doing to help us.

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Worship by Caroline Jeong

This is a typical Sunday for those on praise. We meet at 7:30am to pray. We share what’s on our hearts and intercede for one another and for the Church. This is an important part of preparing our hearts to worship the Lord…asking for our hearts to be cleansed, to have the right attitude, and to have unison in song. We, then, separate. The guys go and get the praise equipment from Pastor Peter’s house and some of the girls go get food for us to eat. =) We usually start setting up the equipment around 8:30 and then start practicing quickly after. During worship, we strive to tune out all distractions (like the faces before us) and to focus our minds wholly on worshiping the Lord…He deserves no less. This past Sunday was a good reminder of what worship really is: genuine thankfulness. It is sad that we often have to put the word “genuine” in front of “Christian” or “worship” because it is so common now to find worship that is not done in spirit and in truth. What does God really desire from us? And what can we give back to Him? Like Pastor Peter said, what do we have that has not been given to us? Coming onto praise, Joe reminded me that God doesn’t need us and that the supreme aim is to please Him by being worshipers of Him throughout the week.

I think that the following passage does a good job describing what the Lord really desires from us and what worship really is. Up to this point Solomon had finished building the temple, bringing the ark of the covenant into it, and all of Israel had been gathered there.

“Indeed it came to pass, when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD, when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the LORD…that the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God.” (2 Chronicles 5:13-14)

It says that as their voices and music were “as one” and that as they “praised” the Lord, the glory of the Lord so filled the place that the priests could not even go on ministering! God was so pleased with their praise lifted up in unison that He came down and filled the place with His presence. What an awesome sight that must have been! Let’s really strive to continually offer up our praises of thanksgiving to Him…with one aim, one heart, and one voice…

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