A young man said to me, “I respect you for living like the apostle Paul”. I was astonished. Though I tried to live like Paul, I could not live like him. On hearing the words, I felt as if the voice of the Lord was reaching my ear, ‘I want you to live like the apostle Paul’. It was a feeling that my head was strongly hit. For me, there is no better whipping than a compliment. If the compliment is received as a sweet thing, it makes someone arrogant. But, if received as a whipping, it makes him humble. While the humble improve, the arrogant fall down.
Many people compliment me. Whenever I hear the compliment, I think inwardly, ‘what he says is that God orders me to do well’. I thank God for that he interferes and reproaches me in detail like that.
I confess that what someone compliments me is the exact part I have to fix, and I pray to the Lord. So I keep finding myself changing slightly while hearing compliments. With this, I cut the parts that appear harshly in me. And then, I never fall down over a door of arrogance whenever the Lord savior appears only.
Everybody wants to hear compliments and be high. However, we are saved by the sharing of the blood of Jesus and we must lower ourselves by receiving the compliments as whippings. When we become lowered, we become humble. And when we are filled with the Holy Spirit by praying, we can see our position.
We are saved from sins, curses and hell by the sharing of the blood of Jesus who died on the cross. We are the receiver of grace that we cannot repay with the things from the Earth. If someone has a faithful conscious, he always becomes humble before God by saying, ‘how can I repay this debt’. We cannot repay this grace even by evangelizing and saving souls to the end according to the will of Lord. When filled with the Holy Spirit, I vanish and become just someone confessing, ‘fulfill your will Lord’.
/ Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #566 (March 3, 2018)
