Before I went into ministry, I prayed earnestly to God to give me profound and rich inspiration. I am not talking about the inspiration that wrote the Bible in the era of the apostle. I prayed for a spiritual sense that I must have as a pastor when I meet church members and fill their spiritual desperation.
If you don’t know whether you are hungry or full spiritually, you might be sick or dead. Even the flesh gets hungry if they do not eat food. Likewise, if they feel hungry spiritually when they don’t eat the word of God, they truly believe in Jesus. If you live not knowing that your soul is hungry or thirsty, naked or poor because you don’t have a spiritual sense, you just live regardless of the word of God as if you don’t believe in Jesus even though you go to church.
Those who are not desperate are hard to go to church to worship God on Sundays. We don’t expect them to pray, or evangelize or work for the Lord. They rather point fingers at those who show great zeal in believing in Jesus or criticize them saying, “It’s overdone.” But when they can look their souls that are hungry and thirsty for righteousness after they received the grace of God, they will too believe in Jesus more zealously than those who they once criticized saying “it’s overdone”
Who can stop those who are wandering to seek water because of thirst? Who can obstruct them from getting food to fill their stomach? Who can interrupt those who work hard to escape poverty? Likewise, who can disturb those who live a life of faith to try to eat with Jesus, to drink with Jesus’ righteousness, to clothe themselves with Jesus’ righteousness, to be rich with Jesus’ righteousness, to satisfy their desperate spiritual instinct? If you criticize people who try to walk by faith to satisfy their thirst and hunger for righteousness, you are not a spiritual person. The first thing a spiritual person has to do is to satisfy the hunger of righteousness, not shaking no matter what you hear.
Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #658
