Growing up in a Christian family can be a blessing and a curse; and in many ways, my own personal walk with God is a great example of this. Being raised as a Christian at a very young age helped me learn the basic principles of Christianity. John 3:16 and the Ten Commandments were pretty much the sum of my Christian faith until I turned 11 and I attended my first church retreat. This retreat marked the beginning when I was first filled with the Holy Spirit. However, this retreat ultimately served as nothing more than my first "spiritual high." I tasted the beauty of God's grace and I was addicted to the "feeling" of being in love with God as if it were a drug. For five years, this pattern persisted. I'd go to a retreat, be filled with the spirit, lose the high, and then wait for the next spiritual high to come along. It was a blessing I was able to experience God's love at an early age but it was also a curse because I was too young to comprehend it or appreciate it in the way I was meant to.
My adolescent years must have been absolute torture for my parents to endure; because I must say, I was a horrible and volatile child. I was extremely selfish, inconsiderate, quick to anger, hypocritical, defiant, rebellious, and too stubborn to see the error in my ways. My teachers hated me and my parents did more than their fair share of showing me tough love every time I would get myself into trouble at school. My grades were worse than poor and my attitude toward everyone was downright unacceptable. Of course, there would be momentary phases when a retreat would temporarily alter my actions; but for the most part, I always fell short when it came to a more permanent transformation.
After 5 years had passed since my first experience with the Holy spirit, it was pretty sad to see that there was nothing about me that clearly showed I was transformed by the love of Christ. The only thing showing the world that I was a Christian was the fact that I went to church every Sunday; and let's face it, that is such a pathetic representation of what a Christian should be. As I got older, these realizations began to dawn on me. I knew something had to change if I was to go around proclaiming I was a Christian. Then on the 5th year, at the end of my sophomore year in high school, I attended my first large scale retreat. First, I went to a retreat in Atlanta called SYNOD, then a conference in LA called JAMA. It was at these retreats I finally came to "know" God and find myself in Christ. I remember the climax of my transformation manifesting itself while I was on my knees praying and pouring out my heart on the last night of JAMA. I can still recreate the memory in my head. For the first time I began praying allowed as if no one else could hear me. It was just me and God and it felt as if I was in His presence alone. Tears poured down my face as I began shouting to God, "Where do I stand God?!" over and over as I pounded my palms against the floor. I wanted something more than just another spiritual high. I wanted the real thing and for once in my life, I wanted to change from the inside out rather than mask everything with temporary alterations in my actions. I remember asking God to put me through the fire and to use my hands and feet to do His will. It was at this point in my life that I received the calling to serve God full time.
Once I returned from the retreats, I was a changed man. I had turned a new leaf and it began to show through my actions and my relationships. My grades vastly improved, my conduct surprised many of my teachers, and my parents could see that something had changed. I can't say that everyday was spent loving God but I can definitely say that my transformation was much more permanent than simply experiencing a spiritual high. I became much more involved with church and by the time I was 18, I was leading praise. My love and obedience to God remained pretty consistent until God put my love to the test in my 2nd year of college.
By the time I was 20, I had harnessed my passion for music and it was one of the main channels in which I expressed my act of worship. Leading praise was a huge part of my life and walk with God. Around this time, God gave me an opportunity to grow in this area of my life when one of the pastors that I had met while I was at SYNOD took a position at the largest Korean church in Memphis. Pastor Jacob was my spiritual mentor and it didn't matter that he was the youth pastor of a different church. Eventually, pastor Jacob organized a joint Wednesday night service for all the youth groups in Memphis. He asked me to lead praise for this service and I remember him warning us about the hardships we might face for doing it. At first, I didn't figure these hardships would eventually lead up to me running away from God; but it soon became apparent that Satan had a strong foothold in the Korean churches of Memphis.
Controversy started to surface because I was leading praise at a church different than my own. In the beginning, I ignored the controversy because I knew that what I was doing was pleasing in God's eyes and it didn't matter if it didn't please the elders at my church. I stuck to my convictions and held strong onto the idea that the church is not a building but rather the fellowship of the body of Christ. It didn't matter that my service to God was being carried out at a different church; but apparently, it mattered a lot to the elders. Eventually, the controversy became so bad to the point that my own father and uncle sat me down in the middle of the fellowship hall of my church while everyone was eating. They began scolding me for my actions and asking me why I wasn't leading praise on Wednesday night at my own church. The reasons were clear. There was no English Ministry at our church and I knew I wouldn't be fed by sitting through a Korean sermon. Despite my reasoning and objections, my uncle and father were set on rebuking me and making sure that I knew that they were right and I was wrong. The dispute eventually climaxed when my father looked me straight in the eyes and told me, "You know, on the outside, you may appear to be a strong Christian, but on the inside, you're nothing." When I heard him say this, a part of me died and an evil spirit swept over me. I remember yelling, "If I'm nothing as a Christian, then what is the point in living?! Why don't you just kill me now!!!" I lost control and became like a mad man. My father, whom is much bigger and stronger than me, couldn't even control me. I remember overpowering my father and throwing him to the ground. I remember punching the wall uncontrollably as blood dripped down from my fists. I remember my mom crying hysterically and my pastor eventually having to calm me down and taking me outside. Outside, while I was expressing my frustrations to my pastor, I remember telling him that I couldn't do this anymore. I told him that I couldn't put up with the politics of church and serving God if it was going to be this hard. It was there that I decided to run away from it all. I was going to transfer schools and get out of Memphis.
When I transferred schools, I wasn't just leaving Memphis, I was also running away from God. I had decided that I was tired of being this goody goody Christian and abstaining from indulging my fleshly passions. I wanted to explore the world and put myself before God. In a sense, you could view my exodus from Memphis as a representation of me leaving God's house in the story of the prodigal son. Though God was still my father, I didn't want the inconvenience of living under the same roof as Him: so I moved out. I put my own desires above that of God's and visited Him only when it was convenient for me. On the surface, though I still appeared to be a Christian, in my heart, I was wandering in darkness. I can't say that God was completely out of the picture, but He definitely wasn't first in my life. This was the state I was in when I met John; and while I was in darkness, God still used me to bring glory to His name. So after 5 years of wandering in the desert, God somehow used my brokenness to not only help bring John to Christ but also to use John's transformation to bring about transformation of my own. This is one of the main reasons why 2010 will forever be remembered as one of the best years of my life. The other reason revolves around my almost sinful obsession with Jane but that story will be for another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment