Message Received

By Youngsuk Chae

Kim Hye-sun is a devout Christian in South Korea. She yearned for God and wanted to know more about His Word. So she joined a Bible study with friends but didn’t understand the discussion. She soon stopped attending.

Image © Pacific Press

Hye-sun usually drives a car, but one day she felt like taking the bus. As she waited at the bus stop in front of her house, she overheard two women talking enthusiastically. “Read this message!” one woman said, holding out her cellphone. “Someone sends me a message every day, and I love them!”

“Really?” the other woman said. “Let me see.”

Hye-sun found herself drawn to the women. “Can I see it, too?” she asked. She didn’t usually talk to strangers, but she was curious.

On the cellphone, she read, “‘God is love’ is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass. The lovely birds making the air vocal with their happy songs, the delicately tinted flowers in their perfection perfuming the air, the lofty trees of the forest with their rich foliage of living green — all testify to the tender, fatherly care of our God and to His desire to make His children happy” (Steps to Christ, p. 10).

“Wow!” Hye-sun thought, “This is what I need!”

She asked how she could receive the text messages. The woman with the cellphone promised to help. Soon she began receiving daily messages, and she expressed her gratitude by replying to each one. On Sundays, she texted back, “Have a good Lord’s day!” After some time, at her texted request for more information, she received The Great Controversy and other books in the mail. She has stopped sending Sunday greetings but continues to express joy for the messages and is reading the books that she has received.

The text messages come from Lim Myung-Sook, a Seventh-day Adventist deaconess who sends Ellen White quotations daily to about 2,500 people, including leaders from other denominations. Myung-Sook is praying that Hye-sun and others who read the messages will grow closer to Jesus. “I don’t know how many people read these messages and how the messages are making a difference in their lives,” she said. “I am just a sower. But I believe God will make the seed grow and reap its fruits.”

This mission story illustrates Mission Objective No. 1 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s “I Will Go” strategic plan: “To revive the concept of worldwide mission and sacrifice for mission as a way of life involving not only pastors but every church member.” Learn more at IWillGo2020.org. This quarter, your Thirteenth Sabbath offering will support two mission projects in South Korea.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Further Thought:

It is hard to imagine how even in the best of times, such as under David and Solomon, the nation of Israel could have been so blessed by God and yet could have so oppressed the poor, the helpless, and the outcasts among them.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

“Therefore, because you tread down the poor
and take grain taxes from him,
though you have built houses of hewn stone,
yet you shall not dwell in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink wine from them.
For I know your manifold transgressions
and your mighty sins:
Afflicting the just and taking bribes;
Diverting the poor from justice at the gate.” ( Amos 5.11-12, NKJV).

“The LORD will enter into judgment with the elders of His people
and His princes:
‘for you have eaten up the vineyard;
the plunder of the poor is in your houses’” (Isaiah 3:14).

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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