Last Friday, one of the members of our church invited me and the other staff members for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Before arriving, Pastor Lee and Principal Yu met a sound engineer at the church sanctuary to solve our soundboard issues. Grateful for his work and a job well done, they invited the engineer to join us.
Naturally, our dinnertime conversation steered toward church. Soon the question was posed to the sound engineer: “Do you have a church home? Would you like to join us one Sunday?” He replied that many churches invite him, but he does not have any firm beliefs. His mother is very religious, though not a Christian. And lately, he has had to work every day to support his wife and young family. In fact, he recently began investing his money in the stock market to try to increase his profits.
It wasn’t a staff member who decided to engage the young man. It was the member of our church—a traditionally quiet, yet always kind man. He began to offer his testimony (as translated to me by Teacher Park, the new teacher at our school):
“Several years ago, I also began investing in the stock market. I would sit at my computer all day, and often stay up all night, watching the market rise and fall. I would average about 3 hours of sleep a night. If I saw the stock price falling, I would panic. I did not make any money. Then, I began to put my hope in God. I felt calm. I began to make a lot of money. In fact, I made enough money to retire for the rest of my life. But I now know that it is God’s money. If He wants me to give it all away, I will do it. He can make me rich again if He wants to. He will continue to give wisdom if I ask for it.”
With that, the church member spent the next half hour offering this young man some practical advice on how to navigate the stock market with success. By the end, the young man said he had never experienced such a warm environment before, and he would seriously consider the invitation to worship with us.
…
I think this scene will be forever etched in my heart and mind. It may seem like a simple dinner conversation. But I was struck by several elements. First of all, it was the church member who reached out to the young man. Surrounded by pastors, he could have thought: “I’ll pass the buck to someone who is paid to talk about God.” Instead, he saw that he was the perfect person to lend a voice to the sound engineer’s questions.
Secondly, I was amazing by the church member’s generosity. He bought dinner for us all. He also shared his heart with the young man. He gave spiritual and practical wisdom with patience and precision. It was a picture of discipleship. An older man giving all that he had to a younger man. Incredibly, it was their first time to meet.
Finally, the content of his testimony spoke to my own heart. The image of the stock market rising and falling, with the corresponding actions and reactions of the heart, resonated within me. These past few years have had their ups and downs. When the times have been good, I have felt unbelievably happy. When the times have been tough, I have felt undeniably depressed. I, too, have shared in the rise and the fall.
When moving to South Korea, I found myself asking the question: “Lord, what have these last several years been about?” I felt my time here would give some perspective in it all. This dinner scene came during my vacation week, when I had been asking for continued clarity. And I felt the Lord asking me some questions in response to my own.
I found myself pondering, “What is controlling my heart?” I thought—if I feel like I am living on a roller coaster, maybe I am still putting too much hope in my circumstances. The Apostle Paul once wrote: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).
I continued to reason—perhaps I should also be careful not to trust in my feelings, but should look more to His leading. Moses once proclaimed to the people of Israel: “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).
That’s when I felt a sudden clarity. The Lord seemed to reveal what these last few years have been about: learning to bring glory to Him through intimacy with His Son and obedience to His Spirit—no matter what. It was a much-desired light bulb moment given during what has been a dark night of the soul. I found calm in my troubled spirit.
I also reconsidered, “What am I investing in?” A friend of mine recently quoted her pastor as saying, “I doubt you will look back on your life and wish you had watched more television.” As Christians, we hope to give ourselves to those things which last eternally. It is thus wise to regularly examine the fruit of our life investments—not to obsess over them, but to again submit them to the Lord. Are we maximizing our gifts and talents? Are we building on the foundation with gold, silver and precious jewels—or wood, hay, and straw (1 Corinthians 3:10-15)? Are we seeing gains for the kingdom?
I remember a conversation with a friend who taught me about ROI—“return on investment.” It brought new light to Jeremiah 17:7-8, which says: ““Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” When we trust in the Lord, we continually enjoy returns. We can afford to be generous. We will not exhaust His resources, and our hope is not in the physical.
When I returned from China, a friend took me to dinner. He asked me, “What was the best moment of your time there?” I shared that, on my last day, one of the Chinese guys from my Bible study gave me a note. In it, he shared that he had come to faith in Christ because of our study group, which he said was “like a family to him.” Then, my friend asked, “What has been difficult about coming back to the US?” I told him I was feeling the weight of my circumstance at the time—no job, no car, no permanent home. He then said something profound: “I bet—if you added up two years worth of salary, the price of your car, and the worth of all the possessions you sold to move to China—you would spend it all again to purchase your friend’s soul, if that was possible.”
I was again confronted with the question, what is a soul worth? I would give anything to see a friend saved—though I do not have enough to give. Fortunately, the true Savior did give His life so that we may be redeemed. Which also begs the question, what do we feel our own soul is worth? Jesus once asked: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul” (Mark 8:36)? It is a tragically poor investment to sell our precious souls to the devil to obtain the empty lies of this world.
My final meditation came from the chapter “Wilderness Worth-ship” in Michael Card’s book, A Sacred Sorrow. It is the question, “What is God worth?” After listing several biblical miracles during the days of Moses, he writes: “In these and numerous other instances, it was powerfully (yet not convincingly, for them) demonstrated to the people what their God was worth. And that is the central issue of worship: What is God worth? In fact, the first primitive form of the word was worth-ship.”
God is worthy. He is worthy on my good days and my bad days. He is worth my trust. Giving it to Him will always result in fruitfulness. He has purchased my soul from the grave. Every opportunity to serve Him is worth putting stock into. Every word that proceeds from His mouth is golden. His worth demands my everything. Though the stock market may rise and fall—Christ has risen, and He has conquered the fall. Amen.
