Recovering the Image of God

I am in between two (three) realms of ministry context.  Being that I am born in Seoul, Korea, I have a scattered Korean identity to bind up and foster into my being, which I have departed from in my teens, in order to merge into what I thought to be, the American mainstream.  But even before that took place, sandwiched right in-between, I acquired what I call my third culture, the Latin American culture.  (Lived in Ecuador for three years in my childhood, the sweetest three years of my life!)

My cultural multiplicity certainly does complicate things quite a bit (in terms of identity) but it also affords a kind of wings that many may not fathom (ie. the Kingdom vision of the multicultural people of God, not unlike the sitz im leben of Paul's ministry).  In short, I am certainly blessed, challenged, and dumfounded, even elated.  After a decade of searching, for myself, and finding my soul, the Korean soul that I began with, I also found my American soul wrestling in there and coming of age.  If there be any ambition, was so that I would be, not only contained to my own little ethnic group, for I find that my sensibilities are decidedly more Global.

As the years pass, I find my outward gaze grow from continent to continent, past Europe to Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia and beyond into Africa and other significant nooks like Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, etc...  My eyes are on the world, unashamedly.

And while going this way unchecked for so many years, I got married and realize, some branches have to be pruned for any real fruits to be borne.  And the virtual sightseeing has my gaze sometimes veering from what matters most, my Lord, my Jesus, who gives me the WHY I gaze out in the first place.  If I don't gaze into my Lord, my outward gazing is tantamount "to gazing out into the abyss, that gazes back into me."

And during a major season of strife and reckoning, I come across this little Korean discipleship/inner healing material, that I find very helpful.  It is a book by Rev. Yoo the previous senior pastor of All Nations Church out in Lake View Terrace, California.  And it is titled:  Recovering the Image of God.  It is a Korean title readable in one sitting.

It told me, I have hurts and wounds.  Yeah, it sounds like a Christian cliché but the candor with which Rev. Yoo speaks, it was therapeutic.  While it is tempting to assign all our misgivings to some obscure wounds that we may have acquired in the past, if we are prone to anger, apathy, flare-ups, temper tantrums, they all reside in our insecure little corners that we had denied the all-so-necessary access and attention of God.  This is to say, we seldom go to God to address the very parts that only God can handle, not us- with all our little sophisticated psychologies or philosophies.

It is a short but an amazing book.  I wish it would be available to more people.  But my people, the Korean people need to heed to this.  Just how far have we veered from the precious image of God, in which we have been made to begin with?  And what have been constantly insisting upon its replacement?  I pray for myself, for my wife and children, and for my relatives including my parents, that they see the deep seethed flowers of pain that flourish unchecked, while we move on, trying to keep up with the Joneses in this world.

The thesis of the book is, (consistent with many other inner healing books) that the enemy forces in the spiritual realm capitalize on personal wounds that we are reluctant to bring to God and His family.  Should the church be an honest and therapeutic gathering, how much might people benefit from bringing their issues to the table without worries of rumors, backstabbing or condemnation?  Not to be harsh against the church, I find that many churches are yet to be equipped to become that gathering of healing.  And the solution that Rev. Yoo offers is, worship.  Not just any kind of worship, but the inner sanctuary worship of the holiest of holies.  A protracted, resolute one on one with God who knows our wounds better, than we know them ourselves.

It is a really good read if you read Korean, but if you don't, feel free to write to me, I would be more than happy to provide a synopsis of it in English, or Spanish too (although folks at Duranno publishing probably already have translations available).