• 140 years ago, missionaries came to this land with the Gospel, together with the light of education, medical care, and human rights, planting hope in a despairing Chosun. Now, we are called to inherit that legacy and to shine the light of hope as God’s people in the midst of today’s broken reality.

1) Praise: Yeram Worship with Holy Spirit Korea 300 Choir

• Sing along with the English lyrics on the screen.

2) Sermon: Pastor Jongnam Lee (Chusan Church)

① Scripture: Acts 11:19-21

19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews.

20. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.

21. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

② Title: Hope Becomes a Miracle

Hello, nice to meet you. I am Pastor Jongnam Lee from Chusan Church, and I am so joyful to be here together at the Korea Holy Spirit Youth Conference with Asia. Because I know how important this gathering is, I have been praying, expecting, and preparing for it for a long time. Whenever I stand in a place like this conference, I hold on to this one thing: I believe that the living God will bring people to life through me, though I am lacking. Shall we greet each other together? God will bring us to life.

When it becomes vacation time or the holiday season, the disciples of faith whom I once guided—those who left their hometowns and now live away from home—come to visit me. With these friends, not only did we worship together, but we also went on overseas and domestic mission trips, where we experienced amazing grace. I believed these young people would live their lives changing the world. I thought they would live as God’s people who bring an extraordinary influence. But most of them say this to me: “Pastor, I’m sorry. I barely manage to attend Sunday service. Pastor, I am not living my life of faith properly.”

As I kept experiencing such things, my heart began to break down. Did I teach something wrong? Is there a problem with me? We had shared in the great works of God that He poured out, and they had clearly made decisions to live as God’s people. Then what went wrong?

Then, I began to read the Bible again. As I was reading the Gospel of John, the words of chapter 6 came alive to me once more.

When we think of John chapter 6, all of us immediately remember the miracle of the five loaves and two fish. But in fact, we must pay closer attention to the verses that follow. Right after that miracle, we see that the great crowd who had experienced the miracle of the five loaves and two fish gathered again the very next day in the same place. But Jesus was not there anymore. By that time, Jesus and His disciples had already gone across to the other side of the lake.

And then Jesus spoke to the crowd who had gathered. In John 6:26, He made clear that these people did not gather because they truly desired to follow Him. They came only to fill another hunger, only hoping for another miracle of the five loaves and two fish.

And what happened to this large crowd in the end? The Bible says in John 6:66, that although they had experienced such a great work, they eventually turned back and no longer followed Him. The Scripture records them simply as “the crowd.” However, though the crowd betrayed and abandoned Jesus, the ones who continued to live following Him to the very end, holding on to the calling to be witnesses, are recorded in the Bible as “disciples.”

In Pastor Kyle Idleman’s book Not a Fan, he divides those who follow Jesus into two groups: fans and disciples.

Both fans and disciples come before Jesus and listen to His words. Both of them equally experience the miracle of the five loaves and two fish in the same place. But from there, depending on how they follow Jesus, they are separated into either fans or disciples.

A fan only tries to get something from Jesus. A fan has no interest in Jesus’ teaching, nor in deep fellowship with Him. They only desire things like the miracle of the five loaves and two fish through Jesus.

I have a son who is now a 24–year–old college student.

When he was in elementary school, he liked the soccer player Messi. For my son, Messi was like the Lord. He wore a Messi uniform every single day when he went to school.

Even though the church was right next door, I never once saw him go there to pray. But I saw him look at Messi’s picture hanging in his room and meditate before he left. For my son, Messi was the Lord.

But when he entered middle school, his spiritual eyes were opened in a new way. He started to like girl idols.

Now, whenever he wanted me to buy him a Messi uniform, he would suddenly become the most filial son. He would massage my shoulders, and he would even massage my feet that had athlete’s foot. But once he got the uniform he wanted, he wouldn’t even look at me.

How have you treated Jesus? When you need the works of the five loaves and two fish in your life, you seek Jesus so eagerly. But once you get what you want, even if Jesus calls you again and again, you do not answer. Are you now living only as part of the crowd who just tries to gain something through Jesus?

Or are you living as a witness, as a disciple—holding on to the grace and the mission Jesus has given you, proclaiming it, and living it out?

While preparing a message one day, I was reading this week’s theme verse, Acts 1:8, and I came to a surprising realization. Although I had seen it, heard it, and even memorized it countless times before, I discovered an amazing secret in this verse. It was the order. Through this word, I came to understand how the expansion of the gospel takes place on this earth. (Acts 1:8) Those who believe in Jesus and are saved first receive the power of the Holy Spirit. And then they are commanded to begin in Jerusalem, move throughout all Judea, then to Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth, carrying out their mission as witnesses of the gospel.

And the disciples who had received the Holy Spirit carried out this mission of being witnesses. The gospel they preached transformed countless lives, and the gospel continued to spread. But then, the early church faced tremendous persecution. (Acts 11:19) Stephen was martyred, and because of this, many believers were scattered. Yet even as they were scattered, there was one thing they did well: they did not abandon their mission as witnesses. However, here a problem arises. They were preaching only to the Jews. Jesus had clearly commanded that the gospel was to be preached not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles—to all people. But because of their prejudice against the Gentiles, they shared the gospel only with the Jews. Up to this point, nothing new was happening.

In Daejeon, there is a famous bakery called Seong-00. I really love the fried soboro bread from that bakery. One time, I mentioned to a deaconess that this bread was delicious, and she told her son, who lives in Daejeon, to buy some. So on Sunday, right after the service ended, she came out. I thought she was saying how much she had been blessed by the sermon, but instead, she said, “Yesterday I ate that bread, and it was so delicious!” You only know it when you taste it. But the reason she was able to taste it and know how good it was, was because I had shared with her just how delicious it is.

The gospel of the Lord has brought us to salvation, and although we are living under this amazing grace, if we do not share this grace with anyone and only keep it to ourselves, then it is just like when the gospel was preached only to the Jews— we are limiting the power of the gospel within ourselves. That is why the gospel must be shared through us who first believed. That is when history begins to happen. Finally, the gospel goes beyond the Jews and is preached also to the Gentiles. And we must see what happens at that time.

Acts 11:20—Some of the men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began to speak also to the Greeks, that is, to the Gentiles who were not Jews, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. And what happened then?

Acts 11:21—When the gospel was preached to the Gentiles according to the Lord’s will, the hand of the Lord was with them. And a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Friends, the scattered believers were simply obeying the Lord’s command to preach the gospel. And it was in that moment that the hand of the Lord was with them, and they witnessed His mighty works.

We must clearly understand how God brings life. We always want our surroundings to change first, and we want the people around us to be different.

So we complain to God, asking, “Why doesn’t my environment change? Why are the people around me always like this?” But God does not first look at our surroundings—He first fixes His eyes on us. And then He changes us. He calls us and gives us a mission. And when we obey that word and mission at the place of calling, the hand of the Lord is with us, and through us, He accomplishes the work of transforming those around us.

So I took this problem and went into the place of prayer to hear the voice of God. And the voice God spoke to me was this: through this country church, He would reveal that He is the living God. I believed this. And I proclaimed it to the congregation on Sunday: “From now on, this church will be a church that reveals the living God.” And although many things happened afterward, among them, God led us to begin the ministry of bringing the next generation to life.

On weekends, we would bring in girls we met on the streets and have them join us for worship. And we also came to meet children living in the countryside. Most of them were children in need of care. Once, I visited the home of a brother and sister. Their parents had divorced, the father had left, and their grandmother had been raising them. But recently, their grandmother had passed away, leaving the children all alone. So we brought them into our home. And these children became our own sons and daughters. We lived together in the parsonage with these children—some for months, some for years—and during that time, they came to encounter God.

And during worship, the Word began to take root in their hearts. As we prayed together, the grace of the Holy Spirit came upon the children—tongues were released, visions were seen, and amazing things began to happen. God gave them a calling: that through them, the gospel would be witnessed. So we began to gather the nearby churches and the next generation, holding retreats and revival meetings, continuing in the ministry of raising up the next generation. The amazing thing was this: the very same grace that fell on the children in our home also came upon the children who attended the gatherings. When they returned to their schools, they began prayer meetings. In middle schools and high schools, students gathered every day to worship passionately. Some of them even sought out classmates who were isolated or bullied, choosing to sit with them at lunch. And as a result, bullying began to disappear from their schools. (Photo 2)

But as the years went by, those children grew up and became young adults, and then they all moved away to other cities. And in the countryside, no more children were being born. With no children, the elementary school, the middle school, and even the high school all closed down. Then, when COVID came, our church’s next-generation ministry came to a halt. For a while, I was discouraged. I thought, “This was such a precious ministry that God had given to our church—is it going to end here?” But then, when I went to lead a youth revival meeting, God made something very clear to me.

And with that answer, I came back to the church and prayed together with the congregation. We did not do it half-heartedly. We prayed in a 24-hour relay, in the early mornings, and in the evenings. Then something began to happen: the young people who had once left for other places started to return to the countryside. They came back, started farming, found jobs, and little by little their number increased. And then they began to get married. Even though there had been no children in the countryside, children began to be born. (Photo 3) At the beginning of last year, we restarted the children’s worship service with just two kids. And God has continued to send young families to us. Just a few weeks ago, we successfully finished our Vacation Bible School. (Photo 4)

(Photo 5) The title of this artwork is Bull’s Head. It was created by Picasso. He made this piece out of a discarded bicycle seat and handlebars. But the value of this artwork is estimated at about 30 billion won. If we were to take a thrown-away bicycle and try to make something, no one would pay attention. But because it was in Picasso’s hands, what was worthless became something of incredible value. In the same way, though we are weak and lacking, when our lives as witnesses are held in the Lord’s hands, the work of revival continues to happen even now.

The believers in the early church who were scattered because of persecution must have felt as if they had been abandoned. But there was one thing they did not let go of: the gospel of the Lord. And when they obeyed the Lord’s command and proclaimed the gospel, not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles, just as He had said, a powerful work of the gospel took place with the Lord’s hand upon them.

These days, we hear the word crisis so often—crisis of the church, crisis of the next generation—always followed by negative talk. But in truth, all these voices are simply what the world and people are saying. In this age of crisis, what we must do is listen to what the Lord is speaking to us. When we hold on to that word of response from Him and faithfully carry out our mission as His witnesses, the work of the Lord’s hand continues even now.

Today, in many places, we are witnessing the history of revival come alive again.

As I have traveled to many churches and met with the next generation, I have heard so many heartbreaking stories: the painful situations churches have faced after COVID, the sorrow of seeing the next generation leaving the church in large numbers, and the increasing difficulty of sharing the gospel. But there is something I have clearly seen: the grace of the Lord is still being poured out without change. The same grace that came upon me when I first met the Lord is still being poured out in many places today. And that grace is restoring the next generation and sending them back into the calling of being the Lord’s witnesses. Through these restored witnesses, I have seen with my own eyes how the Lord is still saving countless souls even now.

Today’s gathering must not end here. Through you who have been brought to life, God’s work of bringing others to life must continue. It is not about what we can accomplish. When we take up the calling of being His witnesses, God will use us—who have been made alive—as His channels, and through His hand working with us, lives will be saved. So let us look forward to the mighty works of God that He will do to bring life! Let us expect revival to come—through us, to our local communities, to our nation of Korea, and to the nations of the world.

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3) Corporate Prayer