I want many things.
I want children.
I want to build the kingdom of God.
I want.
I also don’t want many things.
I don’t want to distort God.
I don’t want to grow old without a chance to nurture my own children.
I don’t want.
I also don’t know what I want and what I don’t want.
I want to want what is good.
I don’t want to want what is not good.
With this jumble of wants, I want to want what God wants.
From about 2015, I have increasingly been convicted to serve what I called the “unofficial” church, for lack of better words. In retrospect, I believe I meant the “underground church.”
So much of our modern, free world churches are organizations/official/filled with professionals of all sorts filling important positions, but I started to lack the conviction that being involved in those was truly kingdom work (I’m speaking at a personal level—not saying everyone needs to walk down this path).
In 2015, when a dear friend of mine was hospitalized because they tried to commit suicide, there were not many people from our Christian circle of friends who could go visit them at the hospital because it was a Sunday. (In fact, I believe I was the only one who was able to go that Sunday). I felt something stir deep within me. I didn’t want to be the kind of Christian who is so busy with “Christian” activities that I wouldn’t have time to be there for my non-Christian friends. That’s the year I decided to purposefully step down from all “official ministries” (I had been a part of Children’s Ministry, Youth Ministry, the list goes on) and empty my weekends and time in general as much as I could so that I could be present with the marginalized at church or my non-believer friends.
Fast forward to 2020. I worked at my church as an administrator during the peak of the COVID pandemic. This meant the “official” church was working under all sorts of government restrictions, and it got to a point where we had to limit how many people could worship on Sundays. Limitations were placed for congregations that had even one person who did not get the COVID shot. For the first time, I wondered what the official church would do: would we start rejecting people who didn’t get the COVID shots to our worship gatherings? We never had to make a decision about this because restrictions slowly started lifting and we got back to the free natural rhythms of life, but it was disturbing to realize how unprepared I was in considering what I would do as a believer if the government started making rules that would restrict how the church could gather to worship God.
Working at my local church solidified my conviction and desire to serve the church in the organic, relational, outward-facing, and unseen things. I started to find vocabulary to these yearnings as I read <Preparing for the Underground Church>, a book that a dear church friend recommended. Below are some quotes from the book:
The underground church is the indissoluble structure of Christ’s work that is revealed when the public church can no longer sustain itself, either due to devastating attack or collapse from within.
Reading quotes like the one above increased my desire to build a sturdy faith that isn’t moved by outward circumstances so that when the public church collapses, I will still be standing firm in faith along with the underground church. (As you continue to read the quotes from this book, you will notice that underground church doesn’t simply mean “persecuted church.”)
The underground church does not owe its existence to persecution at all. Persecution only reveals the underground church; it cannot create it.
John 12:24 says, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone’ but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Thus, it is the underground church not because it is in hiding but because, like a seed planted in the ground, it is that part of the church which has already died to the world. Because it has already died to the world, it is impervious to the world’s attacks.
To prepare for the underground church means to prepare to be fully Christian in the full glare of day when every vestige of honor has been stripped from us by the world and there is nothing to clothe our nakedness but the Lord’s own glory.
I’ve been trying to practice doing good deeds in the most secretive way possible and forgetting anything good I did (not keeping a tab on it). In a culture that tries to recognize good deeds all the time (I’m very much guilty of doing this to myself and others), it’s truly counterintuitive and hard to do.
This is a chart derived from an in-depth look at the difference between public and underground church in response to persecution:
| PUBLIC CHURCH: like public organization | UNDERGROUND CHURCH: disciplined love of Christ and theology of suffering love |
| Protects interests, assets, rights, way of life, beliefs | Already died; does not seek to defend or preserve itself |
| Court cases, protests, attempts and public persuasion | Free to serve only the Lord |
| Wins some skirmishes, loses others, each strengthening opposition | Solely focused on hearing and doing the whole Word of God |
| Starts to turn on itself—justifying compromise with enemies and denouncing segments that refuse to do the same | Stewards theological heritage so that nothing is added nor neglected |
| Starts to spend itself (financially, physically, spiritually) as it seeks to save its own life | Doesn’t entrust itself to the world because it knows the world’s heart |
| Theology and practice become distorted by defending itself and its practices, drawing Christianity carelessly around itself like a blanket in the process so that the faith serves the church | Carries out work in full awareness of the opposition of the world and strategizes accordingly |
| Pays price (joyfully) for not compromising with the world | |
| Knows that what is required is not to die defending the faith but to die practicing it | |
| Has learned that it is not called to defend buildings, denominations, assets, ways of life, or its own interests |
“Ultimately, Satan’s strategy would be actualized even more fully in the realm of personal identity, which would come to drive the politics and the economics of the free world in ways that few had foreseen or could imagine. It would be through that realm, buttressed not only by politics and economics but also by science, education, entertainment, and even spirituality, that “forbidding to forbid” would come to be hailed as the enlightened ethic of the free world.”
Forbidding to forbid. That does seem to be the free world’s mantra. It has seeped into the way that we think about personal identity—especially sexual identity. It has become such a major part of the way we identify ourselves that it plays a huge part in hiring or firing someone, getting that scholarship or not, being popular or not, the list goes on. People in the free world are forbidden to disagree, for example, with the trans ideology. Not supporting it translates to “hating” the trans community. People are forbidden to restrict sexual content because it translates to being prudish and close-minded.
“As John Rist puts it, human history is always a “conflict between a monotheistic God and a race of men inclined to will their absolute autonomy.” Sex either humbly and faithfully serves God’s purposes or it accords humans the most arrogant, virulent autonomy.”
Pedophilia, animism, polyamorous relationships, and so much more is coming to the surface as the free world is using sex arrogantly and autonomously. Outside of God, no human being or created being can function well because by definition none of us can exist without Him. Any step away from Him means it will be a distortion of what He meant it to be.
Here are some paraphrased snippets of a long quote/idea: Sex’s alliance with science and atheism was its declaration of independence. As science came to be defined as “empirically verifiable facts” (and no longer as a teleological cause), it gave rise to the philosophy of scientism: “nothing exists apart from empirically verifiable facts.” When sex is studied this way…sex can’t be for procreation or for anything. When science examines sex in this way, as Augusto del Noce notes with concern, “all that is left is vital energy.” Any restraint on that vital energy must be regarded as “repressive.”
The free world is fighting hard to define anything that doesn’t allow the “vital energy” of sex to be used in all sorts of depraved ways as “repressive.” Because identity has been attached to sex or sexual “preferences,” the Church in the free world struggles on taking any kind of stance on such matters in fear it will be perceived as unloving and judgmental. And yet the Church is seen as the enemy of the sexual revolution simply by its existence. They are the sexual oppressors who are trying to impose ideas of modesty, purity, and restraint upon humans’ “vital energies.”
It’s becoming harder and harder for the church to argue against the sexual revolution because a large part of their way of thinking has seeped into our own “contemporary understanding of Christian marriage.” Both LGBTQ+ marriages and Christian marriages are currently based on “spiritual companionship, mutual fulfilment, and romantic love. But as Stephen Adubato notes, it is not the romance in marriage that mirrors the relationship between Christ and the church but rather the martyrdom.”
So, “before we seek to teach anyone anything about sex, before we protest the sinful self-creativity of others, we ourselves must repent, submitting our own self-created lives back to God for his redemptive work while learning what…Christian tradition has always maintained about these things.”
As I write these things, I am writing it mostly in self-repentance. There is so much in me and the church that is rotten and yet I continue to see God’s mercies pouring over us again and again. The Groom is calling the Bride to submit to Him. Are we listening to Him? Are we sitting at His feet? Or are we too busy being “authentic” and building up our own kingdoms?
**Every quote in this blog is from the books <Preparing for the Underground Church> and <Planting the Underground Church>.
Some years ago, someone kept telling my cousin she looked quite young for her age as a compliment. She replied, “Yes, sure, but my eggs are dying.”
And whenever my girl friends try to console me about my unfulfilled desire to be married by telling me, “There’s time” or “You look like you’re in your 20’s,” I always reply, “Yeah, but my eggs are dying.” And we half laugh/half are sad about it (웃픔).
I may look younger than my 34-going-on-35 years of age…
but every day that passes by,
my eggs are dying…
but…
every day that passes by is…
a day closer to seeing Jesus face to face.
Boom.
This realization came as I was meditating on God’s Word one random morning. And it’s been comforting my soul the deepest lately. The fact that each day that I wake up and more of my eggs will inevitably die (ho hum) because I’m tied down to this physical realm will not change. But also the fact that each day that I wake up, I’m one step closer to seeing my Savior, the Head of the Body face to face–to receive the fullness of His love without the sin that so easily entangles distorting anything–will not change either. The one may represent temporarily unfulfilled desires, but the latter represents a sure hope I have for all eternity.
So, my eggs may be dying, but I’m also joyful knowing every day that passes by is one day closer to seeing Jesus face to face.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I’ve had millions of questions about the church and the way we do church in the modern free world. There’s been so much of it that I haven’t been able to separate from the ways of the world that I continue to ask myself, “What IS the church?!” I have often asked, in relation to that question, “Am I even a Christian? Are we living as Christians?”
This will be my first written attempt to address these questions—to bring some order, hopefully, to the questions I’ve had. I will be quoting from a series of books written by Richard Wurmbrand, Eric Foley, and Merv Knight on the underground church because these books gave a lot of vocabulary to the questions I’ve had about the church. Using quotes from the books and mixing my own comments and thoughts will hopefully weave a more coherent narrative of what are my actual questions about the church.
“Christians in the free world simply can’t imagine an opponent motivated and capable of systematically persecuting all of them…put great faith in their governments…they are confident that their country’s law and culture will protect them from losing the right to believe and freely practice their faith… Christians in the free world also have great faith in the power of their churches…it is usually very influential, wealthy, educated, and well-connected internationally.”
This is exactly the attitude that is prevalent and what I believe weakens our faith. We put too much faith in our “country’s law and culture” and fail to see that any government—whether communist, socialist, democratic, etc.—that is not submitting under Christ’s leadership and authority is “an opponent motivated and capable of systematically persecuting all of them.” People think it’s better to be a Christian in the free world, but I would only go so far as say it’s more physically comfortable but infinitely more challenging to “beat my body” to not go with the flow of the free world and its selfish spirit.
“The question is not where it is more pleasant for us to live (in a communist or capitalist society) but where it is more pleasant for God to live, where he finds himself welcomed… [God] is equally reviled in North and South Korea “because he is no more the God of the sexual revolution than he is the God of the communist revolution.”
Where is it pleasant for God to live? Where does he find himself welcomed? Does he feel welcomed in our churches? our Sunday services?
I love my church, but when I enter our Sunday service, I often feel as though it is more about people than it is about worshiping God. There’s many practical reasons for it: we rent space from another church so we are busy setting up sound/lights/everything often to the last minute, which creates a bustling sort of vibe; busy metropolitan Christians will find Sunday before and after service the only time they can socialize with other believers, so a lot of vibrant conversations will be happening inside the sanctuary even when the service has started; we always try to make it friendly for any “visitors” or “new-comers,” as do most churches that want to be seen as welcoming.
I’m not saying all these things are bad, but I started to wonder, ‘Wasn’t Sunday Service meant to be the one time a week that we gather as a congregation to worship God together? How come it feels more like it’s about us getting our fill of what we think we need or of doing things the right way in terms of technicality?’ I’m not saying we don’t worship God on Sundays. We do. But I wonder if it’s at the front and center of our hearts and minds—because our actions do not seem to reflect that. If anyone was to see it from the outside, I would say our priorities look like we are making sure things go smoothly and to make new people feel welcome. And I don’t think this is necessarily something specific to our church—I think churches in the free world are usually modeled somewhat like this (maybe not to the tee with the examples I provided, but I hope you get the gist of what I’m saying).
Speaking on the early church, “Before individuals were invited to worship, congregational leaders would visit and talk about their lives and why they follow Christ.” And this is the norm in underground churches as well.
“In an underground church, there’s no need to grow large in order to cover a pastor’s salary or pay for a building. So instead of begging people to come, we can treat participation as a precious privilege.”
This is what I think many of our modern, free churches lack: the sense that participating in the worship of our living God is a precious privilege. Right now, every Sunday service is a mix of lukewarm, non-believers, believers, and everything in between. Reading the quotes above made me wonder, ‘Is there any modern Christian gathering where I have ever worshiped alongside people that I knew were all in for Christ?’ and I think it’s always a mix with committed/not committed people in any “worship” gathering. It’s weird if you think about it, because if we were to go to someone’s birthday party, we would all go in with the assumption we are going to celebrate this person and that we are all intimately connected to this person to the degree that we got the party invitation. Everything that day and at that time would rightly revolve around the birthday boy. But why is that not the case when we “gather to worship God?”
I’ve been trying to consider these congregational gatherings as a precious privilege and trying to go early if possible to sit and pray and set my heart, mind, and body in a position of worship towards God. So far, that’s all I feel in my power to do to go against the current.
If anyone has any insight on any of this, please feel more than welcome to share. This will be the first installment of many more blogs to come. This is only scratching the surface of the many things that have been roaming in my head about church.
**Every quote is from the books <Preparing for the Underground Church> and <Planting the Underground Church>
The more I allow God into every nook and cranny of my soul, the more joy I experience. It’s been such an adventure allowing God to take the lead and teach me His ways. In doing this, I started to value the things not seen over the things seen and the results have been growth and joy on all sides.
I used to exert myself greatly to “love” and “serve” when all God was asking me to do was to “die” to self. That means to 힘 빼 (let go)–not 힘 줘 (strain). A dead person cannot 힘 줘 ㅋㅋㅋ
One of my close friends visited me from the States not long ago. She has known me in my worst and stuck it out as a faithful friend. As we were hanging out, she joyfully commented on how much “softer” I had gotten. Yes, God has softened me up a lot and I’m sure He will continue to do so, because I know that without Him, I would be as rough as… a porcupine.
It’s things like these that add to the deep-seeded joy I feel in this season of life. Knowing that the Holy Spirit has been breathing life into me–molding me to be who I was meant to be in Christ.
I used to think of joy as a concept rather than a reality. And I remember that the word “joy” kept popping up during my hardest and most depressing season in life (back in 2017-2018). I wondered what God meant by it, and at that time, two things became apparent: one, I was invited to explore the word “pleasure” in Christ, and two, I felt like I had to pause on asking, “What is your will, God?” Both things were so foreign to me that it took years to register what it meant, but now I understand why God brought those two thoughts in mind.
God was trying to help me get out of the utalitarian view I had of Him, His will, and His kingdom. He wiped a large chunk of this clean through an image that still remains fresh in my mind. I was at Swiss L’Abri (it’s a Christian center that calls itself a shelter for questions) and I was sunbathing at a local pool on one of our free days. I was questioning why I was here. I felt so spoiled. Why did I have so many questions? Why couldn’t I just toughen up and get over my depression? There was so much to do for God’s kingdom! The last thing God needs is a weakling like me. While such thoughts were roaming in my head, I was people-watching. There were children running around on scooters nearby. One of them fell from one of the ramps. A worker came to him to see whether he was okay. He seemed a little bruised, but he could walk. The worker walked with the child to find his mother. The child limped a bit, but otherwise seemed fine. But the moment the child saw his mother, he started to cry loudly and ask for a hug as he sobbingly explained everything that happened. In seeing this unfold, I felt like God was telling me that it’s okay for me to be like that child with Him. Sure, I wasn’t dealing with extreme persecution, hunger, or poverty like some Christians out there, and my questions about life were not life-or-death issues, but God wanted me to go to Him with the same trust that child went to his mother. He could have sucked it up, but when he saw his mother, he knew he could express his emotions as they were. Within the child’s realm of understanding, this was the good and proper thing to do. After this, I slowly saw myself shifting from a utalitarian view towards one of learning to enjoy God.
And the inevitable fruit of enjoying God is joy.
“Whatever the agency, let children be assured that the work is the work of God, to be accomplished in the strength of God, according to the laws of God: that it is our part to make ourselves acquainted with the laws we would work out, and that, having done all, we wait for the inspiration of the divine life, even as the diligent farmer waits upon sunshine and shower.”
– Excerpt from <Parents and Children> by Charlotte Mason
“God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.”
“By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”
– Excerpts from <Celebration of Discipline> by Richard J. Foster
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. – 1 Cor. 15:10
The deeper our understanding of God’s grace goes, the deeper we go into diligence, into the working out of spiritual disciplines, into working harder. We do this not because we are better than others nor because we want to gain God’s approval. We do this because God’s grace compels the sinner to respond to such amazing love in what we can: simple and humble faith and obedience.
Often times I am appalled at how little I seem to understand God’s grace when I harbor grumpiness, lust, greed, pride, or ‘how could they do that?!’ thoughts. And that makes God’s continuous forgiveness and kindness all the more compelling. The more I receive, the more I am bound to give. And oh, have I received much from my Abba Father. And I continue to receive so much.
I’ve been reading the passages in Mark that talk about Jesus’ crucifixion as part of my freelance work. The more I read those passages, the more I am struck with how humiliating and unfair everything–from the verbal and physical abuse to the spiritual-realm-level battles that must have gone inside Jesus–was. When I see glimpses of this pain, it makes me never ever want to sin again. The price Jesus paid is the greatest that could ever have been paid. I don’t want to grieve the Father, the Holy Spirit, nor my Savior Jesus in going back to drink poisoned water. How can I do this?
Be like a diligent farmer. While the farmer cannot provide sunshine and shower at his beck and call, he can work the land, plant seeds, take the weeds out. Diligently wait upon God in the quiet, still place. Show up at the place where I can receive His grace.
“Are we doing God’s will? We do not mean, Are we doing God’s work?—preaching or teaching, or collecting money—but God’s will. A man may think he is doing God’s work, when he is not even doing God’s will. … Are we working out our common every-day life on the great lines of God’s will?”
– Excerpt from < The Greatest Thing in the World> by Henry Drummond
My goal in life has shifted from being a background character (I liked to be unnoticeable in the shadow of my charismatic family) to do great educational reforms (I love Finnish education) to doing awesome Kingdom of God work (I wanted to be super duper useful like Paul was) to simply doing God’s will.
For the longest time, I prayed, “Your will be done” with fear and hesitation because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted His will to be done. What if God would force me to marry someone I didn’t want? What if I would be forced to do great works that I didn’t want to do? What if… All based on my distorted views on God.
And from about 2018, I felt as though God was prodding me to stop asking about His “will” and learn to take pleasure in Him. In retrospect, it was an invitation to get to know Him and His real character. As I’ve been getting to know and enjoy the mundane, daily blessings He gives, I’ve slowly been learning to trust Him.
Now, I’m getting excited to ask God, “What’s Your will today? I want to walk with You today, now, this day that you’ve chosen to give me new grace by allowing me to breathe, move, think.” Each day is a new chance to do God’s will.
The KJV version of John 4:34 apparently says, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.” And this hit home as I’ve been learning to enjoy asking about His will. It will take trial and error to discern what is truly His will or not, but knowing His patient, loving, and merciful character, I cannot help but boldly desire to know more of Him and His good and pleasing will.
I have tried and failed to describe this as well as Chesterton does on <Orthodoxy> so here goes a direct quote that describes truth as a paradox by comparing the circle vs. the cross:
“The circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”
A spiritual director…
I have met very few people in life that fit this bill and I learned so much from them. It wasn’t their preaching and teaching only, but how they quietly and peacefully shone Christ in the most difficult circumstances, how they asked forgiveness humbly for things that were not even their fault, for not giving in to whims that were not according to God’s Word.
I saw how it cost them greatly to uphold God’s law above man’s demands and I saw how they held no judgment against those who harmed them. And I keep striving to be such a woman myself. Not because I think I am smart or strong enough, but because Jesus is living in me, so how can I not desire to reflect Him as beautifully as He has been reflected to me by others?
A closer look into Eli's special thoughts 