This year's retreat theme was One Thing I Ask (Psalm 27:4). Click here to listen to the retreat sermon recordings. Read on for reflections on the retreat by David Choi...

Thoughts rush through my mind as I write this, all jumbled together and struggling for attention.  I will try to pull out just a few strands of thought to share.

I have two ideas that I would like to share.  One is a personal growth story, and the other is a general, "oh my, I think I just learned something about life" kind of story.  The latter comes first.

Love and Holiness.

Recently, I led a Sunday School class, where the topic was on humility.  The main thing that I wanted to convey with this topic was a necessary attribute that starts everything.  To be humble, one must take the proper attitude, a new perspective that changes how one sees life, people, everything.  Humility begins when you understand that you cannot be humble without putting yourself below others.  And humility doesn't mean you are equal with others; it means you are below other people.  And, if you are below others, you can serve them.  You cannot serve other people without this attitude.  There is no more critical element for our relationships with other people. 

If you are another's equal, you are assisting them - one peer to another.  If you are above them, then you are giving charity.  Both are nice, but neither assistance nor charity is service.  See the thing is, assistance is voluntary, and obviously charity is optional as well.  But service is demanded, it is a responsibility, and we are called to serve, not to assist or the give charity.

Watching Pastor Peter's video about Africa, and about the need that is critical across the world, I felt convicted as I saw that many other people were.  But there is more.  I saw a person in the video who used to go to this church, being used by God in a fruitful way.  And this made me feel ashamed.  The person that I knew was a person with whom I never had a good relationship, and instead of trying to be his brother, I stayed away from him.  There were many times when I helped him, but I never considered him to be a friend, and I never considered him to be above me in anything.  Of course, the point is that while I had given him considerable help, it was all charity from my point of view.  My time, my legal advice and help, my energy, money, everything.  There wasn't a single time that I had actually served him, and then he left NHF to find a better fit for him.  I had been relieved to be rid of the burden, and I had not expected to see him again.

And then, at the retreat I find that God uses a person such as him to make the lives of those hurting in Africa better, to bring the Word to such a forsaken place.  The video testimony was a conviction to me on so many levels.

This leads me to my personal growth story.

At the retreat, I learned so much about myself, particularly about my own failings.  Pastor Peter's sermons really touched me in so many ways, but more than anything else I learned that I am not alone.  Not alone in my struggles to deal with my past life, my struggles with my parents, my fears.  I truly believe that there is no more influential person in a young boy's life than his dad, and my relationship with my dad has always been based on fear.  Fear of getting physically punished, of being castigated verbally (which was just as bad and probably more emotionally hurtful than physical pain), of disappointing him.  I've lived with this fear for my entire life, and looking back now, I can see almost every major decision in my life based on this fear. 

So here it is.  God spoke to me for the first time at the retreat.  When I say "the first time," I mean that I heard Him actually talk to me, and it wasn't a thunderous voice or a burning bush.  As I've often shared with others (including at the retreat's small group session), I had never heard God speak to me.  In my Christian life, I've heard so many others talk about how God spoke to them, and I really envied them and wondered why I'd not heard the same.  Anyway, the words that I heard were, "David, don't be afraid."  What was amazing about this wasn't that I heard God speak, but that He spoke to ME.  But, I think maybe all this time, I'd not been listening.

See, Pastor Peter spoke God's message about the meaning of holiness.  We are called to be Holy, and to be holy we must serve others.  Interesting how that ties into being humble.  Interesting too how that ties into 1John's idea of love (our recent small group study).  That to be in love, we must love as God loves, and to love as God loves, we must love each other.  Of course, this also ties into what Jesus stated are the greatest commandments - to love our Lord with all our hearts, strength and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  When Jesus said that ALL the law and the prophets hang on these two things, He wasn't kidding.

Love, Holiness, Humility, the Greatest Commandments...they are all part of the same thing - who we are, what we do, how we view the world.

Initially, I felt that the "David, do not be afraid" had to do with just my relationship with my dad.  But there is a greater idea here.  "David, do not be afraid" has more importance than just me and my dad.  "David, do not be afraid" speaks to my fear of commitment, of giving myself completely to others because I have always been afraid of losing what I have, of being suckered by others or just being selfish and worried about what I have and what I want to have.

It was a good retreat.

In Christ,
David