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The most vivid memories of my adolescence comprise scenes of my mom crying in the kitchen or bedroom. During my middle school and high school years, money was an ever-pressing concern for my family. As a result, one of the very first “life goals” that I realized was to become financially successful so that my family could live comfortably and finally stop worrying about our next bills.

In response to these early financial pressures, money began to distort the way I saw my education as well. Growing up, I tried my best in school because it was how I could live up to my parent’s expectations. However, as I grew older, I naturally became more aware of the necessity of money and how it drives and shapes the world around us. As I grew wiser to our hyper-materialistic reality, academic achievement became a means for achieving my life goal of monetary success. Doing well in school meant getting into a good college, which would eventually lead to a well-paying career.

With this mindset, throughout my high school years, college admissions became the most important goal in my life. I saw going to a good school as a means of financial mobility for my family. Going to a competitive high school only exacerbated this high-pressure, high-stakes mentality. I went into senior of high school with immense expectations about my college admissions process.

During this final year of high school, one of my close friends “A” plagiarized my college application materials. To make matters worse, A ended up being admitted to all five of my top choice programs… whereas I was flatly rejected. Unsurprisingly, this incident became a major source of resentment and bitterness. It was the first time in my life that I developed such an intensely acrid feeling of grievance towards another person — as well as God.

At this point of my adolescence, my family had long stopped going to church. I called myself Christian and knew the basic doctrines, but in reality, I was worshipping the golden idols of money and success. But even in my brokenness, I knew that I could not continue to live in my bitterness towards the world and the person who had wronged me. It was then that I decided to start to attend church for the first time in 8 years with the hope of learning forgiveness.

It was in the dusty sanctuary of a small Korean church that I experienced the radical love of God. At first, when I started to attend this church’s Sunday service, I was extremely weirded out by the other high school students who would sob in response to worship songs and subsequently lay their hands upon me to pray for me. But during my fourth or fifth Sunday service, one of the other students laid his hands on me during worship and started to pray for me. I remember that his hand felt extremely hot and my heart started to tremble. Was this God? Or just the sweaty palm of another teenage boy?

Throughout the following weeks, I began to experience and believe that I was loved by God. I cannot pinpoint an exact time or memory in which I experienced my “aha!” moment, but in that warm spring season of my senior year, I came to understand that God loved me. It was this love that covered over the innumerable hurts and pains that I had experienced in my life up until that moment. It was a love that was worth giving up my life for. As a response, I finally began to forgive A and decided to follow Jesus.

Originally, I looked to my education and career as my family’s salvation. What I encountered was the true salvation found in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

Since then, God has radically reshaped my life and has moved in so many powerful ways. He has freed me from my selfish, obsessive ambition by showing me that there is a greater purpose in following His calling for me. When I despaired in my depression, God held me as I found comfort in the cross—knowing that Jesus’s sacrifice paved a perfectly redemptive future for me in heaven. When my dad was stuck in the ER or when he struggled with a possible cancer diagnosis, God gave me peace by reminding me that our life does not end here on earth. Throughout my life, God has shown me that He has loved me from my past to my present, and will continue to love me for the rest of eternity.

Today, I am still a broken, woefully imperfect sinner. Too many times have I chosen sin over righteousness. On my own, I am still so inadequate and insufficient. Yet, I can boldly proclaim that Jesus Christ is my savior, and that my identity is no longer defined by my transgressions, but by the overwhelming love of God. I continue to be sanctified and changed by Him with every passing day. With utmost hope, I have set my eyes upon the glorious redemption that God has promised for His children.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

1 Peter 2:24

One afternoon, I was washing a bowl of beansprouts as part of preparing to cook a hearty soup. The way you wash beansprouts is similar to how you wash rice: you put them into a large bowl and rinse them with water. The key to this process is repetition. You need to flush the beansprouts with at least two (probably three) bowls of clean water in order to ensure that they are clean. No matter how hard you try, the beansprouts will never be clean with only one rinse.

The mechanism by which these beansprouts become clean is actually a process of transferring dirt from these roots to the surrounding water. The first time around, even with the most vigorous of rinses, they will never be completely clean because the surrounding water will remain dirty. Because the water has become saturated with grime, no more dirt can be transferred to the water. In order to truly clean the vegetables, you need to empty its bowl and surround them with a fresh, clean volume of water. Only then, will the beansprouts be clean.

As I was washing these vegetables, I couldn’t help but think about how our hearts are like these bowls of beansprouts. As we live our imperfect lives, our hearts become darkened and stained by sin. I think of our initial struggle as that first bowl of dirty water. No matter how hard we struggle by our human selves, we cannot rid ourselves of this sinfulness. But if we invite God by emptying our hearts, then the Holy Spirit will cleanse our hearts. Emptying means that we must lay down everything—our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our weaknesses, our wretched sin—in front of the throne of grace. For me, it was a prayer to God with a desperate heart that confessed that I am a broken, insufficient sinner who needs Jesus. Our vessels must be empty to be filled anew with what is righteous and good. When we surrender to God as we repent, He restores us.

I think of this past season of life as a period in which my cup was emptied so that it may be filled with the grandeur and glory of God. And finally, I am starting to see that God is granting me a new longing for Him over my deceitful desires.

“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” 1 Corinthians 10:21

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” Matthew 23:25

“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” Psalm 116:13

For me, it has been difficult to connect my identity as a Christian with my career as a quant trader. Unlike my previous workplaces, there are no Christian affinity groups or weekly prayer meetings. I have yet to encounter a fellow believer in my line of work. Even before the pandemic, people tended to separate their work and personal lives, so there was little fraternization outside of the walls of my office. Remote work has only strengthened these intersocial barriers.

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Initially, I had worked through a great battle in my heart to come to trust God regardless of the outcome. A few weeks prior, I had finally found the peace and obedience I was seeking. However, I couldn’t help but feel so much joy and relief when I heard this piece of news.

My prayer is that even though God has protected my dad in this moment, I would be able to trust Him even more fully and completely when faced with further challenges and tribulations in the future. Thank you God for your providence and guidance. And thank you all for your continued prayers.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Colossians‬ ‭3:16‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I am so thankful that my PCR test result came back negative today!!! God has kept the door open to Panama. I’m doing the last bits of preparation for the trip and am so excited to witness what He will do in Panama.

I also wanted to share three prayer requests:

• For my friends on this trip to come to know the love and grace of Christ which overcomes all evil

• That God would renew in me a pure heart which yearns for Him alone

• If it would be His will, that God would protect my dad against cancer; my dad’s diagnostic MRI is scheduled for the week I return. Regardless of the outcome, I am praying that my family would not despair but trust and sincerely depend on God.

This will probably be my last update until I leave — I will update you after I return.

Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he satisfies the longing soul,
    and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

Psalm 107:8-9

Thank you so much for running with me on this journey and for strengthening me with your prayers. I have been so blessed by your encouragements and responses. In case you missed any past emails, I previously shared about:

• my testimony from an Uber ride

• processing anxiety about my dad’s health.

I originally started this newsletter because God convicted me to share my testimonies leading up to and after my mission trip to Panama. The time has come, and I will be be embarking on a flight to this Central American country.

To be honest, when I first decided to go on this missions trip, I was filled with anxiety and uncertainty about my safety and health. This was worsened by the fact that the location that we are going to has gained notoriety due to its precarious environmental conditions and criminal activity.

My friends know me as someone who is very careful and cautious about his health (especially after the COVID-19 pandemic). One of my work colleagues asked me why I would risk my comforts and safety to go to the jungles of Panama — to a region that is proximal to one of the most hazardous places in the world.

There is but one answer. I have been overwhelmingly convicted by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:4-8

As I have continued preparing for this trip, both prayerfully and materially, my initial fear has mostly been replaced with excitement. I am so excited to witness the work that God will do in Panama and ask for your continued prayers.

I also wanted to share a specific prayer request — over the weekend, my brother and I both became sick. We rapid-tested negative for COVID, but are waiting on results from the more conclusive PCR test. I am hoping and praying that God would keep the door to Panama open.

In Christ,

J.

In this period of preparing for my mission trip to Panama, I learned that my dad received an abnormal test result which indicated a 1/4 chance of cancer. Unsurprisingly, my heart was immediately wracked by anxiety. So I did what any other worrywart-son would do: I scoured the vast archives of Google and WebMD.

I looked into whether certain kinds of exercise could help or worsen my dad’s potential condition. After researching the most beneficial antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables, I rushed to the grocery store and then returned to my parents’s house with several bags of bright red and orange produce (such fruits are rich in lycopene).

But despite all of my persistent efforts, my anxiety would not recede.

What’s ironic is that a day prior to hearing this news, I was at a bible study where I shared a simple prayer request: for God to help me to submit to His plans, even if they were not what I wanted. It felt like the ultimate irony. Was this how God would answer my prayers? Was this a tribulation meant to test my faith in His future for my family? To be honest, my immediate response wasn’t very faithful. I wanted to satisfy my uncertain heart by turning off my brain and binging in pleasures: online shopping, Uber Eats, and a mindless Netflix binge. However, ultimately, I went to God in prayer to ask for the faith to trust Him over my own short-sighted plans, and for as my dad’s health as well.

I shared my worries with the pastor overseeing my upcoming mission trip to Panama. He answered with three brief but illuminating questions:

“Do you love your parents?” Yes (of course)

“Do you think you love your parents more than God?” No

“If God loves your parents more than you ever could, then why can’t you trust God to take care of them?”

This simple series of questions led to me realize, with a broken heart, that the reason I could not trust God with the future was because I did not understand His love. As humans, part of our psychology is to trust people by the measure of how much they care about us and are invested in our circumstances. Then, if there is a God who loves us and cares for us infinitely beyond measure, shouldn’t we be able to trust Him with anything?

I couldn’t stop thinking about this reflection over the next few days. A week later, I had a second realization that this applied to my own insecurities as well. Why could I not trust God with all of my personal anxieties and circumstances? Why am I so insecure about my life and why do I feel like I always need be in control? I realized that it is because I do not sufficiently know the immeasurable love of God.

And so my prayer for my dad grew a little bit longer: “God, would you help me to understand how much you love me and my parents? Help me to know more of your love that is boundless, so that I can trust you with my dad even if my own hopes fail.”

Another week passed, and while reading the Bible, I discovered a prayer from Apostle Paul which seemed to mirror my own.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Ephesians 3:14-19

In the moments I kept praying for my dad, my anxieties became still.

Over the years, I have become entrenched in this culture and have developed my own vivid self consciousness. This has affected my Christian faith as well and, specifically, has manifested in a fear of evangelism. However, by the workings of the Holy Spirit, I am sharing this testimony to recount how my heart has begun to change. 

Recently, one of my friends brought me to a Christian conference organized by a grassroots missions organization. The primary event roster was an ensemble of live worship and sermons led by various leaders. In addition to this main schedule, there was a number of skits scattered throughout the day, throughout which small groups of young adults would put on a dramatic depiction of relevant Christian themes. 

Frankly speaking, I was initially put off by parts of these skits. To be completely honest, it felt a little childish and a bit dorky. With a heart of callous arrogance, I  (internally) judged these twenty-something-year-olds who danced earnestly to the bright backdrop of Christian music. But as I kept watching, this arrogance gradually transformed into marvel. I was astonished at the distinct lack of shame of these performers and how they danced with all their might as if the presence of God was before them. In the beginning, I saw what looked like childishness, but by the end I realized it was something else entirely: a childlike faith and love for God. By watching their earnest performance, I began to also realize and share in the very same joy that enabled them to worship and carry out their skits without shame. My self consciousness and cultural inertia seemed so small in front of this marvelously pure and precious joy.

The conference ended quite late that evening. With a stirred heart and a renewed sense of joy for God, I left the venue around 2AM (due to a lack of rides). The following day, I rose from bed with jubilation at how God had dissolved the two years of bitterness and jadedness that I had accumulated throughout the pandemic. On that Sunday morning, like every other week, I prepared to go to church and called an Uber. But for some reason, when I stepped into the back of this compact Toyota SUV, I felt a desire to pray for this female Uber driver. As mentioned prior, I find evangelism, particularly to strangers, terrifying. 

As I squirmed in the back of my Uber ride, scrolling through my phone, I struggled with the desire to ask my driver if she knew about Jesus. We started chatting and I learned more about this woman with graying hair and wrinkled eyes. Her name was P. (a pseudonym) and she was a grandmother. When I asked her about the paramedic badge on her dashboard, she told me that her sister was a paramedic but had passed away a few years ago. As I learned more about P., my heart became laden with a growing desire to ask her if I could pray for her. It was a desire so strong that it began to move my heart to anxiety. Despite this, my self consciousness felt like a heavy blanket which immobilized me and prevented me from sharing. It was a double KO of heart panic — my social anxiety was being compounded by a different type of anxiety caused by the weight of my conviction. As we kept on talking, she eventually mentioned a platitude that used the word “God”: something like, “by the grace of God, I wake up every day.” 

At this brief mention of God, I jumped at the opportunity to ask her if she was religious. She didn’t answer immediately but explained that she did pray but that she was estranged from the Catholic Church for many years. She was disgusted by the sins of the Catholic Church and how the priest who had baptized her granddaughter was later identified as a predator. At that point, I told her that my (Protestant) church was always open to her but she brushed it off. 

As we talked about her experiences and the brokenness of man, we came to the end of my ride. She had confided in me that a relative actually gave her a Bible very recently but she rejected them fiercely, explicitly telling them she did not want it.  Despite this, I could not help but summon up the courage ask her if I could pray for her; P. agreed. 

So I laid down my heart and began to pray aloud. In my prayer, I asked God that He would show us His grace despite the brokenness of His children. I prayed that we would know His holiness and righteousness even though we are so utterly sinful. As I closed my prayer with a shaky voice, I prayed for P. and her sister. Through my own teary eyes, I could see that P. had also been moved and started to hold back her tears as well. She thanked me afterwards. 

As I was getting ready to leave the car, much to my surprise, P. told me that she would visit my church next week and asked for the service time. In the beginning, I was so scared of asking this woman if I could simply pray for her. Yet, our brief prayer became such a powerful blessing for the both of us. I marveled once again at the providence of God. The day before, my God, full of love and grace, dissolved my own years-long jadedness and rebuked by hardened heart. And in this brief 15 minute Uber ride, God again began to work on the bitterness in another one of His children’s hearts.

Personally, I am little worried that an elderly, Hispanic woman would feel a little out of place in my church full of Asian millennials and college students. But I have complete trust that God will work where He intends no matter the place or person. I pray with this hope that P. will come to know the God I know and be nurtured in our community. 

God earnestly desires to use His children as He has done so throughout ages past. He gives us even small opportunities like this. For me, I cannot let my shame obscure the work that God will use me for. It was by re-discovering and marveling at joy — a simple, pure and absolute joy in Jesus — that God had set me free.

I do hope that P. comes to church next week. 

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This is the testimony which led me to sign up for my upcoming mission trip to Panama. The trip will be led by the organization which hosted the conference that I mention here.

Thank you for reading my first update!