I Can’t Add or Subtract; I Won’t!
I still marvel at how God led me to ECKCM this year. Even 3 months before CM, I had no plans or the desire to go to camp-meeting. But from the bottom of my heart, I thank God that He led me there; that He placed people in my life at the right time to convince me to go.
For the longest time, I’ve always thought that there wasn’t a thriving young adult program at camp-meeting. I’ve seen and been told there weren’t many unmarried young adults in the church; that the young adult ministry was very small.
As an unmarried young adult, I felt that I would feel like a fish out of water. I know a lot of youth leave the church once they reach college, and don’t come back until they have kids. Of course, I speak very generally, but there is some truth to that. So yes, I was very hesitant in attending.
Then God started working on me. Well, His work concerning camp-meeting started last year, when Pastor Jimmy Kim asked Isabella Kim and Carol Ip to be coordinators for the Young Adult department. Honestly, I was surprised. I’ve known both for a bit and while they are hard workers and great people, they wouldn’t be people I’d think are great leaders. But God can use anyone for His work. As I watched the effort they put into their roles with no expectation of pay or reward, I couldn’t help but be touched. They asked me to be one of the leaders but I said “no;” I was actively resisting God. But after seeing how much time they put into the program, seeing their efforts-- I had to say “yes.”
One of the main topics the young adults studied was about salvation. As Pastor Sterling Berry put it so eloquently, we keep adding the fruits of the gospel to the actual gospel. There is NOTHING we can do to earn salvation! It is a FREE gift that we just have to accept. But sometimes, we think something we do or don’t do can take us away from God. I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but it’s SO engrained in our spiritual DNA that it will take just as much effort to get it out of our system. But the funny thing is I hated hearing this. Not because the message wasn’t good. It’s great! But I could never get a satisfactory explanation on what that meant practically. I couldn’t connect acceptance of Jesus’ saving gift to my daily life. So if I accept Jesus today, does my life all of a sudden change tomorrow? Do I need to stop smoking and drinking alcohol, stop eating pork and only wear a suit to church? Does wearing jewelry condemn me? Do I even have to go to church? On a Saturday?! And if I don’t or do all these, do I lose my salvation, even if I’ve accepted Jesus? The answer turned out to be yes and no.
When we accept Jesus and His free gift of salvation, we are accepting that He loves us unconditionally. We are accepting that He was willing to lose His divinity, His life to save just one of us. The King, the God of the universe is willing to die for us. When we finally understand and accept that, it WILL help us change our thinking and life.
We aren’t saved because we keep the Sabbath. There will be people who’ve never heard of the seventh day Sabbath who will be saved. But for those of us who have heard of the Sabbath, we keep it because God asked us to remember it. Remember that we had nothing to do with creation and we have nothing to do with our salvation. We aren’t saved because we don’t eat pork, abstain from alcohol and cigarettes, but we avoid those things because we want to keep our bodies clean and healthy so that when we are called, we can lead more people to this wonderful God who died in our place. We put aside our jewelry not because it’s going to save us, but because when we realize the sacrifice Jesus made for us, we don’t worry about adorning ourselves but only focus on Jesus. Nothing we do can add or subtract from our salvation.
When Pastor Sterling taught us this, most might say, “Then we don’t have to do anything, since we are saved, as long as we believe. Our actions don’t matter.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
A verse that has always stuck with me is 1 Samuel 16:7. “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The issue isn’t about our actions--it’s about our hearts. God convicts us of certain truths at different times. Some of us have been convicted not to eat pork. To those people, eating pork is a sin. If they choose to eat, it’s a willful disregard of God. But others have not been convicted of it. So how could it be a sin? This is why we are told not to judge in Matthew. We have no idea about the other person’s relationship with God. But as David tells us in Psalms 119:11, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” We must diligently study God’s word so that God can convict us of what is right and wrong and to know how to love God with all our hearts, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
In the end, I was just as blessed as anyone else at camp-meeting. Maybe it was because I had to go to all the meetings and pay attention. But I learned new things and even things I already knew were rekindled. I can’t recommend strongly enough attending camp-meeting next year. You’ll experience the hard work the coordinators and the administration team puts into it. But most of all, you can’t help but feel God’s presence there. =)
PS. Our other speaker, Pastor Rafael Morales encouraged us to find a verse and make it our own. My verse is Philippians 2:14 (lol says something about me): Do everything without grumbling or arguing,
Daniel "Gonzoine" Kim, is a graduate student at Kennesaw State University getting his masters in Applied Statistics. He enjoys waking up really early, hearing corny jokes and eating (cup)cakes...So please send him some jokes and cakes!