Finding the Father in His Home, Mee Kyung

There is something on earth called the house of God. I'm not talking about the church buildings. The house of God is a living entity composed of the children of God that expresses God. Just like if I want to visit a friend, I need to go to the house that she lives in. If we want to find God, we need to go where He lives. About a year ago I found my eternal Father in a very subjective way in the house where He located Himself.

I became a Christian at the age of 18, thirteen years ago when I was a freshman in college in Seoul, Korea through a Christian organization. I made a lot of friends in that organization and learned all the teachings through them and got actively involved in that group. Because of their input, I eventually received a personal calling from the Lord to be a missionary to share the gospel around the world. After graduating from college, I worked as a missionary overseas for four years. Since I had studied agriculture, I always felt inadequate in my missionary career. So I felt it was a necessity to study in a seminary to be better equipped. I came to America for this purpose. Pursuing a master's degree of Divinity gave me a greater perspective in interpreting the Bible than the narrow one I had before. The more I got to know broader and deeper ways of interpreting the Bible, the less I was able to cling to any particular interpretation. The most important thing was that God was becoming more and more an object of study, than the object of enjoyment. The God that I really wanted to know and serve for the rest of my life was becoming very abstract and I couldn't understand any verse in the Bible fully.

While I was inwardly wondering like this, I got introduced to a book, The Spiritual Man written by Watchman Nee, in July, 1999 by a group who were practicing inner spirituality.

After reading that book twice thoroughly, I realized that I have a human spirit, and the human spirit is the very organ to contact God, receive God, and experience God. The reason that I was frustrated the more I pursued the Lord was because I wanted to understand God through the study in my mind, which is not the right organ. The next book by Watchman Nee that I read was The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit. This book was a life-changing book to me. It changed my view toward things, matters, and persons that are around me all the time. The major revelation that I got from the book was that everyone and everything around us is the Lord's arrangement to break our outer man, so that we would be useful to the Lord. Through these two fundamental books, I came to appreciate Watchman Nee and his writings, my relationship with the Lord became intimate, and I finally started learning to live as a normal Christian.

A year and a half later, in March of 2001, I wanted to know more about Watchman Nee. During spring break, I got on the websites intending to research the personal life of Watchman Nee. When I typed “Watchman Nee” in the search box in yahoo.com, many websites came up, and the very first one was WatchmanNee.org It sounded very good, so I opened it and read through very carefully. The website was succinct and greatly done. The website explained that Watchman Nee's coworker Witness Lee came to America to continue the same ministry about 40 years ago and there is a representative ministry called Living Stream Ministry in Anaheim, California. This website linked me to the Affirmation and Critique website and the Living Stream Ministry website. It was a Friday that I found all these wonderful websites, and almost all day long, I read and read and couldn't leave the computer in the school library. I decided to visit the Living Stream Ministry bookstore on the following Monday, and drove 60 miles to Anaheim. There I met some believers who were pursuing the Lord with a pure heart according to Watchman Nee's teaching.

I started fellowshipping with the believers that I met at the bookstore and reading the Life-study of Genesis, which is a Bible commentary expounded by Witness Lee. A couple of months later, I started meeting with the church in Fullerton. Then, a couple of months after that, I came to the Full-Time Training in Anaheim.

The God who chose and predestinated me unto sonship in eternity past (Ephesians 1:5) and gave Himself up for me and loves me unconditionally (John 3:16), who I love and want to give all that I have, has been real in the local church for the one year that I have spent here. God is not the object of study any more. He is a living person that I can touch, fellowship with, and experience. This same God was very abstract to me in all the denominations and organizations I visited, but He has become very real and personal in the local church. Now I am not an orphan anymore because I found my Father in His home. I will dwell here all the days of my life in His house to behold the beauty of my Father.