It was 2014 that I met Ji-hyun. I was a graduate assistant tutoring ESL students for writing at UM. I was taking the course waiting for the approval of the religious worker visa. So, I was going to school and working as a minister at the same time. My ministry was, as always, evangelizing Korean students. I first saw her in the ESL school but it was at a gathering at my house for the new Korean students that semester at the Chooseok, the Korean Thanksgiving, party that I met her personally.
As I came across with her she stood out. She greeted to me with bright smile on the face. After a while as I had prayer meetings for students at home, she was the most frequent attendee. So, she and my family became good friends. She was very nice young lady well disciplined. As we got to know her we were surprised for her difference from other Korean students. She was paying the tuition with the money that she had earned in Korea and she was not wasting money for things that were not necessary. That was a big difference and it made us really surprised.
She left to Korea at the last semester of her college. After graduation, she was preparing for job applications. As it is extremely difficult to get into a good job nowadays in Korea, she has been doing it since then. I knew all of this for I have been corresponding with her through KaTalk, the social network service the most popular one among Koreans.
I got to talk to her over the SNS recently. It was the first time since she went back to Korea. The reason was interesting. In this semester, I got an ESL student who has a son. As we became good friends, she introduced her son to me and my wife and I found him a nice young man well disciplined. He was at his good age for marriage according to a Korean perspective. So as it is normal his mom asked us to help him find a nice young lady to date. I automatically thought of Ji-hyun and told them about her. They welcomed my suggestion.
So, I left a message to her and she called me that night, morning in Korea. During the talk, she let me know that she had an interview for one of her dream jobs, the airplane stewardess. So, after I talked to her about the nice young man, before I hung up, I proposed a prayer and she welcomed.
Last night, which was a couple of days later after the talk, I became curious of how that interview went. So I left a message to her asking about that. It was early this morning as I was getting up in the bed that I saw her response. It was saying, “Due to your prayer, I passed the interview. It was my first time to pass a job interview. Thank you for prayer.” I smiled at it and went into the room in which I usually pray, the closet in the master bathroom. I was really surprised to hear that the prayer worked for her.
I am not saying that the prayer made her through the interview for the first time in her life, but she was feeling like that about prayer. She said later, she could be calm in the interview thinking, as I had prayed that night, that even if she would not pass it God would lead her into the best way for her. She was, she said, very different in that interview than in others before.
This is what I meant to say. It is not the power of prayer that makes a person to be successful in important life events, regardless of whether or not he or she is well prepared for them. If it was, prayer would’ve been a magic. But its power is to make the person to trust more in God and be able to have peace in mind even in front of big life determining events, such as getting an admission to a graduate program, a job or marriage.
This is what I want to share with you, readers of this testimony. Ji-hyun experienced working of God in her especially around the interview. She might have been very nervous before the interview and if she might have gone into it without a prayer reminding her of God who would lead her the best way even that job not being it, she would not have had such a calmness in the interview. What it means is that she actually trusted her life into God’s hands before the interview. That is really a walking with God, accepting Him as personal God and Lord of his or her life.
What about you? I know many of you know God and Jesus. But are you walking with Him? Then, how closely?
Sarah's Prayer
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