Meet Our Pastor

Meet Our Pastor At First United Methodist Church Oswego-Rev. Yohang Chun 

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Do you like to travel? I think that most of us like to travel. Before traveling, we prepare lots of things for the trip, certainly filling up our travel bags with all kinds of stuff, such as clothes, a toothbrush, soap, cosmetic lotion, a shaver, some books, a camera, a camcorder, and something to eat. In this way, we try to fill up our travel bags with as much as we can. However, when we come back home, we soon realize that we took lots of stuff we didn’t need in our travels. From my experiences, I have often had the same feeling after traveling; “Why did I take this stuff? Why did I put so many clothes into my bag? And why did I take that many books? However, we still believe that if we pack our bags as full as possible, it will make us more comfortable during our trip, isn’t that true? As you know, our life is a long journey. Especially we Christians are in a spiritual journey. For this special spiritual journey, with what will you fill up your bag? What stuff do you think we need for this special trip? A story of “the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness” in Matthew 4 gives us a piece of advice and a guide for our spiritual journey through Jesus’ preparation. According to the story, Jesus went to the wilderness to prepare him for his journey and his 3-year ministry. For 40 days and nights, it seems to me that went into the wilderness to fill his bag up before his long and tough journey. Rather he tried to get rid of unnecessary things from his bag before his journey. In other words, he tried to make his bags be emptied and himself be emptied before God. Through this process, ironically Jesus’ bag was filled with something called the Holy Spirit. This shows that when we get rid of something unnecessary from our bag and try to make ourselves be emptied for our spiritual journey, God will fill our bag with something amazing, such as the Holy Spirit, joy, or inner peace. Brothers and sisters in Christ! Now we are in our own spiritual journey. For this journey, why don’t we ask ourselves an important question again? “Will I still fill up my bag with my own stuff? Or will I let my bag be emptied to allow God to fill it with the Holy Spirit?” It is our decision and choice.
Amen and amen