We find the command to “honor your father and mother” in the 10 commandments God gave to Moses. I stand up here with the hopes of doing so. I love you mom and dad and I am eternally thankful as when I heard the gospel, that God loves me, I had an understanding of what that meant. Over the past few years, it pains me to share such a message of God's love and see the strain in someone's face as they have no concept of love or are jaded to such a theory. Thank you for you discipline, advice, and correction. Again, thank you so much for loving me through failures, mistakes, and let downs as these experiences of grace and love has led me to Christ.
To Michael Hashimoto:
I thank God for blessing me with your friendship as it too has led me to Christ. For those who don't know, it was Hashi's friendship that initially brought me out to this church. In your life I have witnessed the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I would go to war with you. When I'm around you I'm home.
To the class of 2004: thank you for being my community. For being available to talk about anything and everything, and for always looking out for each other during college and now.
To those who have invested into me such as youth staff at this church and people I call uncles and aunties: I thank you for your love and sacrifices that has led me down such a path. I'm especially thankful for the older men in my life such as Darrin, Dan, and Erik, who have made it a point to teach me about God's grace for me, and other nuggets of Godly wisdom. Wisdom such as how to pray, approach school, wise spending, and what to look for in a wife.
To the co-laborers in Epic: To the staff, I thank you for spoiling me; creating a work place of grace and for grace, where I was cared more for myself than my performance. Because of your faith and wisdom in the Lord I have been transformed by your love and patience. As I look back at my first year as an intern with Epic I was so insecure and brash. Now, years later and as a volunteer; now, I'm just brash. To the students who are or were involved in the campus ministry, I wonder who actually influenced who, as I have witnessed and have been inspired by your hearts being broken for the lost as you take up the Great Commission to reach your campus. I praise the Lord for you.
To the church: I am eternally thankful to you as it was this church to first reveal the gospel to me, and also the church that sent me to be a light while in college, and also the biggest supporter of my ministry post-college. In this church, from the childrens' ministry to the seniors, I have witnessed thousands acts of love that has made it a reality that God is love. No church is perfect, and this church doesn't parade around stating such, but I can truthfully say that I have experienced love from God and love from others right here.
My testimony begins on an intellectual level. As a child, I wasn't the most talkative or outgoing, but I was always lost in thought. I never really doubted God's existence. It just made sense to me. The very thing that gives us thought, our brain, we cannot comprehend. Even the most advanced scientist who dedicate their entire research to studying the human brain would admit that our understanding is rudimentary at best. What about time? What about life and the fact that we can question it and our existence? The vastness of the universe? Or entropy? As a child in school and even through college this paradigm left me unsatisfied as our education system is built around a concept of “effectient cause” and not “final cause”. Of course, as a child, I wasn't as articulate as I am now and probably wouldn't be able to explain my thoughts, but as I said before, I don't think I was a typical child. So let me explain, “effecient cause” means that external entity from which the change or the ending of the change first starts, or in other words it deals with “how” questions. “Final cause” means for the sake of which a thing exists, or is done - including both purposeful and instrumental actions. The final cause, or telos, is the purpose, or end, that something is supposed to serve, or in other words it deals with “why” questions. I might have lost you in the past couple of sentences so I'll use a story to explain. In junior high we had science class where we would learn about our physical world, one lesson was on why the sky is blue. So the teacher lectured and used projection slides. We learned all about energy waves and the prisism effect, and the elemental components of air, and so on and so forth. To the frustration of my teacher, I would raise my hand about every 5 minutes – and every answer he would give, would leave me more unsatisfied. You see, all the teacher could do was explain HOW the sky was blue, but never WHY. The Final clausal statement that I was seeking was, “the sky is blue because God said so.”
Naturally, as I got invited to go to CBCs Friday night youth group, these “final cause” statements latched on to my heart as it satisfied my intellectual curiosity. Why do I exist? Because God loves me and created me to know Him personally. He has a wonderful plan for my life. Statements such as John 3:16 surrounded my conscience. “For God so loved Timmy the He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Why is there bad stuff, because people sin. “...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
From my understanding of Christianity, there seems to be three components: an intellectual understanding of the final and efficient cause (the whys of our situation, and hows to get out of it) and an aspect of faith, a conscience decision of the will.
So, back to my story, in early high school, I had a grasp of the final cause of the gospel, but the two other components were missing. Thus, my theology, or belief system was this: God is love, and good, mankind is bad and sinners, therefore, try to be good, and if you are good enough, you get heaven. It pains me to think that so many people are at this stage, in their spiritual journey, and even some belief systems are solely about such, because all one is to experience down this path is pain and letdown, and is the poorest representation of Christianity possible as it is in opposition.
Of course, during this time, many people had presented the message of Jesus Christ during youth group, the efficient cause of our situation. You see, Jesus existed, he died on a cross, and rose from the dead. Jesus is God's only provision for our sin. Through Him alone we can know God personally and experience God's love and plan. Jesus died in our place to pay the penalty for my sins. I can believe in such because, almost in the same breath, Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sins and he predicted his death and resurrection. Just like a geometry proof, a transitive property lies here, if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, A and C must be the same. Jesus' prediction of his death and resurrection, his actual death and resurrection, and his claims to forgive sins follow in the same suit. The resurrection happened, and that is why I take Jesus seriously.
Faith is the last component in my story. I came to faith as a junior in high school. I wouldn’t consider myself being a bad kid, I got straight As, and was an amazing athlete, I was even the scholar athlete of my class. But it wasn’t enough – being an Asian American, the pressures to succeed is immense. This pressure didn’t come from my parents, but from the environment I was in. Cerritos, is known for Whitney High School, the #1 ranked school in America. I didn’t go to Whitney, but the trickle down effects were everywhere. My surroundings all told me that your worth is in how hard you work, and it fit my theology at the time – try hard to be good. I remember the day pretty clearly. In zero period, I took Japanese. We were assigned to do a comic strip in groups of 3, the project was worth 1/3 our grade. We decided to have two people translate our script, and one person do the artwork. When it came down to the guy doing the artwork, he completely didn’t come through. I worked so hard on the script and translation, and he completely blew it off. The day it was due, he just didn’t care. I remember being in a furious rage, all I could think of where thoughts of inflicting serious physical harm. These thoughts came straight from my heart. My conscious broke though. What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? I ran out the door as fast as I could. Confused. Angry. In the fuzz of emotions, however, things were most clear. First of all, I am a sinner, sure, in my behavior I didn't do anything malicious, all I did was storm out of the class, but something was clearly sinful on another level, in my heart, and in my heart is who I truly am. Secondly, I could clearly see that my intentions to be good were the very thing that led me to sin. If I didn't have to strive to be good, him not doing his part would have not of effected me on such a level. My entire belief system was dismantled and repaired, at than moment I became a Christian. I put my faith in that he loved me as I was, that I didn’t need to get good grades or become a faster runner for Him to love me more; because He loves me more than I could possibly comprehend – so much that he went to the cross for me.
Ephesian 2:8-10 reads:
8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
I believe that to be true. I believe that this very baptism is a good thing that God planned for me long ago. To stand before you and tell you or remind you that Jesus, in his love for us made a conscience decision to pay for our sins by paying the ultimate price. On the cross he died with two criminals to his left and right. One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”
40 But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? 41 We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”
I take the position of the second criminal. I deserve to die for my crimes, but you did not do anything wrong. In your love you stayed on the cross and thought of me. Thank you.
