The Best Message Ever Preached.
By Bobae Lee
A part of many immigrants’ story is how little time they are able to spend with their parents. My parents were no exception, leaving for work at 8am and coming back home at 7:30pm, it was often just me and my younger sisters. With no other family in the States, our after school teacher would drop us off at 6pm and we were alone until one of our parents came home. Looking back on my childhood, the most time spent with my mom was either watching Korean dramas or at church. She would take us to church whenever she was doing something, whether it was the weekly flower arrangements or the all-week revivals, if she was there, we were there. Watching her live out her faith shaped the way I serve, pray, and engage with the Lord.
My favorite thing to do with my mom was go to early morning prayer. In the beginning, it definitely had a lot more to do with the bagels they gave out than the praying part. However, watching my mom pray taught me to pray and experience intimacy through prayer in a way I had never known before. Watching my mom pray was like a small window into her relationship with God. I watched her wage war with the enemy as she interceded for my dad and our family, asking for the Lord’s favor anywhere that we went. At times she would cry through most of her prayers because her heart was aching. In the midst of the harsh reality of immigrant life, Jesus was her everything and prayer was her lifeline.
At this point you might expect me to say that I am following in my mom’s footsteps, waking up at dawn, and going to early morning prayer everyday. I’m not. I would like to be a 5am person, but my favorite time of day is between the hours of 10pm and 2am making it really difficult for me to be that 5am person. Even though I don’t go to early morning prayer everyday, I pray, and my prayer life is guided by the principles I picked up while sitting next to my mom. Here are a few of those principles:
Pray in and out of season: Don’t pray only in the hard times because it’s God’s faithfulness in the good times that will carry us through. If we don’t stay connected with the Lord in prayer, we won’t recognize God’s faithfulness is present at all times.
Don’t hold back with God: When my mom prayed, she was all-in with her time, her emotions, and her attention. Consistency and focus in prayer creates a holy atmosphere that makes the enemy shutter.
Take your kids with you: This is for my future self and for all the mommas out there raising kids. Take your kids on this journey of faith with you. There’s always more that is caught than taught. Your children will watch you and learn what it looks like to love Jesus through the different seasons of life.
I often hear women say they grew up without seeing female pastors. My experience is very different. The church I grew up at always had female pastors on staff and invited many female guest speakers for revival services. It wasn’t until seminary I learned how uncommon my experience was, and part of the reason why my gender was never a hindrance in pursuing my call as a pastor (though there were/are many other doubts but that’s a story for another day). I think a larger reason why I never doubted a woman’s call to ministry was because of the way my mom lived fully the call God had put in her life. She was the best minister I had growing up. She was the best discipler and pastor I could learn from.
I don’t share this to boast about what an awesome powerhouse of a mom I have. She’s great, but she’s not perfect. I share all of this to say that even though we don’t see nearly enough ministers that look like us on the platform, maybe we’re looking in the wrong places. As we are looking to Jesus and walking faithfully in our call as His daughters, maybe God is actually shaping us into the ministers and disciplers that other women and our children are looking for. My mom never stepped foot on a pulpit, but her relationship with Jesus was the loudest message she ever preached.
So my encouragement for us is this: keep going and invite others on your journey. You don’t have to be perfect because that’s not our call. All you need to do is keep going and along the way, God will use your relationship with Him to be the best message you’ve ever preached.
