Dead

The title is a bit misleading. I know it sounds emo and everything. Let me explain.

So at the church that I've been attending here in Korea, we had a guest speaker for a few weeks. He was a pretty solid speaker in many ways. But one of the many awesome things I got out of his sermons was about death in sin. We hear this all the time in the Bible, in Bible studies, in sermons, etc. But the speaker just kept on talking about the word death. There's always misconceptions about what our state is without Christ. Yes we were dead in sin, and now alive in Christ. But does the part about "dead in sin" really hit you? For the longest time in my walk, even though I read "dead in sin", I always thought about "struggling", "limping", "handicapped" in sin. Almost as if I'm hurt really badly, and I just need a hand from Christ to pick me back up. But it isn't like that. We were DEAD in sin. Meaning, there is NOTHING we could have done. If you're dead, you're dead. You're not breathing, no blood flowing, you just... can't do ANYTHING.

Now with that said, being alive in Christ glorifies God all the more. Because when you're dead in sin, it's nothing that we can do. We are alive in Christ because He did everything. Isn't that humbling? What right do we have to boast in our own deeds? He did everything all out of pure grace. Think about it. If you're dead, you can't even apologize to God. You can't repent. You can't cry out and be all regretful. It is only because we are alive in Christ that we are able to repent, cry out, and do all those things that we try to offer up as worship. This humbled me.

-Simon

PS-Got one more week of work! :)

Humidity and Sweat

The weather is no joke here. Every time I walk out of a subway station or bus or an air-conditioned room, it feels like I'm walking into a sauna. I've never sweat so much in my life. My brother and I play basketball at least 4-5 times a week, and every time we come back from playing our shirts are literally drenched with sweat. Since we've washed these basketball shirts so frequently, the texture of the cotton feels like I'm wearing newspapers. Yeah, it's pretty gross. Even aside from basketball, just sitting there, sitting in dry sweat, feeling all sticky, my brother has given me another nickname dubbed: Gummy Bear. It's pretty nasty after basketball when we're walking side-by-side, and our shoulders or arms make contact on accident, and it just sticks (just like two melted gummy bears).

As a result, I think I'm losing a lot of weight here. Although I may be eating pretty well, I'm doing loads of walking, basketball, and a lot of sweating. We already took a picture of my face right when I got to Korea. We shall see the before/after result.

In other news, it was very nice to see the Cambodia team. Ate at the famous "Phil's Awesome Samgyup Jip". Unfortunately, my brother didn't take any pictures and I always forget to ask him because I'm too distracted by the meat and the works.

Okay, now go listen to Se7en-Better Together. :)

-Simon