Hello friends! I just heard some great interviews this past week and I hope you can check some of them out. And please feel free to share with your friends and family members. I remember as a young professional woman trying to follow Jesus in NYC, I thought that no one like me was out there. Back in the 90s you only learned about things by word of mouth or flyers. Today there’s such an abundance of information and resources for the seekers and sojourners. It’s a wonderful thing. Praise God!
This past week I was talking with someone about my faith journey. I never had someone who listened so closely about my faith journey. She must’ve heard me speak for an hour and half! As I was talking, I realized that I am a risk averse person, and so I want to make the least amount of mistakes as possible. That characteristic trait makes me want to learn from other’s experiences and their mistakes. That explains why I am so drawn to hearing and reading autobiographies, interviews and real stories. I hope some of the stories that I share with you help you to minimize mistakes.
By the way, if you’re not like me and you are a risk taker, that’s fine. That’s how God made you to be. But like any good, global corporation you need the risk management department too. We need each other. I also think believers like me are great intercessors because we are good at seeing the dangers and problems. And as God’s children, we have learned to turn our worries into intercessions. We proactively intercede ahead and prepare a way. Please reach out to believers like us before you make major decision on any big changes and moves. See us as the “mistake minimizers”. 🙂 I think that describes well what I do in the body of Christ. And I need the risk takers in my life too, or else I’ll be fine with just staying in my local faith community and have little to do with the outside world. The risk takers are the evangelistic types in the body of Christ. I see these believers as those who work in the New Business department, or sales and marketing. They are naturally comfortable being in the spotlight and I think they make decisions a bit too quickly. That’s where I can come in to help them pause a little bit longer in order to minimize mistakes.
Firstly, you have to understand that after studying the Bible so much in the last 15 years the principles for relationships and its theology are my bedrock. There are so many mistakes made in there and recorded for us that just studying the Bible alone is enough to minimize mistakes in your life. Had I known this in college, then I would have studied it more. If anyone has any questions about the Bible, please reach out to me. If I don’t know the answer, I can point you to the right direction for research. The Bible is a supernatural book, and the more you study it the more you understand the heart and mind of God who created us, this earth, and the entire universe and galaxies beyond! Therefore if you study the Bible that makes you wiser than your family elders, professors, therapists and even pastors who do not study the Bible continually.
The new year 2026 is approaching quickly. If you don’t have a plan yet to read the Bible, then please consider Times Square Church’s Bible reading plan being launched in January. It’s a four year plan because they will be going through a chapter a day starting with the Old Testament. Couple of years ago, I did their New Testament plan which is a one year plan. It was free and it was excellent. Please pray about your Bible reading plan in place for January. Once the TSC plan is launched I will share it with you.
I’ve shared with you that in 2025, I am doing an audio Bible reading plan and I really enjoy it. I am still on the plan. The Commuter Bible reading plan is nice since they read Monday to Friday, plus work holidays are off. The Bible Recap is a nice one too. It’s the ‘cliff notes’ version of the Bible. I’ve been hearing her recaps all year long and they are very good and biblically sound. Here are their links.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/commuter-bible/id1447035790
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bible-recap/id1440833267
Here are some great interviews and sermons that I heard this week. I learned a lot from their experiences and biblical insights:
I re-heard this older message in 2014 by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church because last week I was notified of three young adult suicides. One passed away. Two are in critical conditions in hospitals. It reminded me why in 2017, I set up another women’s prayer group specifically to intercede for our youth. We had many high schoolers locally who committed suicide in 2016-2017. Once we started to intercede weekly just for the local schools we didn’t hear anymore about suicides happening. And if there were any attempts, it wasn’t successful. I’m informing you about this because we need younger moms to now take the baton to proactively pray for your children and their schools. Please reach out to me if you want to learn how to do this. During the pandemic lockdown, we set up a very successful method to pray by teleconference. I will share all the details with you. It is doable even for working parents. My co-leader, Yadi works full time and yet she makes time for this important intercession every week since 2017.
Back to Rick Warren – I wanted to hear Pastor Rick Warren again so I would not make mistakes if I ever engage with someone whose family member committed suicide. I’m so glad that I heard it again. I highly recommend you listen to this one if you only have time to hear one message. Suicide is the second cause of death in our youth and young adults in America. And if you are wondering what the first cause is, it is accidents (this also includes drug overdoses).
This is an interview with Pastor Rick Warren two years ago. It was excellent. He talked about what he’s been up to after passing the baton of leading Saddleback church. He inspired me to imagine what the global church of 2.6 billion Christians can accomplish with unity and tolerance for one another when we have disagreements on issues and theology. His analogy of using animals to describe the different kinds of churches really makes sense too. I’ll always remember that now. My church would be considered an elephant church. He gave some advice to the elephant churches. He also encouraged and inspired me about evangelism and doing my little part. When he broke it down, I said to myself I can do that! 😃
My college church had an active college ministry and evangelism. And that’s why I found them. I didn’t have any real need for anything or anyone. I was doing very well as a student and had ambitions. As I was talking about my faith journey this week, I realized that I got rooted into this small country church because I found something that I’ve never seen before in real life. I found a “unicorn” 🦄. I marveled at their love and affection. I marveled when husbands were kind and loving to their wives and children. I marveled at seeing college students having friendships with the opposite sex that’s wholesome and non-sexual. And so I came near the “unicorn” and stayed. I felt like I found an extended family and got adopted by so many aunties, uncles, and cousins.
I’m sharing this with you because as I see more students and young people coming to my church and in colleges, I think I have the perspective of what motivated me to stay and continue to get involved in my college church. Risk averse people like me will not make a huge mess of our lives. But we crave to be part of a good, loving, supportive community. We crave to belong. We want to see and learn from the elders how to make a good family and marriage relationship. I think in today’s world, this has become an even more of a rare “unicorn” than in the 80s and 90s.
So if you are a church leader or elder (in college I used to think anyone over 30 was an elder.) please learn the how’s of good relationships. Start with your own family and church members. Volunteering at your church is a great place to learn too. Because generally we “forgive and bless” more easily. And if the church leaders and elders don’t “forgive and bless” well, then you probably need to pray about switching to another church.
Studying Bible theology is so important! “Forgive and bless” should be our motto but there are some relationships that are so toxic and dangerous that it needs to end. Please hear this great interview with Lysa Terkeurst. She is a Christian leader and teacher who was given poor advice about her marriage difficulties. She suffered greatly for that. She goes into the theology of divorce in the Bible.
I liked her advice on how to respond when one hears someone from church getting a divorce. I usually get surprised when someone tells me they are separating. Since I don’t know their story I try not to judge or say anything. But I know that it’ll be a very painful journey and so I pray for them. If anyone is considering ending a marriage, PLEASE hear this interview and judge your reasons for a divorce using the Bible’s criteria. You also need to receive your church pastor’s counsel and their prayers too, and not just your therapist’s advice. And you need a church support group. I know at my church there’s a community group for divorced women. They can pray for you with empathy and understanding in this difficult journey.
Here’s an article about Lysa Terkeurst’s backstory.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/lysa-terkeurst-remarries-two-years-after-painful-divorce.html
Dr Michael Youseff is originally from Egypt 🇪🇬 and he always offers great insights from the ancient, middle eastern perspective, and not our modern, western perspective. In this sermon, he explains how the rabbis and scholars of the mosaic laws were interpreting and arguing about the laws for divorce during Jesus’ ministry days. They asked Jesus about that. Dr. Youseff teaches what we should know about marriage and divorce in the Old Testament’s context. He is teaching us Bible theology.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leading-the-way-radio/id273093852?i=1000739791935
By the way, Michael Youseff at age 77 recently passed the baton of his church to his son, Jonathan so that he can focus on global evangelism like Rick Warren. His son, Jonathan is in his early 40s and a young parent. Check out his podcast. He talks a lot about parenting issues. Here is a conversation with a mom blogger who wrote about raising grateful kids. This author’s risk averse Christian life changed after visiting Kenya 🇰🇪. Wow.
My church has many members from India. I learned more about the Indian American church community from reading this good essay written by a local high schooler. His feelings of belonging made me remember my key reason for staying in my college church for so long – I found belonging and love there. I found a unicorn 🦄.
https://open.substack.com/pub/caacptsem/p/invited-in-discovering-belonging
As a young professional woman I really needed workplace mentors too. My mentors were good people in my first job but since they were not Christians, my immediate supervisor confused the heck out of me about Christianity. Since we shared a cubicle for about six months due to overcrowding we also became friendly. He followed a bizarre New Age beliefs. But since he was super smart and my supervisor, I considered his thoughts very carefully. Anyway I was left so confused and deflated by the time I got my own cubicle. As I was thinking about visiting my college church to help me process all these things I heard news that they were splitting up due to infighting by the leaders on theological differences in healing and miracles. Seriously?! My motto is if an issue does not matter in a 100 years then I don’t allow that disagreement to severe my friendships and relationships in the church and my family. Unity is too valuable and disunity is too damaging.
In sum, it’s very important to keep the unity in the church, and teach ourselves and our youth on Christian apologetics – the field of study to defend our faith and beliefs with facts and historical evidence. If anyone needs help with finding good resources, please reach out to me.
Christine Caine is a great leader to follow. I’ve been following her since I learned about her work against human trafficking. Her organization is A21 if you’re interested in seeing what they do.
She is so fearless. In her podcast she interviews Christian women in leadership. If you go to her podcast you’ll find women business leaders too. I just heard this one from an Anglican Church pastor in UK. 🇬🇧 God is moving mightily in the UK!
Carey Nieuwhof interviews many Christian leaders in all kinds of fields too. Please check out his podcast for a list of great interviews. He has nearly 800 interviews to choose from! He has a great mission to equip and train Christians in all areas. He and his wife are both lawyers and so their type A, strong personalities led to great fights and marriage struggles. Today, they share on how they overcame their differences to having a strong relationship. I think they’ve been married for about 35 years. Search on his website for interviews with his wife, Toni Nieuwhof.
If you have time please hear this man’s story. I can’t help thinking about his story. I grew up watching “21 Jump Street” and “Miami Vice” in the 80s. They are shows about sexy, undercover police investigating drug dealers in high schools and in Miami, Florida. Watching shows like that made me too scared to even go near drugs or anyone who looked like they might take drugs. Therefore I listened to this man who was offered methaphamine at age 13 at a party. He said he got hooked in his first try. I don’t understand why anyone would ever try drugs. I think hearing his story is a great deterrent for young people to stay far away from drugs. He got radically transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit when he attended his aunt’s Pentecostal church while hiding from law enforcement for dealing drugs. You have to hear his story and how he is doing today. Amazing and so incredible. His stories about his time in jail is insane to hear too. People like me would be eaten alive in jail!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/maybe-god/id1329159271?i=1000737467154
Some of you like me are currently teaching your parents and family elders about the Bible. If they are newly saved, or have been cultural Christians all their lives then you will need to flush out the superstitions and so many wrong doctrines.
Biblegateway.com has many different languages. When my mom tries to push an advice or idea that’s unbiblical, Confucianism, astrology, fortune telling, prosperity gospel or whatever else from culture; I look up the Bible verse that refutes otherwise and share it in Korean with her. If you are also doing that right now, please reach out to me and I can share with you what works well for us. I shared Jeremiah 32 with my mom today.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2032&version=KOERV
Since I came to the USA when I was 8 years old, my Korean isn’t advanced. I’ve been watching Korean dramas to expand my vocabulary. It’s been a fun way to learn. If you’re interested, I’m watching this k-drama. It’s about the Asian financial crisis of 1997. It’s been hilarious to see the technology we had back then. Remember beepers, fax machines, floppy disks and phone booths, modem cable to dial into the internet? I used all these things. 😂
https://www.netflix.com/title/82024855
Here’s a brief recap about the Asian financial crisis. USA wasn’t affected. I was working in NYC at that time and there were so many jobs and opportunities in corporate USA.
I shared so many resources in here. Please reach out to believers like me in your church me to pray about an important issue or upcoming decision in your life. We are “mistake minimizers” or like someone who works in the risk management department.
God bless you always and abundantly.
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. – John 10:10
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2010&version=NKJV
5 “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. – Matthew 6:5-6
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206&version=NKJV—
If you want to reach out to me about setting up a prayer group by teleconference and lead it, you can email me:
estherprayergroup2016@gmail.com
Journal of Faith 