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“God of Immanuel, God of Jehovah-Jireh and God of Ebenezer”

Key verse: Romans 11:29  “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”

My name is Isaac Choi. I was born on October 28th 1944 at Pyung-Yang, North Korea. My father was an engineer and my mother was a home-maker. I was a lucky and happy boy under my parent’s love and care. However, when I became six years old in 1950, the Korean civil war broke out by the North communist Korea’s invading to South Korea. This three year war turned my life upside down and our family life broken down by losing my father forever. This war made so many Korean-young and old, men and women-helpless and hopeless by all kinds of sorrow and misery of life.  What a man made a tragedy it was! But God has great purpose on me to be a child of God for his salvation work.

First, God changed my life through the word of God. When we, my mother and I fled from North and South, we didn’t have home to live nor job to make living. Our number one priority was to survive by any means. My mother worked all kind of jobs to make a living. Although I was young and seemed to know nothing what had happened in my life, I began to look at the world with a fatalistic view of life. It caused me to give up difficult things easily rather than to overcome, and depend on others as much as possible without my own decision. These kinds of view of life made me a speechless and quiet boy. My purpose of life was not clear even though I had to work harder than anybody for the sake of myself and my widowed mother who sacrificed her life for me. I studied hard in order to be successful and to achieve. I attended church worship service regularly and joined all activities. Still I couldn’t find clear life direction and motivation. One of my church members told me that UBF Bible study is good. So with much curiosity and desire to study Bible, I visited UBF Chong-Ro center in 1971. Through Genesis Bible study with late Sh. Moses Kim, I began to discover who I am and meaning of life. Genesis 1:31a said, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good...” This very word of God struck my heart and broke down all my unanswered life questions. I came from God, not by accident, as his best one. It was clear that the Korean War did not change my life journey, but there is God’s sovereignty upon my life. This one word became all my answers. This one word has been helping me to overcome my inferior complex which intimidated me the most. At the same time, it gave me confidence to do everything because I am a beloved child of God.

Second, God sent many role models in order to help and teach me. Due to my only son character, I had many short comings and bad habits of spiritual life with common sense. So God sent me many great servants of God such as Dr. Samuel Lee, Mother Barry, Dr. John Jun and Sh. Moses Kim to demonstrate their life of faith to imitate. On top of them, I had three women of God from my family. They were my grandmother, mother and wife.                                          

My grand-mother was called Mrs. No. In those days parents didn’t send their daughter to school nor give her a name. So her church pastor named her as Maria No. Whenever she went church, she took a Bible although she was illiterate. But she was a woman of prayer. She lost all her three sons during the Korean War. It left to her three widowed daughter-in-law, and each widowed had one son each. The older had a daughter more. Before the war she had enough funds to send her two sons to study college in Seoul. But everything was gone like wind after the war. Nonetheless this sorrowful situation made her strong. Before going to bed, she went out to kitchen and prayed for one hour every day. Her prayer topic was “Her grandchildren may grow as servants of God.” Although she had prayed every night, nothing was changed. But after 40 years has passed her prayer have been fulfilled one by one. Until 2014, God have been blessed the Choi’s family with 7 pastors and 2 missionaries with 3 Ph.Ds. Praise God who never ignore my helpless grandmother’s prayers.

My mother became a widow at 28 years old. I was just 6 years old. But she decided to dedicate herself to raise her one and only son as a man of God. In order to support her son she took all kinds of jobs as much as possible. She went down to Hong-Chun, Kangwon province and engaged in farm work with the inherited small field. But she was not swayed by the situation but had faith in God. At the church, she engaged in Bible study and prayer meeting diligently and also taught the Bible to fellow members. She always encouraged me to have faith in God. When our family came to America as missionary, she was left alone in Korea and learned the life of faith of M Joseph and Maria Ahn, and P Abraham and Sarah Kim in their houses while taking care of their children. After five years, when she came to America, she got a UBF missionary certificate by the help of Dr. Samuel Lee. In America, she stayed with Dr. Ben Toh’ and P Kevin Albright’ houses and took care of their children respectively. On top of that she had served Chicago missionaries’ parents with the word of God every weekend until she was called to heaven in 1998. Although she had lived a humanly sorrowful life, but she demonstrated her faith in God. Thank God for granting me such a wonderful mother of faith.

By God’s grace and one-side love on October 24th 1972, God established my house church with M Rebecca who is the most mindful woman of God in the world. She is the oldest among 8 children. I was a spoiled, only son, who had many weaknesses and short comings. So I demanded love from her as usual which my mother had done for me. M Rebecca suffered a lot with her immature husband. Rather she accepted me as her older son although we didn’t have a son yet. I thank God that she didn’t run away up to now. Instead, she served me with her love until I came to know what love and service in Jesus is. God blessed our family with two sons and one daughter. Isaac, the older one got the Ph. D and doing post doctorate in Oxford, UK. Daughter, Becky finished Northwestern graduate school, have been working as a high school math teacher. The youngest, Daniel works as a computer software engineer after graduating Northwestern University. Also God granted us four cute grandchildren so far: Nathan, Jonathan, Elliot and Lydia. Since we came to Chicago, I worked full time and M Rebecca served campus mission full time. By God’s grace, she could take care of many sheep. Whenever the guest came to Chicago, she invited them into our house and fed them. Also she diligently sent gifts to frontline mission fields or sick coworkers or sheep who needed our encouragement. Also M Rebecca became a visiting partner with M Grace  Lee throughout the Chicago land. Her giving life and serving life marbled me so much. Because I was get used to be served and to get something as an only son. God sent me an angel like her and taught me how to serve and love in Jesus’ name.

Third, through the participation in God’s work I came to know God very personally. In 1978, God sent us America as missionaries along with three children for young college students.  Dr. Samuel Lee appointed our family to begin CBF ministry in 1979. So weekdays, we joined the UIC pioneering work with M Daniel Sohn and M James Joung. On weekend, we served little children ministry with a prayer topic, “Raising 2nd generation missionary and shepherd.” One day Dr. Samuel Lee found that several CBF children couldn’t speak Korean well. He encouraged us to teach them Korean also. So we opened 3 Korean classes after Saturday CBF meeting in our basement. 

Meanwhile UIC ministry was growing with many sheep, many missionaries wanted to join UIC ministry. We thought that it was time to leave UIC and go to another campus in Chicago area. At UIC, God blessed M Rebecca with many sheep under her care; Sh. Maria Albright, Sh. Marcia Lenthang became precious coworkers and more than 100 students studied Bible with her. John Dewar had been studied Bible from his freshman year plus until he finished Trinity seminary school. Although he didn't commit to UBF, but he comes to our worship service at least 3 times per year and showed his gratitude for being a Bible student for 25 years. He is now an elder in south side of Chicago church and introduced us as his spiritual parent whoever we met in his church. After serving UIC 14 years, we began to pioneer Loyola University with P. Ron Ward. At Loyola, we could lay a foundation to register UBF as Bible study group. It was a mighty work of God and a victory against severe persecution from school administration. Also M Rebecca registered as a student in order to fish Loyola student paying $1000 for one subject together with P. Ron. God accepted our labor of love as our prayers and blessed us so much. I had even 18 years old freshman girl sheep, Hayden for the first time in my life.

While serving UIC and Loyola total 27 years, CBF ministry grew in number more than 120 including babies. At that time, each fellowship had prayer topic to raise 120 flocks of sheep. By God’s one-side grace CBF ministry had 120 children under our care. By the recommendation of Dr. John Jun, we established independent CBF fellowship to serve 2nd generation with focus in 2005. God blessed our CBF fellowship with several faithful stewards such as Birgit Pierce, Tim McEathron, Sarah Yu, Timkim Williams, with other 15 teachers. According to my 35 year experience in CBF, I realized that teachers and parents are very important in youth ministry. Teachers’ and parents’ exemplary life of faith influences their children so much. So we introduced “Family devotion” to Chicago UBF community for the spiritual relationship between parents and children in 2013. Also for the improving teachers’ quality and teaching techniques we hold annual teacher’s conference. For the better and sound youth ministry and for the spiritual benefit to our growing children, I began to prepare special lectures such as “CBF ministry, Children education, Teacher’s self-development, and Family discipleship,” in order to train youth ministry teachers and educate parents and grandparents as well.

By God’s grace and mercy, I retired on April 2013 after long 34 year service for one company, Xerox Corporation. When I obeyed a calling for world mission, God blessed me with a wonderful job as a service engineer in computer field. This job provided and enabled me to serve my layman mission and M Rebecca could serve American campus mission as a full time and our three children’s college education too.  In this way I could support my family and UBF world mission as a self-supporting lay missionary. While I had been working as an employee, I had several times of crisis. All of them did not relate directly with my job performance, but due to my skin color. I was threatened to demote or fire me out despite of my small mistake. Whenever I faced this kind of problem, I went to God almighty every morning with my broken heart. Then, he filled me with new strength and hope through his almighty words. In spite of all kind of accusation and racial prejudice, God had covered and guided me with his mighty hand for the 34 years in my work. In 1990, I was chosen as an employee of the year among fellow workers with very nice 4 days paid vacation trip to Bahama with my wife. What a wonderful and sweet victory after spiritual battle it was!!! However I just wanted to give up this nice trip for the morale and influence to others. It was because other coworkers engaged in fishing and 1:1 battle diligently. But Dr. Samuel Lee heard it about and encouraged us to go trip for the honor of God and victory for the God’s people. So we were the first to go to Bahama vacation in the middle of pioneering work in America.

My future direction is to prepare many lectures for children ministry and family ministry based on my experiences, and educate teachers in the youth ministry, and parents and grandparents so that our ministry may grow strong in spirituality and serve Jesus’ world mission. While I was writing my life testimony, I realized that my God is the God of Immanuel, Jehovah-Jireh and Ebenezer from the North Korea, South Korea to America. I praise and thank God who turned my life from the fatalistic way of life to know God very personally and enabled me to serve his life-giving works as a Bible teacher and a prayer servant in spite of myself.

One word:  “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”