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WALK BEFORE ME

From September 28-30, LA UBF gathered for a Summer Bible Conference at Pinecrest Christian Conference Center in Twin Peaks, CA.  A total of 107 attendants gathered, including Missionaries Isaac and Rebekah Kim, founders of LA UBF who were visiting from Northern California.  The title of the conference was “Walk Before Me,” derived from God’s words to Abraham in Genesis 17.  After prayer and discussion, the board of overseers agreed that this conference would be focused on growth/revival through repentance and faith and designed the conference agenda around 3 key times in Abraham’s life as recorded in the book of Genesis.

Believing in our need to rely on God for a blessed conference and ongoing revival, a prayer meeting was held for a month prior to the start of the conference.  This prayer meeting proved to be particularly blessed as many (usually 20-25) showed up voluntarily every morning from Monday through Saturday at 5:30 a.m. and prayed together for the conference and many other prayer topics, particularly for the church and nation.  Through this, already repentance, faith, strength, and unity was growing among us.

After dinner, the conference began Friday evening with a message titled, “You Will Be A Blessing,” by Robert Fishman based on God’s first calling to Abraham in Genesis 12.  It was the beginning of God’s work to grow Abraham, the father of faith, and it was in many ways a new beginning for God’s plan of world salvation as well.  As pointed out in the message, God’s calling to Abraham consisted of blessing him and making him a blessing, even blessing all peoples on earth through him by sending the Messiah Jesus through his line of descendants.  Abraham was too old to make anything of himself.  Interestingly, he and his wife had not even been able to have a single child up to his old age of 75, and he and his family had been idol worshippers.  But, the promise could and would be fulfilled not through Abraham’s ability and will, but by the Almighty God who had made the promise and in whom he believed.  The message prompted us to repent and believe in God who promises to take the lives of his people of faith and bless them and make them into blessings, even despite all our shortcomings.  The evening was capped off with group Bible study as a preview to the next day’s message on Genesis 17.

After breakfast Saturday morning, we listened to a message by Terry Lopez based on Genesis 17, titled, “Walk Before Me.”  The message took us through one of the darker times in Abraham’s life when he followed his wife Sarah’s idea to sleep with her slave Hagar and have a child through her.  It symbolized a life of trying to make something out of ourselves and get what we want by our own efforts of compromise rather than being patient and relying on the timing and promises of God.  Through this strategy, Abraham did indeed get a son whom they named Ishmael, but it came at a clear cost.  It was not the life of blessing coming from the promises of God.  Instead of blessing, there was bitterness, jealousy and much fighting in the household between Sarah and their slave Hagar, and Abraham in the the middle of it, obviously having a tough time.  Also, there was a period of 13 years that passed by in which the Bible is silent, likely with more of the same turmoil, but also likely a time when Abraham enjoyed being the father of the son he had always wanted. But it was not a time good for his life of faith.  So at the end of the 13 years, God appeared to him and said “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.”  It was God’s effort to help Abraham repent and get aligned with Him again according to the promises God had originally made to him.  Abraham fell facedown in repentance, and God gave him his promise again, this time with a covenant, including circumcision.  And in keeping with his promise, God told Abraham that his wife Sarah would have a son through whom kings of peoples would come.  Through obeying God’s instructions for circumcision that very day, Abraham showed his repentance and faith in God’s words and indeed grew up in his faith.

After the message, we listened to a testimony by Terry’s son, Peter, a young college student attending USC.  He shared his multiple attempts to grab the life of blessing for himself through various girlfriends, with reasoning and compromise similar to that of Abraham’s as he went after getting Ishmael.  He also testified about how each time God would bless him in one way or another, he would quickly grab the blessing and run, largely forgetting about God and the bigger picture behind God’s blessing and what God wanted to do in making him into a blessing for others.  He prays to be used as a source of blessing to those in his business fraternity, particularly in finding a way to help them know Jesus.

After the message there was a large 7-hour gap of time for reflection writing with lunch in the middle.  Some chose to fast through lunch in order to better focus mentally and spiritually on this time of reflection.  It was designed to be and was indeed likely one of the most impactful times of the conference as each person could personally reflect on where their life of faith was at, meditating on the word of God and writing down testimonies.

After dinner, the testimonies were shared in small groups.  Then after a short break, on a voluntary basis these testimonies were shared in front of the whole congregation at the podium for several hours, with just short breaks in between.  Anyone who wanted to share could share.  It was a great time of healing, revival, and repentance with tears, laughter, and joy all mixed in as each person sincerely testified about their life of faith, the ups and downs, and their struggle with the word of God.  In particular, the words stemming from the conference key verse, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless,” were reflected on and testified to a lot.  One of the eldest among us, a senior shepherd, Abraham Michaud, and one of the youngest among us, Mark Lopez, both testified with much grace of God’s appearing to them through the conference by the words in this key verse.  There was so much willingness to participate and share that we ran out of time to listen to everyone who wanted to share and decided to listen to the remaining people the next day.  We finished the night with a full hour of very fitting songs of praise and worship lead by Moses Lim and co. and combined the praise time with prayer.  In between songs, three prayer leaders helped lead the congregation into various prayer topics to consider and pray for including gospel-based prayer topics and prayers according to other words of God, prayers for the lost campus students and for the ministry’s children, and prayers of thanks to God for the work he had done and will do and the prayers he answers.

After breakfast on the final day, Sunday, we listened to a message by William Larsen based on Genesis 22 with the title, “Because You Have Obeyed Me.”  The message revealed how God had helped Abraham, taking this broken-down man who was like an old broken-down car, and worked on him to grow him into a solid man of faith who was now like a restored fully-functional high caliber car, operating at a high level of faith.  When God first called him, Abraham believed God and obeyed, but still Abraham didn’t have faith in God alone.  So in a time of testing he failed to perform well.  He had his son Ishmael by way of compromise and then put his faith, hopes, and dreams in this illegitimate son.  But God appeared to him and helped him to repent and direct his faith back in God and God alone.  And through God’s help, Abraham became the man seen in Genesis 22.  In this chapter, Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his promised son Isaac on the altar.  By faith Abraham could do it, even reasoning that God would raise the dead if necessary since this son Isaac was the promised descendent in whom God said he would fulfill the promises through.  Abraham had become a man who could believe every word of God and whose actions of obedience backed it up.  The message revealed to us that it is faith that pleases God and through which God works.

The rest of the morning was primarily used in listening to the remainder of the testimonies from those who wished to share.  This lasted around 2 hours until we had to close it out.  Pastor John Kwon gave closing announcements, including the invitation to those still wishing to share testimonies to share at the upcoming Sunday Worship Services, one per week, until all who want to share have shared.  More healing and edification came out and we could see God’s work among us as nearly every speaker shed tears for some reason or another.  The conference closed with a call to dedicate oneself to the early morning 5:30 prayer meetings that would continue following the conference.  We give thanks and praise to God for working by his Spirit and word among us to revive us and to grow and prompt us into greater lives of faith.