News > North America

New Jersey UBF, US
April 9, 2014

Ezra Devoted Himself to Study, Obey and Teach the Bible

Ezra 7:10 “For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.”

I. 2013

Ephesians 3: 7 “I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.” Living in this land a long time comfortably, I was got used to thinking and living like an American. I forgot God’s calling upon me as the servant of God. It was difficult for me to find out the motivation to live as a servant of God but to seek for better conditions. Through the message from Ephesians 3, I was encouraged to restore my spiritual identity as a kingdom of priests. People become useless by doing something worthless and petty. In 2013, I focused on preaching the mystery of the gospel as the servant of God instead of doing something petty and selfish for myself.

In 2013, we studied the book of Matthew to learn the kingship of Jesus so that we worshipped Jesus as our King. God raised up three messengers for UBF worship service at 3PM; Sh. David Gates, Sh. Jason Perry and Msn. Peter Kim, and three messengers for JBF worship service at 11:00AM: Msn. Joseph Sohn, Msn. Peter Lim and Msn Joseph Lee Jr. In summer, we participated in the International Summer Bible Conference through prayer. God blessed us to serve 150 international guests worldwide during the summer. We invited 23 second generation missionaries from around the world through summer camp in Honors Review and International Summer Bible Conference. We began to build up 120 disciples common house at Rutgers in March, 2013 and moved our worship place to Princeton. Dr. Junhee Lee's house church served Princeton student with one to one Bible study. Through their prayer for Princeton, God sent Sister Vivienne Tam as a remnant of Princeton University.

II. 2014

Ezra 7:10 says, “For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.” Based on Ezra 7:10, we pray as follows:

First, Bible Study Community at Rutgers and Princeton: Ezra studied the Bible intensively with his people. As Ezra did for the purpose of restoring Israel as a kingdom of Priests, we pray to build up a Bible study community to raise up 7000 Bible teachers and missionaries to share the gospel of Jesus.

Second, we pray to establish house churches through marriage by faith. We learn that marriage is very important to God. God made marriage and he wants his people to include him in their marriages. In every time and place this problem surfaces in a different way. Even in the time of Noah it was godless marriages that led to God’s judgment by the flood. Immorality and the breakdown of families is one great problem of our times. Ezra was deeply concerned about the marriage of God’s people. The sons of God’s people intermarried with Gentile women based on their interests of emotion and appearance. He mourned the whole day and prayed in repentance to God. This teaches us how important it is to build up God-centered and mission-centered house churches. If God’s people marry according to human feelings or their own ideas, they will end up worshipping idols like Solomon. In Genesis 24 there is a beautiful and spiritual marriage. It is the wonderful house church of Isaac and Rebecca, through which the blessing of God was flowing. We pray to raise up seven house churches among us.

John Park