David Kim said when he was in seminary, God showed him something about himself not by opening his eyes but by closing them.
“There was a time when I was working full time, studying full time and ministering part time on the weekends,” said Kim, pastor of Good Community Church of Torrance in Torrance, California, during his sermon to the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference on June 9. “One day I was just working in my workplace, and my eyelids felt so heavy they were literally shutting down on me.”
He tried to sleep it off, but it didn’t work. Three days later he still couldn’t hold his eyes open.
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So Kim went to two hospitals — first one in Texas, then one in South Korea — and doctors at both told him he had Myasthenia Gravis, a serious condition that causes muscle weakness and has no cure. The doctors in South Korea predicted he would be completely paralyzed in six months’ time and would spend the rest of his life in bed.
“I was in complete and utter disbelief of what I’d just heard,” Kim said.
He sat in silence in his hospital bed for three hours, then began crying out to God asking, “Why?” Then he asked God to take his life if he was going to be a burden to his family.
“I had said that Christ was enough, but in that moment, in the face of incredible suffering, my honest confession is that no, Christ was not enough,” Kim said. “I needed Christ plus health, Christ plus healing — then I will be content.”
And at that moment, he said God reminded him of the truth of Job 1:21 — that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
“That was the first time I knew what it meant to submit to the Lordship of Christ,” Kim said. “Up until then, I thought that my body was my own possession and I had every right to use my head, arms, legs and feet like I wanted. On that day I finally realized that everything I had, everything I enjoyed … my life was not mine, and it never was.”
He asked for God’s forgiveness there in the hospital bed, and he felt an “amazing peace and incredible joy.” He began sharing the gospel with every person he encountered at the hospital. And then a miracle happened — after three months of being hospitalized, the paralysis started to recede. Kim’s doctor called it a true miracle.
“To this day, whenever I feel a sense of entitlement, I always go back to that hospital in my mind and I pray, ‘Lord, You are the only master of my life,’” he said.
Kim shared this story with those present at the Pastors Conference and shared from 2 Timothy 2:1–7 that disciples of Jesus are to give their whole lives to Christ — and walk faithfully through suffering.
“True discipleship is giving the ownership of our life to the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “How can we know if we are truly living in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ?”
The test, Kim said, is suffering. He asked those present at the conference to ask themselves these three questions:
*Do you submit to the will of God even in the midst of incredible suffering?
*Do you give thanks to the Lord, and do you worship Him in the midst of suffering or only after the suffering has passed away?
*In the darkest hour, in the face of the greatest pain and suffering, is Christ really enough?
“I know this is a lot easier said than done,” Kim said.
But he said that one day, everyone would stand before God and have to answer questions about how they used their life.
“One day He will ask these two questions to all believers … ‘Did you give your all in all to be a disciple and live a life of discipleship?’ and ‘Did you give your all in all to make disciples of all nations?’ Be prepared to answer that question,” he said. “And until that day, may God be with us in each and every step of the way.”
For more information about the SBC Pastors’ Conference, visit sbcpc.net. To see Kim’s sermon and others from the conference, visit sbcannualmeeting.net.
