kingdom accord

...after having a great time of discipleship and mutual encouragement w/ griff this morning (i'm gonna miss seeing ya, g!), we took care of lots of errands and tied up many loose ends...as u can imagine, things are busy, but counter-balanced with reminders that God is still using this time to teach us that all of life is ministry...

...take for example the sale of our trusty sidekick, our '99 honda accord...we've driven cross-country twice with our sidekick and it has been such an awesome ride...so, given all our good will for the accord, at first we approached the sale with the attitude of getting fair market value for the car....focused more on the deal than on the person, we simply didn't tune into what God was trying to do...

...more than merely finalizing a transaction, in hindsight God wanted to begin a partnership between two people...God wanted us to be kingdom-givers, not business dealers (both of us were never good at econ anyway)...as negotiations stalled, God led us to spend some time of prayer and seeking God's way (ironically, this prayer time took place in the car), and to His glory, God broadened our horizons and bended our desires to be more like His: God showed us that we must think about the individual (not the transaction), and that we should seek to bless and encourage our potential buyer with christian generosity, not business hardball, even if that comes at a loss of profit...

...as it turned out, obeying God's leading is profitable and in this case resulted in something far greater than the bottom line we were originally looking for...moved by our generous price, our buyer (kwon, left above) too sensed the Holy Spirit's leading and response to partner with us generously in prayer and financial investment....and get this: with the sale price and his ministry support, we ended up with far more than our original asking price and we also experienced the joy of a new partnership for the gospel in japan...indeed, God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and thankfully, His ways are higher than our ways (isa 55)...

...despite the lesson we learned, it was still hard to part ways with our trusty sidekick...

...take care of our baby, kwon...

...then we had dinner with my cousin lauren (and her boyfriend mike) in k-town...

...and capped the evening with a cozy gathering of friends and fellow ministry partners @ tong-dang thai in pasadena...

...at the restaurant i couldn't help but notice the enormous and well-crafted statue of buddha (and bodhisatvas) placed in a location of aesthetic prominence and cultural priority...