Do Not Stop at Praying

The father in Luke 15:20 runs towards the son who has squandered his inheritance. He feels compassion, embraces him and kisses him. For Pastor Hong, visiting from Korea, that compassion has become familiar through life with his son Wonki, and through learning where his own love reaches its limit.

The Father Ran

The son asked for his inheritance while his father was still alive. His father gave it gladly. The son did not invest it in stocks or Bitcoin or build a successful business. He squandered every bit of it, then came home.

The son didn't run to the father. The father ran to the son.

Splanchnizomai is the word translated as compassion. Splanchnon means a person's inner organs; the verb describes those inward parts being violently churned or convulsed. This father's ache sends him running towards his son. Parental disappointment, anger and the desire for respect can churn inside us too. Holding this aching pity towards our own children can be hard.

You Are Wonki's Father

Wonki was five when he was diagnosed with progeria syndrome, so rare that there was no information about it in Korea at the time. Doctors could give his parents the name, but could not say how long he would live.

His parents had prayed for him to grow hair and be healthy. On the night of the diagnosis, Pastor Hong raged at God all night, forgetting entirely that he was a pastor. He beat his chest, tore at his hair and threw an absolute fit, threatening revenge: "you have abandoned me and my son, but just you wait." God said nothing.

Yet towards Wonki he felt an unbearable ache. A voice kept speaking inside his heart.

You are Wonki's father. You have to do something, whatever it takes.

Only later did he understand that God had given him that heart. The ache itself was something God had given, even while he felt abandoned.

Simply That Wonki Is Alive

His happiness as a parent changed. It stopped depending on Wonki turning out a certain way and became a search for what would actually make Wonki happy. He was thankful simply that his son was alive, and that they could rejoice in being alive together. This was the heart of splanchnizomai.

Kamen Rider toys fill an entire wall of their house. In his own childhood, toys were rewards for pleasing his parents; he buys them for Wonki without conditions, because Wonki loves them.

Wonki is grateful for a very short while, and after that he forgets to be grateful. Just like me.

Living with that heart costs time and money and wears him out. It also brings him, little by little, to know God's heart towards him.

One Step Ahead

About ten years ago, a doctor took pity on Wonki and offered extremely expensive stem cell treatment for free. It required fat-derived stem cells, but Wonki's illness means he has no body fat, so the fat came from his father.

God had, you might say, prepared plenty of fat on me for Wonki's sake.

He prayed that the cup would pass from him; God told him to drink it. When he told his wife it hurt, her answer was, "compared to giving birth that's nothing, you fool." If he had carried Wonki, she reckoned, he would have run off the delivery table.

Wonki's brief thanks left his father thinking about the blood and flesh he had given. In that pain, he began to understand God's heart towards him.

When a second procedure was needed, he suggested using his wife's fat and rehearsed a speech claiming hers would be a better match because she had carried Wonki. The doctor smiled and said to do it one more time. "God is always one step ahead of me."

The End of My Limit

During the second surgery, overwhelming fear made breathing difficult, and he thought he would die. He wanted to bolt off the table, but a documentary crew was filming.

That night he could not sleep. He prayed that living as Wonki's father was too hard, and at the end of that confession recognised something he could not do.

That was my limit. I truly loved Wonki, but I could not die in his place.

At the end of his limit, the gospel became new to him.

He is a Lord who, out of sheer pity for me, would willingly die for me. That is the Lord's love. It is by that love that I am here, and that my son is here.

He had resented what God had not given him without once weighing the Lord's heart in willingly dying for him. To live as a Christian is to think deeply about that heart towards us, and feel it more deeply still.

When we cannot feel God's will, we are to weep more, and willingly love and embrace someone with the Lord's heart. When the measure of those tears, that sacrifice and that love is full, only then does God let us know his will and his heart.

Do Not Stop at Praying

"I'm praying for you" can become a single line followed by nothing. Pastor Hong names this as the thing that tempts him most, and a reason many believers and younger people leave God. Those words can suffocate someone already hurting.

His parents still do not fully understand him. They say praying for him matters more than talking with him and understanding his heart; that causes him pain and anger. After being almost entirely cut off from them for two years, he reached out first from Australia, sending a message and opening his heart. It remains hard.

I hope you won't stop at praying, but will go to them first, hold out your hand, and pray that the Lord would let you embrace that person and give you the strength for it, and so take one step, and another step, toward them.

The challenge is to stop using a promise of prayer to excuse doing nothing. Prayer here asks for the strength to embrace the person who has wounded you. Whatever wound you have been given, remember the Lord who willingly died for you. Go to them first, hold out your hand, and take one step and another towards them.